The best job-creation strategy: Getting rid of corruption

“We stand by the Constitution as inherently conservative,” says the U.S. Tea Party web site. “We serve as a beacon to the masses that have lost their way, a light illuminating the path to the original intentions of our Founding Fathers.”

Now there’s something you don’t hear every day about the Canadian constitution, which hasn’t been a topic of much interest, even to political buffs, since prime minister Brian Mulroney drove the whole country nuts by talking about it nonstop 20 years ago.

Yet the constitution is a hot topic in the United States, where many on the political right see a more literal reading of the document — with a special emphasis on looking for areas where the federal government has overstepped its authority — as the way to restore optimism in a country exhausted by terrorism, war, recession and political dysfunction.

They are, in a way, both right and wrong.

Let’s start with the wrong. Constitutional fundamentalism won’t do much to restore American prosperity or hope. Neither will abolishing the Federal Reserve, reinstating the Gold Standard or eliminating anti-poverty safeguards.

Now here’s what right about it.

The U.S. constitution was designed in a world where monarchs and warlords ran roughshod over everyone else. Laws were written, enforced and tossed aside whimsically. Corruption and violence were rampant. Human rights were non-existent.

Suddenly, a new concept: a written constitution that would apply some discipline and consistency to law creation and enforcement, rein in the corruption a bit, offer some protection from anarchy and guarantee some basic rights.

In the world of the 1780s, this was a truly innovative idea.

The guarantee of somewhat fair treatment — at least compared to the abysmally low standards of the 18th century — made the United States an extremely attractive place to do business, and gave that country a tremendous economic advantage that lasted well into the 20th century.

But somewhere along the way, the U.S. stopped leading on that front.

By world standards, still abysmal after all these years, the United States still has excellent constitutional safeguards that broadly ensure basic human rights and the rule of law.

Yet, it falls short of being the cleanest place to do business in the world, or even the Americas. According to Transparency International’s 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index, Canada, Barbados, Bahamas and Chile all have less corruption.

Corruption matters. It’s not just a matter of bribes and kickbacks to get government contracts, the protection of favoured businesses from competition, or the patronage appointments. (That the Canadian Senate is still filled with partisan appointees in this day and age is deplorable.)

It’s about government actively seeking good advice, and being frank with the public about what it wants to do, why it wants to do it, and letting people know what to expect well ahead of time.

It’s what divides relatively successful northern Europe, where unemployment is still only five percent in the Netherlands and eight percent in Denmark, from southern-tier countries like Greece and Spain, where the official unemployment rates are 22 percent and 24 percent, respectively.

Spain is only the 31st least-corrupt country in the world according to Transparency International, while Greece ranks a miserable 80th — tied with Colombia, El Salvador, Morocco, Peru and Thailand.

In corrupt countries like Greece, where six-in-ten citizens supposedly bribed  public officials in 2011-12, good advice doesn’t get heard or acted upon by those at the top if it conflicts with the interests of those few who benefit handsomely from the corruption.

And it shows in the local job market. The graph below shows the relationship between a country’s reputation for not tolerating corruption and the health of its job market.

Corruption perceptions and employment/population ratio, based on entire population aged 15-64. (Click to view full-sized image)

About 60 percent of the difference between job markets can be accounted for by  a country’s level of freedom from corruption, with the cleanest countries having the most jobs to go around.

How can corruption hurt the economy, and by extension, job markets?

• In 2009, the Oxford Review of Economic Policy found that corruption “leads to pure waste and to misallocation of resources” and is “a likely source of unsustainable development”.

• “When a culture of corruption in a state raises uncertainty or the cost of doing business, capital flows to more amenable institutional environments,” noted a 2009 working paper written by researchers at  Virginia’s George Mason University. “[E]ntrepreneurs may respond to corruption by choosing ‘fly-by-night’ technologies with too little fixed capital so they can credibly threaten to disappear should bribe demands become too high.”

