Harper in Court Over "Fixed" Election Dates Law - Was the Last Election Illegal?

This turn of events show just how strange politics can be. Democracy Watch is a watchdog group that monitors ethics in government., They are suing the Harper government in Federal Court and the arguments are being heard today. The issue is if Prime Minister Harper's last election call was illegal.

Harper had a campaign promise in the prior election of 2006 to set fixed election dates, and his law was passed unanimously by Parliament, if memory serves. Under the law of the land the next election was supposed to be October 19, 2009, pretty much as it looks like it will be, give or take a month.

The then Minister of Democratic Reform, now Minister of Justice, Rob Nicholson, said, according to CBC reports, the fixed election date law restricted the Prime Minister from calling an election unless a vote of no-confidence in the government occurred before October 2009. Ouch!

Democracy Watch says the fixed election date law was intended to stop the kind of actions Mr. Harper took last year in asking the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and call an election. Of course Mr. Harper's lawyers say nothing in the law prevents the Prime Minister from making such a request of the Governor General.

An interesting challenge of what is the appropriate statutory interpretation of Harper's fixed election date law will ensue in the Federal Court today. Does it mean a minority government can only be defeated by a non-confidence vote? With Harper proroguing Parliament he managed to duck out of facing such a vote. Is that good for democracy?

Technically the Governor General calls an election not the Prime Minister. So what does it matter if we have an election based on a non-confidence vote or a voluntary submission of a minority government to dissolve and go to an election.

In this case, the opposition parties formed a coalition and were prepared to do two things. First defeat the Harper government in a non-confidence vote. Then go to the Governor General as a majority coalition and ask the Governor General for permission to form a new government.

If she agreed to the coalitions request they would form a government and we would not have had the last election forced on bu by Mr. Harper's tactics. We did not want an election then either but Harper forced it anyway, and he still won anyway. Almost looked like a majority there for a few days too.

So what will happen? Will the court decide that last election was illegal? If so what does that do to the legitimacy of the Harper's right to govern? Do we go back into an election now by court order? Or will the courts wait out the forth coming non-confidence vote, see the next election through and then announce its decision? I think so. The courts do not want to get that deeply into the political thrust and parry of validating or invalidating an election if they can avoid it.

Or will the courts do what the RCMP did in 2006 and proceed and announce their decision, even if it is in the middle of an election. Remember in the middle of the 2006 election the RCMP announced a criminal investigation into possible income trust leaks by the government. that investigation later proved baseless except for one civil servant who used the insider information for personal gain.

Many believe that ill-advised and ill-timed investigation led to the defeat of the Martin Liberal government. I don't think the courts will do that but there is nothing to stop them. In fact there is much to be said for them proceeding on their own timetable and to ignore the political implications. After all many do not like what they call judge made law.

Just as the state does not belong in the bedrooms of the nation, so too the courts do not belong in the election campaigns of the nation. However, that principle could cut either way. Staying out of the election campaign may be interpreted by the court as just delaying releasing its decision until after the next election is over. That is one way to stay out of the election process. It could also mean that the courts decide that the election timing and process has nothing to do with them and what ever they do is irrelevant to the election process. They would then choose to ignore the election process entirely and release their decision whenever they are ready. To do otherwise is a de facto involvement in the election process.

Then of course, this all depends on what the final court decision is. If Harper is off the hook and did not act illegally, should that decision be released in the middle of an election campaign? Will that not be the courts having an impact of the final result? If Harper is off the hook and the decision can be announced before the election starts but knowing we are headed for an election; should it be announced?

What if the courts wait, Harper wins the next election but loses in court? Does that destabilize and undermine the the legitimacy of his government? These potential scenarios are all real issues that could have been avoided simply by Harper facing the House of Commons non-confidence vote and challenging the coalitions legitimacy to govern and forcing an election in 2006.

