[LINK] Two notes on the surprising outcome of the British Columbia election

The results of yesterday’s general election in British Columbia. Briefly, everyone expected the NDP to replace the unpopular Liberal minority government of Christy Clark. Instead, the electorate returned the Liberals with a majority.

CBC’s report “How did Christy Clark pull off a B.C. election upset?” summarizes the whole affair nicely.

Anchor Tony Parsons opened the CBC election night special broadcast by declaring it would be “an exciting night of political drama.” That it was, but the voters didn’t follow the script.

The way Parsons posed the possible outcomes did give a hint of what was about to unfold. He started with, “We will see Christy Clark lead what would be one of the greatest political comebacks in B.C. election history, will that happen?”

Even as signs early in the night pointed to a Liberal majority, the journalists and analysts seemed to be in disbelief.

After all every published public opinion polls suggested that the NDP was ahead, the latest polls by an average of about 7.5 per cent. At one point, Adrian Dix had a 20-point lead in the polls.

In the end, the Liberals won 50 of the province’s 85 seats, will govern for a fourth consecutive term and finished about five points ahead of the NDP in the popular vote.

Better leadership on the part of Clark than that displayed by NDP leader Adrian Dix, the success of negative campaigning and advertising, the NDP’s opposition to pipeline expansion, low voter turnout, and others have been produced as explanations. For ThreeHundredEight.com’s Éric Grenier, the title of his post-election post “Polling industry dealt major blow in B.C. election” summarizes his reaction.

In British Columbia, there was no indication of a late swing. If anything, there was a sign that Clark’s momentum had reversed itself. The New Democrats were not an unknown quantity. There was polling being done as late as Monday. There was the experience of two pollsters with long and successful histories in British Columbia. There was the much-vaunted GOTV organization of the NDP. And yet all the polls said the New Democrats would win, and all the polls were wrong.

[. . .]

The forecasted ranges captured every vote and seat result with the exception of the NDP. Those ranges are designed to account for an Alberta-level event, but even so they were unable to predict that the New Democrats would under-perform in the popular vote to such a great degree. The ranges, implying that the polls should always be considered potentially spectacularly wrong, were apparently a good idea, but if ranges of this size need to be included in every election the usefulness of the forecasting model is virtually zero. In even a modestly close election, they will always span almost the entire spectrum since most ridings come into play at that point.

[. . .]

There is no question that seat projection models like mine work. They are an effective way to translate poll results into seats. This is not voodoo magic, it is a rather simple endeavour. The challenge is being the least possible amount of wrong, which is the best that forecasters can hope for. But the models are only as good as the available information.

I have to admit that my confidence in the quality of that information – polling – has been profoundly shaken. Alberta was an aberration, and there was some good reason as to why it occurred (which I now have doubts about). Quebec was only a minor flub, which can be attributed in part to superior Liberal organization (or can it?). But this is a complete disaster. There is no reason why this should have happened, which leads me to believe that the reason it happened is because the pollsters did a bad job.

It might not be their fault exactly. Perhaps it is no longer possible to consistently and repeatedly build a sample that is reflective of the population. Can online panels be reliably effective when they aren’t national? Work will have to be done to determine why this is happening and how it can be avoided. I have no doubt that the pollsters will eventually tackle the new challenges that they face. The question is how long it will take and whether it can be done in a country like Canada.

[LINK] “Quebec’s Liberal ‘rebirth’ is just a PQ fade”

Veteran Québec columnist Lysiane Gagnon‘s latest article in The Globe and Mail, making an interesting comparison to the situation in France facing the Socialists. Is this what happens when cynicism about the governing parties spreads so much? And who will take over? (The Liberals of la belle province, as Gagnon notes, benefit from currently being the least unpopular party.)

Usually, it takes a few years for governments to beat themselves – typically more than one term in office. As time goes by, they accumulate mistakes, disappoint people and end up looking stale. The Parti Québécois government, however, is not even nine months old, yet poll after poll reflects widespread voter disenchantment.

The rate of dissatisfaction with the government is in the high 60s – as high as it was during the miserable last years of Jean Charest’s third mandate. And according to a recent Léger Marketing poll, the Liberals are now leading with 35-per-cent support, with the PQ at 27 per cent. This wouldn’t be enough to ensure a majority for the Liberals but it’d certainly be enough for the PQ to lose the next election.