• “Corruption makes local bureaucracy less transparent and hence acts as a tax on foreign investors,” two researchers from Oxford University and Columbia University wrote in 2009.  [C]orruption decreases the effective protection of investor’s intangible assets and lowers the probability that disputes between foreign and domestic partners will be adjudicated fairly . . .”

In every country, the honesty and openness of government can no longer be treated as an issue not relevant to job creation and economic growth — it is at the heart of both issues.

All places, including Canada, Manitoba and Winnipeg, can always take steps to make government ever more open and honest, and benefit from the resulting job creation. Here’s how:

• Wherever possible, laws against basic forms of corruption — such as bribes, kickbacks and influence-peddling — should be toughened up and more rigorously enforced.

• The media and the public should continue criticizing political patronage, such as the appointment of partisans to the Senate and the boards of Crown corporations as thinly disguised rewards for services rendered.

• Attempts to toy around with the integrity of the electoral system through “robocalls” and fiddling with constituency boundaries should also be severely dealt with.

• More governments should follow in the path of Australia’s southeastern Victoria state, which publishes the contracts it awards online for anyone to read.

• Freedom of Information laws should be brought up to high Scandinavian standards — and it should not cost $1.9 million to get information. Federal and provincial Transparency Commissioners should be established to nag governments on issues like this.

• Political life should be organized less on hierarchical lines, given a 2005 study’s finding that “the level of political corruption is higher in hierarchical societies” (and almost certainly in hierarchical organizations as well). Thus, governmental pleas for greater public deference — “just trust us” — should be greeted with scepticism. So too should claims by public figures that they speak on behalf of an entire group of people, which is another common plea for deference to those at the top of a hierarchy.

• Protectionist policies should be eliminated as much as possible, given that a 2009 study found “strong evidence suggesting that corruption is significantly higher in countries with activist trade and industrial policies” on the grounds that these give government officials greater discretionary power.

• Major legislation and regulatory changes should be subject to public hearings, with presentations for and against the legislation being posted online for public viewing.  This lends itself to good decision making and allows important information to be brought forward by those without the funds to run a public awareness campaign.

Cabinet ministers have long had lavish tastes

Waiter! Bring me an orange juice!

Many Canadians try to pinch pennies when they travel abroad, looking for bargains on airfare and accommodations. Not federal International Cooperation minister Bev Oda, who found herself in trouble this week for having a grand old time at taxpayers’ expense during a trip to London, England last year.

It was bad enough that the Minister decided that the five-star Grange St. Paul’s Hotel wasn’t up to her standards and canceled her $287 Cdn./night reservation — quite reasonable for a London five-star hotel — in favour of a $665/night reservation at The Savoy, a favourite with visiting heads of state, and stuck the taxpayer with the Grange’s $287 cancellation penalty.

But did she really need a $16 glass of orange juice?

As outrageous as these prices might be, Oda wasn’t the first minister to get busted living the high life before her ministerial years come to an end and the perks and privileges disappear.

Those with long memories might recall Suzanne Blais-Grenier’s love of travel. Now largely a forgotten figure, the then-Environment Minister was blasted in 1985-86 for spending $65,000 ($127,000 in 2012 dollars) on two trips to Europe that seemed to involve more fun than government business.

She was soon demoted by then prime minister Brian Mulroney, and later kicked out of the Progressive Conservative party.

It’s not just Canada that has had problems with ministers who didn’t always appreciate value-for-money.

Ireland’s former Arts, Sports and Tourism minister John O’Donoghue caused howls of outrage in 2009 when it was discovered that he spent over $600 Cdn. on a three-minute limousine ride between two terminals at London’s Heathrow Airport.

An airport shuttle bus could have taken him between terminals at no charge.

The same year, Irish environment minister John Gormley made a point of taking the ferry across to the U.K to reduce his carbon footprint — where he was promptly met by a chauffeured car that had been driven five hours from London to whisk him away. In total, the car and chauffeur cost taxpayers about $3,500 Cdn.

It was the embassy’s fault, he said.