Democracy Watch is saying if they win, then Canadians could start a class action against the Conservative Party for the $350,000,000 of costs for the last election. What a tangled web our Prime Minister weaves by the kinds of political choices he makes.

Are Volatile "Voters" Confounding the Pollsters?

So once again we are seeing voter volatility and uncertainty reflected in the various recent poll results but they are all about a hypothetical question of who will you vote for when there is no election on, so generally, people don't take the question seriously. Ekos says Harper and Ignatieff are tied but the Libs have been leading for a while. Strategic Counsel says Harper is up 5 points and has been leading the Liberals since early July. Ipsos Reid a couple of weeks ago had a poll result that was very different that a group of other recent pollster findings. Go figure? All are pollsters in the game are reputable and capable but how can we account fo rthe wide variations in findings?

Strategic Counsel says the Liberal Vote is down 14% in Quebec since last May. Ekos tells us that Liberal support is higher in Alberta than Conservative support in Quebec. A fun factoid but what does it mean. Will the Libs break through in Alberta again? Will Quebecers send Harper packing? All this proves nothing but continuing uncertainty and just adds to the misinformation and distraction from the real issues we need to be facing in any pending election.

Here are some of my concerns about the state of politics and the nation these days. Consensus about leadership is lacking, both in terms of Harper's capacity and Ignatieff's intentions. No one has really talked clearly about vision and how we need to mitigate and adapt over concerns over climate change, education based on skills needed for the 21st century, how we can rethink our economy to reposition ourselves globally as we come out of the recession. What about our relations with America - where the puck was, and China and India where the puck is going. None of these issues are in isolation, they are all integrated and impact on each other.

Canadians recognize that we need a change from another minority government but we are not sure yet which way we want to go to create that change. An election will focus us on how we really want to answer that question. The Conservatives are feeding fear that an election will shut down government and the home reno provisions will not be passed. Not true but in uncertain times feeding fear is a powerful political strategy.

Elections have never destabilized the continuing work of government in Canada. And the home reno issue is assured and need not be political at all, unless Mr. Harper decides he wants to make so. I still don't understand why Harper did not just pass it all in his budget last April. Why did he not just get the home reno program done when he had the chance? We have enough uncertainty and his approach to suggest it might not go through if an election were called this fall is not true and intended to add to the angst and uncertainty of the recession.

Harper wants to avoid an early election because he wants the media attention of the international meetings that are coming up, including another session with President Obama. He will likely do what it takes to defer any efforts to personally present a confidence motion on an issue that he would like to be defeated on, like EI reform. He will at least wait to play that kind of political card until after he gets to rub shoulders with the truly powerful politicians on the world stage.

The Liberals already voted for the Budget and want it finished and effectively implemented so they are not going to scuttle the home reno program. They also want to see the results of the fiscal update the PM has to deliver to the nation by the end of September. They are just starting to talk about hope and are staking out a place presence for their leader on the Internet and traditional media with a new advertising campaign. That needs time to gel too.

But but neither Conservative fear or Liberal hope is in itself an effective method to prove either leader is ready to govern in these perilous uncertain times in our country. We will want more meaningful policy meat from these camps if we are forced to go to the polls this fall. The economy, health care and the environment are likely the top of mind issues for most of us. No polls that I have seen are exploring what the issues are going to be in the next election and our attitudes are towards them. Pity!

The punditry is all about talking up the horse race between the leaders, as meaningless and trivial as that is to the real concerns of the country. Commentary is presented without clarification nor with the contextual reality that the race has not yet started so all this chatter is just that, much ado but signifying nothing. The polling focuses to date are just about positioning politicians and parties like people in elevators. They are either coming in and on their way up or they are going down and on their way out. Sadly we don't yet know for sure who is who in the zoo.