[. . .]

Neither the French Socialists nor the PQ enjoyed the honeymoon usually granted to newly elected governments. Both have been characterized by erratic leadership, broken promises, botched policies followed by humiliating retreats, and cabinets in which too many ministers have been gaffe-prone neophytes or just plain incompetent. Both have been plagued with harsh criticism from left and right.

The PQ is in a worse situation, though, since it’s a minority government and has very little time to revamp its image. The party’s “anti-business” rhetoric has eroded its middle-class support, and its many turnabouts and compromises on key issues have alienated left-leaning supporters and hard-line secessionists. The PQ finds itself bleeding from both left and right flanks, as some of its supporters flock toward small ideological parties such as Québec Solidaire and Option Nationale while others go back into the Liberal fold.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait picks up on the news that the Canadian federal government is only going to fund research that leads directly to economic gain.
• The Burgh Diaspora’s Jim Russell wonders about the ethics of Cuba’s export of trained doctors as contract workers.
• Could a “Nebula Winter” explain Earth’s greatest glaciations? The Dragon’s Tales reports.
• Eastern Approaches reports on the indecisive election in crisis-ridden Bulgaria.
• Geocurrents examines the reasons for Bhutan’s surprisingly high level of development for a Himalayan polity.
• GNXP’s Razib Khan wonders about the ethics of certain kinds of eugenics, arguably already in practice today (pre-natal tests for Down’s syndrome, say).
• Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on the prospects that the disastrous building collapse in a clothing manufacturing plant in Bangladesh might lead to new global standards.
• Strange Maps has fun with the unusual placenames of the Shetland and Orkney islands, off the northeastern coast of Scotland.
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes that a German family claiming asylum in the United States on the grounds that homeschooling is not permitted in Germany has been turned down.
• Window on Eurasia reports on a conspiracy theory in Russia that Siberia is going to be stolen by Muslim guest workers.

[URBAN NOTE] “Council Wants to Strengthen Supports for Medically Uninsured Residents”

Torontoist’s Desmond Cole writes about a proposal by Toronto city council to give medically uninsured residents–most notably immigrants–improved public health care coverage. In a country where public health care is part of the national identity, this is serious stuff. There have been a few interesting things have been afoot with citizenship and immigration into Toronto recently, incidentally, including proposals to give non-citizen permanent residents the vote in municipal elections. Will these things take off?

Toronto city council wants to improve health care for medically uninsured residents, especially those who avoid treatment because they lack immigration status in Canada. They can’t do it all directly, but on Thursday night, councillors voted 21-7 to ask the provincial government to strengthen access to basic health care programs for residents ineligible for the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP).

Many refugees, undocumented residents, people who have lost their identification, and even permanent residents of Canada do not qualify for OHIP benefits. Dr. David McKeown, Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health, says that expanding health care access is both humanitarian and practical. “Early intervention is almost always less costly than dealing with a more advanced illness later in its course,” he told council.

According to a Board of Health report on the medically uninsured [PDF], the most vulnerable of them are undocumented residents, many of whom avoid hospitals for fear of deportation. When these individuals do access emergency medical services, they are routinely billed several times more for services than insured residents. That too needs attention, say some. “The billing system needs an overhaul so that anyone can access health care at a fair price,” maintained Denise Gastaldo, associate professor at the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, after council’s vote. “Today’s decision is a step in the right direction.”

Also among those who can’t access services: permanent residents, who are eligible for OHIP benefits, but only after a three month waiting period. Council has asked the province to eliminate this gap in service, citing the fact that permanent residents spend years going through the application process before being accepted, and that by the time they arrive here they have already met immigration requirements.

[LINK] “Liberals take Labrador, as Jones wins big over Penashue”

Former Conservative MP Peter Penashue, once not only the representative of the federal riding of Labrador, has been decisively defeated by his Liberal opponent, Yvonne Jones. The CBC commentary is likely correct in noting that this represents the riding’s return to its traditional Liberal alignment, as the party has recovered from its 2011 nadir. The import of this for wider Canadian politics remains unclear, although as Jones herself notes it’s certainly symbolic.