On the continent, France has had numerous problems with ministers’ free-spending ways. Herve Gaymard, the finance minister, handed in his resignation in 2005 after it was discovered that his luxurious 6,500 sq. ft. (!) home near the Champs-Elysee — shared by his wife and eight children — was costing French taxpayers the equivalent of $23,000 Cdn. every month.

To make matters worse, he was simultaneously renting out his other apartment for $3,700 Cdn. per month.

“I have always lived humbly. I don’t have money,” he told a reporter in his own defence.

Five years later, junior minister Christian Blanc resigned after getting caught passing his $18,000 Cdn. bill for Cuban cigars off to the taxpayer.

Though French president Nicolas Sarkozy vowed a crackdown on such lavish spending, he himself was roundly criticized one year later after his son Pierre Sarkozy — better known in rap circles as DJ Mosey – called home from Ukraine complaining of an upset stomach.

The president promptly dispatched a government jet to Ukraine to airlift his son to a French hospital, covering 30 percent of the bill himself and leaving taxpayers on the hook for the balance.

As comical or outrageous as these abuses are, one can only imagine how much worse things would be without Freedom of Information laws.

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On the subject of travel, if you ever wanted to visit Europe at a reasonable price, this is the year to do it.  While gateway cities like London, Paris and Amsterdam will always be expensive, high-quality accommodations in Europe’s secondary cities are so ridiculously cheap right now due to the recession that it can cost about as much to travel to Europe as it would to travel to a major U.S. city if you can catch a seat sale. Consider the following, based on a July 7-14 stay:

Berlin — Park Plaza Prenzlauer Berg (4*): $55 Cdn./night

Copenhagen — First Hotel Copenhagen (4*): $105 Cdn./night

Lisbon — Hotel Lutecia (4*): $63 Cdn./night

Vienna — Rainers Hotel Vienna (4*): $65 Cdn./night

Get the deals while they last.

No retirement plans for U.S. congressman who’s been in office since 1955

Should troops be sent to Vietnam? Should a vast fortune be spent to put a man on the Moon? Should President Nixon be impeached?

If you thought the politicians who debated these historical issues had long since left the stage, think again.

Much has been written about the dangers of the “safe seat”, the seat that predictably stays with the same party in election after election after election. These seats can become the “red-headed stepchildren” of the political system, taken for granted by the ruling party and written off as not worth fighting for by the others, while everyone fawns over the bellweather ridings that regularly change hands.

They can also become Ground Zero in battles between party factions. The most visible example of this is in the U.S., where constituency boundaries deliberately drawn to ensure one-party dominance have long fueled fratricidal warfare within parties in the absence of an outside threat.

Another effect is that political survivors can end up holding these seats for unimaginably long periods of time.

The most extreme case of this is Michigan congressman John Dingell.  First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives at age 29 in a 1955 by-election, Dingell has become one of the longest continually serving legislators in the world.

Incredibly, after 56 years in office, Dingell is still only the third longest-serving member of the U.S. Congress in history, being little more than a year shy of the record set by former Sen. Robert Byrd, who sat in the House of Representatives from 1953 to 1959, and in the Senate from 1959 until his death in 2010 at age 92.

The second-longest run in the American capital was that of Arizona representative-turned-senator Carl Hayden, who was first sent to Washington in 1912 and didn’t return home to retire until 1969.

But Dingell might yet break those records. Now 85 years old, he’s running to be elected to a 30th term in Congress in November.

America’s Capitol Hill has one of the world’s largest collections of ultra-long-time incumbents. Twenty-two of the 435 members of the House of Representatives, and eight of the 100 members of the Senate, have been in office for more than 30 years.

By comparison, Thompson MLA Steve Ashton is the only member of the 57-seat Manitoba Legislature with more than 30 years’ seniority. Canada’s longest-serving current MP is Quebec’s Louis Plamondon, who has been in the House of Commons since 1984.

A look at some of the world’s longest-serving elected representatives:

• Rep. John Dingell (USA, 1955-present): Dingell was elected to the House of Representatives in 1955 in a by-election to replace his late father, John Sr., who had represented Michigan since 1933.  Now 85 years old, Dingell is running for an unprecedented 30th term in 2012.

