RAD Thoughts

Canadians rejoice!!!! The National Do Not Call List is now live. You can register your telephone number to prevent telemarketers from calling.

A friend writes:

Dear Rad,
Please start commenting on the federal election because right now I need to hear your rational defense of conservative policies. A Stephen Harper majority is giving me nightmares.

If I remember correctly, fear of a Stephen Harper government was the main argument against the Conservatives in the last election, no? Something about Harper wielding The-Clause-Of-Conservative-Destiny (Tenacious D rules!!!).

I think Harper’s Conservatives are as centrist as they come. I don’t think fiscal conservatives (like myself) or social conservatives (pro-family types) or the keep-your-stinkin’-paws-off-of-our-oil-revenue types (Albertans) are licking their chops with the prospect of a Harper majority. We expect small tweaks to policies that have been embraced by both Liberals and Conservatives for decades now and we don’t even expect the tweaks to be in a direction we favor. The current brand of Lost-Liberals, NDP, Bloc, and Green Party promote policies that would give me nightmares if I thought they had any hope of taking power.

I think we all have to get used to the idea of the current Conservatives being in power for quite some time. The fact that the Conservatives were in power this long with a coaltion-free minority government is mind boggling. There is only one centrist choice currently while all the other federal parties have taken a left-ward turn (including the Bloc). 

Splitting votes across different parties/candidates with almost identical policies is not a recipe for success. Just look at the impact of a Ralph Nader or Ross Perot on U.S. politics.

So personally I am not terribly excited by the Canadian federal election. The views of the “left” vs. the “right” I find fascinating. Obama vs. Palin I find fascinating. Whether or not there is any such thing as a “rational defense” I find infinitely fascinating.

So let me get this straight… the Liberals propose a favorable change to the current RESP (Registered Education Savings Plan) rules that passes and the Conservatives turn around and want to squash the bill because it represents an irresponsible tax cut for the wealthy.

Mr. Flaherty defended the government’s approach as adequate and affordable. He said he was unconcerned about a backlash from voting parents excited by the prospect of a new tax break because only wealthier families would benefit from Mr. McTeague’s proposal.

“If you’re rich, it’ll be a popular plan,” Mr. Flaherty said.

Perhaps the backlash will not come from voting parents but from conservatives/libertarians that cringe when politicians use socialist talking points. No Comrade Flaherty, we shall never allow those nasty bourgeoisie take more money from the proletariat.

First those nasty retirees getting filthy rich off of income trusts were knocked down a notch or two now its time to go after parents trying to save for their kids education. Privileged SOBs… you go get’em Jim.

My registration card for the upcoming October 10th Ontario election arrived in the mail the other day. In the package there was a pamphlet explaining that this election will also have a referendum question. The question is whether we should keep the existing electoral system OR switch to a new alternative electoral system.

Hmmmmm…. sounds ominous. They call the old system “First Past The Poll”. Very catchy, no? I think of it as a Zero Sum Riding system where there can be only one winner in a riding. The problem with the old system is that TV commentators say things like “the Penultimate Party only won 23 seats despite winning 39% of the popular vote” the next day.

So how do you fix the system to prevent cynicism on TV? Well, you use the proposed alternative electoral system which is called Mixed Member Proportional. Catchy, no? So the way this works is that each party makes a list of special politicians that you don’t vote for in addition to the politicians that run in each riding. When the riding results are in someone calls the Election.everyonePlayNice() Java method and politicians from each party’s pre-assigned list are “elected” to make the vote proportional.

So I thought hard about this. After about 5 seconds I thought, well fair is good. But at about 7.5 seconds I realized there is some weird stuff in this new system. A ballot will allow for two votes, one for the person you want to win in your riding and one for the party you want to win in the province. Perfect for those that want to cook up devious voting strategies but really a bit of superfluous complexity in my mind. The system can work fine without the two votes but this is what we get if we vote yes. Then I wondered about the politicians in the pre-assigned list. What is that all about? How are they accountable? I don’t like the idea of nebulous blobs of politicians.

Then the real kicker occurred to me. How do election outcomes change? Well, it seems to me that the system takes seats from the zero sum riding winner and redistributes them to everyone else. So more minority governments or at least it increases the likelihood of minority governments. So the NDP or The Green Party carry the balance of power. Yuck.

Here is the other thing. After thinking hard about a simple yes/no question for 15 minutes if you still don’t have an obvious opinion then there are probably some non-trivial ramifications involved.

I’m voting no (I’m thinking maybe…. nothing like firm commitment).

UPDATE (2007/10/11): Electoral reform rejected with 63% against.

Canada’s privacy commissioner is concerned about Google Street View.

A number of websites carry satellite images or low-resolution photographs and video.

Stoddart doesn’t have a problem with those. However, she warned that high-resolution pictures such as those available on Street View could contravene the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, which came into effect on Jan. 1, 2004.

“Our Office considers images of individuals that are sufficiently clear to allow an individual to be identified to be personal information within the meaning of PIPEDA,” Stoddart writes.

Of particular concern to Stoddart is that the images on Street View appear to have been collected largely without the consent of the people in them. Street View does allow viewers to request their images be removed. However, by then, Stoddart says, it’s too late.

Oh brother. Am I missing something? The PIPEDA is about the collection of “personal information” not about unintentionally including an individual in an image of a streetscape. If this is the most pressing privacy issue in Canada then we are indeed a privileged country.