Yvonne Jones recaptured what has traditionally been safe Liberal ground, rolling up a big victory over Conservative Peter Penashue in Labrador’s federal byelection.

“When I was reflecting on this election win tonight, I was saying, ‘You know, I’m the first person in the country to beat the Harper government in a byelection,’” Jones told supporters at a victory party in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

“But that could never happen without all of you and many more across Labrador.”

Jones garnered 5,814 votes to Penashue’s 3,922.

With all 91 polls reporting, the Liberal candidate’s share of the vote was 48 per cent, compared with 33 per cent for the Conservative candidate and 19 per cent for the NDP’s Harry Borlase.

[. . .]

Penashue — a prominent Innu leader — wrested the riding away for the Conservatives in 2011, eking out a 79-vote win. He garnered less than 40 per cent of the ballots cast, and was helped by a stronger than expected NDP showing that siphoned off Liberal support.

Up until that surprise victory two years ago, the region had only once gone Conservative blue since Newfoundland and Labrador joined Canada in 1949.

Penashue quit as MP in March after repaying $30,000 in compensation for “ineligible contributions” he accepted during the 2011 election. He immediately announced he would run in the ensuing byelection.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Bag News Notes features multiple interesting brief photo essays: one about the downloadable gun; one about the woman miraculously rescued from the wreckage of the factory in Bangladesh; one about how modernism, done right, can be quite beautiful.
• At Beyond the Beyond, Bruce Sterling links to a critique of the English words and terms used by European Union officials and to a description of the post-democratic “info-state”.
• Crooked Timber commemorates the conviction of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Mott by noting that Ronald Reagan spoke highly of him.
• At A Fistful of Euros, Edward Hugh introduces the work of a blogger who suggests that, between emigration and the consequences of a low birth rate, Portugal’s economy is set to crater.
• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Robert Farley considers Edward Hugh’s suggestion that some countries might face state failure as depopulation proceeds.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen seems to like Feedly as an alternative to Google Reader.
• Naked Anthropologist Laura Agustín blogs about the way in people transgressed identities–national, occupational, and so on–can be quite commonsensical while others who don’t get this can be stuck.
• Savage Minds interviews journalist and anthropologist Sarah Kendzior about experience in her two professions.
• Strange Maps links to a map of chimpanzee and bonobo populations in central Africa, divided not only by their behaviour (the first violent, the second sexual) but by the Congo River.
• Une heure de peine’s Denis Colombi tackles the idea that French emigrants are refugees fleeing a hostile environment at home, as opposed to being mobile professionals in a global workplace.
• The Volokh Conspiracy’s Ilya Somin argues that judicial rulings legalizing same-sex marriage have not harmed same-sex marriage at the ballot box.
• Window on Eurasia touches on the ethnic divisions among Russian Buddhists–Kalmyks, Tuvans, Buryats–that is preventing the establishment of a Buddhist sanctuary in Moscow.

[URBAN NOTE] Two links on the aftermath of Toronto city council’s anti-tax vote

First, Steve Munro writing two slightly different essays–one at his own blog and the other at Torontoist–condemns the “irresponsible madness” at Toronto City Hall.

What is overwhelmingly evident is the leadership vacuum at City Hall. Throughout the debate, Mayor Ford wandered in and out of the chamber wearing his Toronto Maple Leafs jersey, and seemingly more interested in how the hockey game might play out than a vital debate. (At one point the debate paused momentarily to the sound of whooping—it was the mayor, behind the scenes, responding to the Leafs’ first goal.) But he didn’t even have much to do with De Baeremaeker making a complete fool of himself, and compromising both truth and any sense of responsible transit planning (though he certainly is glad to trumpet subways any time anyone mentions them).

For her part, TTC Chair Karen Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence), having launched the whole process by backing De Baeremaeker’s pipe dreams, sat silently while the debate drifted further and further from any coherence and, by extension, possible support for any “plan” including her own ill-fated One City scheme from a few months ago. Rather than controlling the genie she let out of the bottle and getting three well-chosen wishes for her transit efforts, Stintz is revealed as a sorcerer’s apprentice who cannot control the blind forces she has unleashed.