• Sen. Daniel Inouye (USA, 1954-1959 at territorial level, 1959-present at federal level): Opting for politics after war injuries prevented him from studying to become a surgeon, Daniel Inouye served in Hawai’i's territorial legislature for several years in the mid-to-late ’50s. After a brief hiatus, Inouye was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives after Hawai’i became a U.S. state in 1959, and to the Senate in 1962. He has been re-elected in every election since. Apparently not tired of the 7,800-kilometre commute between Washington, D.C. and Honolulu, the 87-year-old says he plans to run for re-election in November 2016, by which time he will be 92 years old.

• Rep. John Conyers (USA, 1965-present):Starting out as an assistant to long-serving Rep. John Dingell, Conyers, now 82, sought his own seat in the House of Representatives in the 1964 election. Elected to represent Detroit’s inner northern suburbs with a runaway 84%-to-16% victory over his Republican opponent, Conyers was sworn in as a congressman in January 1965 and has been re-elected every two years since, with his “worst” result being in 2010, when Conyers won 77 percent of the vote. Unlike some other “lifers”, Conyers actually tried to extricate himself from Washington by campaigning unsuccessfully for Mayor of Detroit in 1989 and again in 1993. Conyers is currently campaigning to be elected to a 25th term in November. Conyers is also notable for having been on President Richard Nixon’s notorious “Enemies List” in the early ’70s.

• Sir Peter Tapsell, MP (UK, 1959-1964 and 1966-present): Tapsell, 82, first ran for the British Parliament as a Conservative candidate in 1957, losing to the Labour party. Undeterred, he tried again in 1959, and this time won his seat in the Nottingham area, 175 kilometres north of London. Losing the 1964 election, he tried again in 1966 in a constituency 75 kilometres away on England’s North Sea coast. He won, and has been in the House of Commons ever since. Though never promoted to Cabinet, he was knighted in 1985, and a British newspaper named him “Parliamentarian of the Year” in 2004.

• Rep. Charlie Rangel (USA, 1971-present): If you ever watch cable news, you’ve undoubtedly seen Charlie Rangel, 81, at some point.  Rangel has been no wallflower over the years, at times stirring controversy by accusing the New York Police Department of assisting drug pushers, calling for the return of conscription so that the children of the wealthy would have to fight the Iraq War, and calling former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney a “son of a bitch”. Rangel has also repeatedly found himself on the hot seat over allegations concerning taxes, property he owns, improper use of letterhead, and so on. Despite that, he won his seat with 80 percent of the vote in 2010, and is running again in 2012 despite a nasty battle over constituency boundaries.

• Rep. Bill Young (USA, 1961-1970 at state level, 1971-present at federal level):  Age hasn’t slowed down Bill Young, 81, who has been a mainstay in Florida politics for more than 50 years. First elected to the Florida state senate in November 1960, Young rose to prominence in the mid-’60s in a bizarre incident where the legislative committee he was serving on, investigating homosexuality in Florida, was threatened with legal action after its explicit report, complete with graphic images, was offered for sale by an X-rated book club. Undamaged by the controversy, Young was promoted to a leadership role in the state senate in 1966, and elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 1970.Young was the only candidate on the ballot in the 1980, 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1998 and 2002 congressional elections. When faced with Democratic and third-party challengers, Young has won each match with between 56 and 80 percent of the vote. He’s running again in 2012, and will be joined on the ballot by the Democrats’ Jessica Ehrlich.

• Philip Ruddock, MP (Australia, 1973-present): Ruddock, 69, was first elected to the Australian Parliament in 1973 representing Parramatta, a Sydney suburb. Passed over for promotion during his party’s 1975-1983 run in government, Ruddock’s patience was finally rewarded in 1996, when he was named Immigration Minister after 23 years in Parliament. Despite his association with Australia’s controversial policy of holding foreign refugees in privately run detention centres, Ruddock was later promoted to Attorney-General from 2003 to 2007.