We are going to have an election eventually. The timing will be based on if Mr. Harper's minority government can still sustain the confidence of the House of Commons. The Liberals are now on record that they are ready to go any time. So now the Bloc and the NDP have the finger on the trigger of the starting gun that will cause the election. It is up to either them to tip the scales and determine when Mr. Harper's leadership has to face the nation. It is an open question when it will start, who will start it, Layton or Duceppe, and what issue they will use to trigger it.

As to what the ballot question will be in the next election, it is always based on a theme of leadership, change and vision. The next election will also be about those themes and how do we achieve an majority government so we can get back to some stability in our politics and governance. That means the underlying and animating ballot question will be which leader do we, as a nation and in our collective wisdom, trust with the absolute governing power of a majority government - Harper or Ignatieff.

Can Pre-Election Opinion Polls Do More Harm Than Good?

I don't have much faith and even less trust in opinion polls. Not because I think they are wrong or a waste of time. I just think they are too trapped in time and context and only a superficial snap shot of "opinion." So they are a pretty meaningless predictor of actual behaviours.

So I was interested to read this piece on polling in yesterday's Edmonton Journal. Ipsos Reid is one of the best brand names for polling around. It was good to see the discussion on the role and limitations on opinion polling.

It is getting harder to get folks to respond to polls these days, and when they do to ensure you have a truly random sample and that participants are telling you the truth. One of my favourite bumper stickers from many years ago was "Save Democracy, Lie to a Pollster."

I think this attitude about intentionally lying to pollsters is more prevalent than many realize. Also, the random sample may be demographically pure but there are so many more phone calls that have to be made to get people to actually participate. As a result we get a self-selection skew in the randomness of sampling. This self-selection skewing is especially true in on-line polling techniques.

I know lots of people who admit lying to pollsters, intentionally. Others give normative but untrue answers that do not reflect reality either. For example less than 60% of Canadians voted in the last federal election but polls indicate a much larger number say they did. Are they lying? some are. Did they forget that they did not vote but intended to vote and re making a mistake? Are they giving what they know is the proper (normative) answer even though they know it is not the truth?

Mr Bricker of Ipsos Reid also notes in the article that the order and syntax of questions will make a big difference in the answers polls generate. So with all this, I take opinion poss with a grain of salt. Those unscientific "surveys" you see in websites of traditional media are actually dangerous. This is because they have a air of unwarranted credibility about they because of the authority of the newspaper, radio or television broadcaster who is hosting them. They often get hijacked by special interests or competing interests, like political parties. The results mislead an unsuspecting public and can have a significant impact on the actual beliefs of many well intentioned but ill-informed people. Look how many Americans still think 911 terrorists came through Canada, even the US Cabinet Secretary involved made a recent comment to that effect. Mistaken initial beliefs are had to change, regardless of the amount and credibility of the subsequent evidence to the contrary.

That said, let the polls proceed. We just need to ensure we have some general literacy in our society about what opinion polls do, what they mean and don't mean and what they "prove" - if anything. I often do commentary and analysis on political opinion polls in the blog. I think the real value they have is, over time and with many sources on similar questions and issues, they can collectively provide a sense of trend or direction of public sentiment. But unless we are into an actual election, asking a hypothetical "how would you vote tomorrow if an election was called" generates pretty meaningless data.

Elections matter and campaigns create consequences that generates real results that truly matter to the good of the country. Poll away but don't let them have any sway until the reality of an actual election is happening, then, and only then should people pay them some heed.

Obama Speaks to Student's About Their Responsibility

I have never had a guest blogger and this post is not one either. However, it is the transcript of the remarks he will make live tomorrow to school kids all over America. The rest of us will watch on television or on the Web. I wanted to post the speech here so you could read them and have them sink in as you watch the President deliver them tomorrow.

The message is clear and much of it can be considered serious challenges for many citizens. This is particularly true for those who have given up on democracy, have withdrawn from the politics and no long choose to be informed about the issues of our times. I hope you read this and share the text with your friends and family who no long feel they have a contribution to make to create a better society through informed citizenship and political participation.