Procedurally, there is one hope: any formal change to last fall’s LRT-based agreement between Toronto and Metrolinx would require a two-thirds majority of council to be reopened. This may block some of the more outrageous schemes for a time, but won’t undo the damage of a divisive, if-I-don’t-get-a-subway-I-won’t-play attitude on council, and on the residents across Toronto who are watching them spin out of control.

At Queen’s Park, the Tories must be rubbing their hands with delight at yet another chance to embarrass the Wynne government. Meanwhile, the NDP, utterly incapable of actually making a decision without weeks of polling and “conversation,” shows no coherent leadership, and the Liberals have to deal with a fifth column of anti-Wynne Scarborough MPPs.

Also writing at Torontoist, David Hains was critical of the entire process.

By a vote of 27-13, council voted to seize the revenue-tools file from Ford’s executive committee. The vote was very close; had the Ford team stalled for Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt) to get back from a doctor’s appointment, they would have won. (Responding to this lapse in strategy, one City Hall staffer said, “Strategy? They couldn’t spell cat if you spotted them the ‘c’ and the ‘t’.”)

All of a sudden, De Baeremaeker’s idea to slap on a different transit line seemed grand to many councillors. So they added their own motions. James Pasternak really likes the idea of a subway on Sheppard Avenue, so he put that forward. Peter Milczyn (Ward 5, Etobicoke-Lakeshore) had his own ideas for the best transit routes. Sarah Doucette (Ward 13, Parkdale-High Park), perhaps to prove a point, asked Milczyn about resurrecting the Jane Street light-rail route. Even Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East), a world away on a trip to Rome, had a raft of motions introduced on his behalf.

Council had plunged down the rabbit hole, and was more than eager to add squiggles on maps. This was far from the rational, coordinated discussion about transit funding that Metrolinx had requested. In fact, it was up to the most quiet and mushy councillors to remind the room of its responsibilities. Paul Ainslie (Ward 43, Scarborough East) and Josh Matlow (Ward 22, St. Paul’s) argued for sticking with the plan and following through on funding it. Ana Bailao (Ward 18, Davenport) spoke about the economic benefits of alleviating congestion, while the typically soft-spoken Mary-Margaret McMahon (Ward 32, Beaches-East York) expressed righteous indignation, which was refreshing, coming from her. By the time they were all done making pleas for reason Matlow had put together and distributed a fact sheet comparing the Scarborough options, distributing it to media and councillors alike.

But the bright spots were overshadowed by the silliness. Doug Ford falsely claimed light rail costs more than subways. The mayor referred to a dedicated transit fund as a “slush fund.” Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) claimed 80 per cent of people along Finch Avenue don’t pay their transit fares. Anthony Peruzza (Ward 8, York West) and Maria Augimeri (Ward 9, York Centre), carrying the NDP banner for Downsview, dismissed dedicated revenue tools in favour of asking the province to raise corporate taxes. Adam Vaughan jokingly proposed a levy on vinyl labels, which would hurt the Ford family business. Doug Holyday (Ward 3, Etobicoke Centre) clipped his nails on the council floor.

It was chaos, filled with self-serving and short-sighted politics, and it offered confirmation to any cynical viewpoints on City Hall. What was supposed to be a mature conversation about how Toronto must get to the next step in building public transit was, instead, the strongest possible evidence that oversight from Metrolinx is needed.

[LINK] “The economy is in good shape, so why is support for the Conservatives slumping?”

Building from Éric Grenier’s latest metapoll at Three Hundred Eight predicting that, all things being equal, the Conservatives’ low of 29% support would mean that a federal election would easily result in a Liberal minority government, Andrew Coyne in the National Post argues that the exceptional unpopularity of the Conservative Party has to do with its style of governance.

If today both Mr. Harper and the party he leads are actively disliked by more than seven voters in 10, it may be because they have gone out of their way to alienate them in every conceivable way — not by their policies, or even their record, but simply by their style of governing, as over-bearing as it is under-handed, and that on a good day.

When they are not refusing to disclose what they are doing, they are giving out false information; when they allow dissenting opinions to be voiced, they smear them as unpatriotic or worse; when they open their own mouths to speak, it is to read the same moronic talking points over and over, however these may conflict with the facts, common courtesy, or their own most solemn promises.