Prepared Remarks of President Barack ObamaBack to School Event
Arlington, Virginia September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.
Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.
Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.
I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.
I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.
Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job.

You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.
And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.
I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.
That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

Wildrose Alliance Invites Bloggers to Their Leadership Convention

My hat is off to Jane Morgan the Executive Director of the Wildrose Alliance Party of Alberta. I recently made a suggestion to her on Twitter that bloggers should be accredited media at their leadership convention in Edmonton on October 17, 2009. Almost immediately she responded - and favourably to the idea. OnTwitter she is @wildrosejane and I am @kenchapman46 if you want to follow us.


Her blog is "Up Close and Personal With Jane." Here is her recent blog post on the point and accepting the challenge. I am returning from out of the country the day before the event but I plan to be there and posting on my impressions from the floor of the WAP convention. I expect others more adept at social media than me will be live blogging the results in real time. There will be quite a few of us political bloggers who will take up the invitation and be posting from the floor of the convention.


Some tweets have expressed concern about allowing "overly partisan bloggers who are strong supporters of other parties" into the WAP convention. I understand the angst at one level but in reality, we will be blogging anyway. By not being there we will not have the advantage and responsibility of accountability that come with actually being there. The fact that bloggers of any and all stripes will be there in person will add authenticity and authority to the social media dialogue that will happen.


I also applaud Jane for also saying that no anonymous bloggers will be allowed. That will add to the accountability and responsibility of the bloggers who post about the WAP leadership. That does not mean blogger's nom-de-plumes can't be used, just that the real name of the blogger has to be published too. Putting the real name of registered bloggers on the WAP website would solve that identity and political perspective problem for readers. This way readers will be able to judge the content, context and credibility of the bloggers...critically important stuff in a vibrant dialogue on policy and politics in the province.


This initiative will be good for the credibility of the WAP. It frames them as an open and accountable party who are demonstrating a commitment to free speech and supporting serious citizen engagement in politics. They also get enormous amounts of free publicity and new media coverage that will be more fact based and biases (like mine) more exposed as well.


Now I wonder if my party, the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta will do the same thing at its November Annual General Meeting in Red Deer. That is when the party delegates will have a confidence vote on Premier Stelmach's leadership. Again the blogosphere and the social media will be alive with commentary in any event. It would be better if the citizen journalists who want to attend the AGM could do so and write their posts in real time from the actual event itself. But again lets not allow anonymous bloggers into the event and lets post the names and URLs of the registered bloggers on the Party website for all to see. Anonymous bloggers will still write stuff but readers can discount their commentary because they don't know if the source is informed and trustworthy.


Yes the bloggers at the PC Party AGM and the WAP Leadership Convention will be looking for interviews with party members and delegates in attendance. Yes they will be asking the key questions about perceptions of Premier Stelmach's performance as party leader and who should lead the WAP and why. Yes there will be biases in the blogging. But there will also be a wide array of bloggers and postings, not all of them supportive of the "host" political parties. That again is the essence of free speech, freedom of association and the price any political party should be prepared to pay as part of it role to promoting a dynamic, vibrant democracy in Alberta.


The old days of controlling the content, context and timing of political messaging is gone. Now it is about the Internet based conversation that happens within social, political, economic and environmental networks of concerned citizens. These exchanges of ideas and opinions are in the open, unfiltered and unmediated by traditional one-way messaging of the conventional news sources.

Political parties are pretty much private clubs, with too much power, in my humble opinion. Anyone can join but few do because they are seen by the general population as closed and constricting. To include and accept social media, and bloggers in particular, into the media mix of such political and partisan events will open them up to scrutiny and accountability but how can that be a bad thing for democracy?


So I applaud Jane Morgan and the Wildrose Alliance Party. Congratulations for having the courage and taking the initiative to be open and accountable as a political institution. Kudos too for being nimble enough to see and accept the new media reality of the 21st century. It can only be a good thing for your organization and for politics in Alberta.