Secretive, controlling, manipulative, crude, autocratic, vicious, unprincipled, untrustworthy, paranoid … Even by the standards of Canadian politics, it’s quite the performance. We’ve had some thuggish or dishonest governments in the past, even some corrupt ones, but never one quite so determined to arouse the public’s hostility, to so little apparent purpose. Their policy legacy may prove short-lived, but it will be hard to erase the stamp of the Nasty Party.

Go read the whole thing.

[LINK] “Cleverly subversive Liberal ad messes with Harper’s head”

Writing in the National Post, Kelly McParland is impressed by the understated competence of Justin Trudeau’s recent YouTube clip, 39 seconds long, attesting to the party’s success in raising a million dollars after Harper’s recent attacks. Are the Liberals, he wonders, trying to drive the Conservatives mad with paranoia?

There is something decidedly weird about the whole set-up. First of all, there’s the outfit. OK, he’s young, he wants to come across as a typical Canadian guy, and typical Canadian guys of a younger age evidently wear dumpy-looking cargo pants on the weekend. That’s fine. But wait a minute, the job he wants is as Prime Minister, and Prime Ministers don’t usually stop to make chatty videos while on their way to put out the garbage in their grubbiest clothes. I bet Xi Jinping doesn’t do that. I know Putin doesn’t.

In the French version of the video, in fact, a truck drives noisily by just as the video is nearing the end, suggesting, 1. The Liberals only rented the camera for an hour and didn’t want to spend the extra dough to shoot a retake, and 2. Justin just missed the garbage truck and probably caught hell from Sophie when he got back inside.

There’s also the setting. It’s just at the bottom of the front steps of a typical-looking suburban Canadian home. So, is it Justin’s home, or did they drive to Brampton and shoo away some neighbours for 40 minutes while they did the shoot? The video is shot with two black bars on either side and Justin in the middle, looking suspiciously like it’s meant to mimic the Canadian flag. It’s also of suspiciously high quality for what is clearly meant to be a casual, almost amateurish film, meaning the party put great thought and effort into devising what looks like some undergrad’s campaign spot for a seat on the student council.

[URBAN NOTE] “Why the Ontario Government needs “Revenue Tools” for transit”

Livejournaler jsburbidge‘s post on the need for revenue tools of some kind to fund transit in the Greater Toronto Area is still a must-read, even after yesterday’s disastrous debate in Toronto city council.

I’m seeing pushback on the issue of revenue tools for public transit in the GTA which seems to boil down to “2 billion a year is a small part of the provincial budget. Surely they can find it through efficiencies or reallocation?”.

Well, they can’t. Maybe in a world in which no Harris tax cuts had taken place, but not here and now.

Most of the Ontario budget is tied up with education (mostly schools, some universities — 18.9%), health care(38.3%), Children’s Services(11.2%) and interest on the debt (10.6%). Much of the rest is tied up in fixed costs and programs such as welfare (Ontario Works, in newspeak). Even the courts take 4.1 Billion (3.2%).

When I look at the news, I see signs of all these areas being under considerable financial stress. Hospitals are struggling to meet their budgets; the TDSB has just been fingered as diverting most of a flow of funds intended to help disadvantaged children into general revenues to make ends meet, and universities are strapped for funds; the courts have unacceptable backlogs. It has been big news that the most recent budget has made the first structural improvements to Ontario Works since the Harris years.

Plus, the Ontario economy is still faltering, relative to the strength it had for decades, so revenues are not as high as they might be.

There are, of course, always inefficiencies, though fewer than some people might think. Some “inefficiencies” provide needed redundancies to allow systems to be able to handle variations in need that can surge unpredictably. (How much do we have to provide in the way of space capacity in case H7N9 starts to spread? How much would it take to clean up after a tornado hits some not-too-sparsely populated area, as one does every few years?) And some are one-time items: it’s all very well to point at ORNGE and E-Health, but (a) they’re in the past and (b) they’re over. (And E-Health was small change compared to the really big computerization / health care fiascos, like the one in the UK).

But even if a magic Revenue Fairy were to drop 2 billion dollars on the Ontario Government via “efficiencies”, how much would go to transit? Is transit more important than all those other underfunded areas?