Who wants to be a Premier? Anyone? Anyone?

Five months have passed since the Oct. 4, 2011 Manitoba provincial election — the night on which Progressive Conservative leader Hugh McFadyen announced that he would step down after fighting two election campaigns at the party’s helm.

The chances of whoever succeeds McFadyen becoming Premier in 2015 are not too shabby. The best predictor of whether or not a government will get re-elected is its age. By the next provincial election, the NDP government will be, after 16 years, the second longest serving administration in Manitoba history.

The longest serving administration was the United Farmers-turned-Liberal Progressive dynasty which governed Manitoba (thanks to a gerrymandered electoral map) from 1922 to 1958 under premiers John Bracken, Stuart Garson and Douglas Campbell.

Though governments occasionally win one more election after celebrating their 10th anniversaries in office, no provincial government outside of the Alberta political aberration has survived 10 years in government and then gone on to win two more elections since the Newfoundland Progressive Conservatives won a fifth and final term in 1985.

Thus, you would think that any Progressive Conservative with ambitions for the premiership would view this as a golden opportunity.

Not so. Five months after Hugh McFadyen gave PC MLAs and party insiders the official blessing to begin campaigning for the leadership, no one has taken the plunge.

Nor is there much interest in the leadership of the provincial Liberal Party, which has also been up for grabs for five months. This, at least, is understandable. The only redeeming feature of the 2011 campaign, which saw the Liberals finish with one seat and slightly less than eight percent of the vote, was that it wasn’t “1981 all over again”, when the party won just seven percent of the vote and lost its only seat in the Legislature.

What is stopping people from reaching for the province’s top political job?

Part of it could be a sincere conclusion by would-be candidates that they lack the ruthlessness to go the distance. When genuinely nice people do make it to the top in politics, they generally end up regretting having taken the job (as Walter Weir publicly admitted after his 1967-69 stint as Premier of Manitoba) or have difficulty asserting authority over wayward MLAs (as Howard Pawley had at times during his 1981-88 premiership).

Or as former U.S. Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan described his dealings with various presidents over the decades: “Jerry Ford was as close to normal as you get in a president . . . There’s a constitutional amendment that I’ve been pushing for years without success. It says, ‘Anyone willing to do what is required to become president of the United States is thereby barred from taking that office.’ I’m only half joking.”

Much the same could be said of anyone wanting to be a Mayor, Premier or Prime Minister. Being a head of government is not for those prone to losing sleep at night because a decision they made will cause someone to lose their home or their reputation.

Another factor that could be inhibiting people from throwing their hats into the ring: the desire for a family life.

Being a party leader or head of government means putting one’s spouse and children second for years on end. Its impact was well summed up by Ros Hawke Dillon, whose father, Bob Hawke, was Australia’s prime minister from 1983 to 1991. In 2003, she explained to an interviewer why she always bought a father’s day card not for her father, but for her mother.

“Dad was there for the fun times but he wasn’t a hands-on dad,” she said, describing the years her father spent on his trajectory toward the premiership while the rest of the family tried to live a normal suburban lifestyle.

“She mowed the lawns, she fixed tap washers, she did everything.”

Politics leaves little time for mowing lawns and fixing tap washers. Even the Parliament of Canada web site cautions would-be MPs that they can expect to have “very little personal time” due to the demands of the job.

The demands are even worse for premiers and party leaders, who are never truly “off duty”.

Such a lifestyle has little appeal to newer generations who often witnessed their own parents’ marriages fail — the so-called “Generation X” born roughly between 1965 and 1980, and the “Millennials” or “Generation Y”, born between 1980 and 1995.

“Generation X’ers are seeking a greater sense of family and are less likely to put jobs before family, friends or other interests,” a 2005 article noted in response to concerns that it was becoming increasingly difficult to fill vacancies in universities’ medicine faculties.

“[Their] first loyalty tends to be to themselves than to any institution. While they may be deeply committed to their work, they are less willing to sacrifice than their parents were, less fixated on titles and the corner office, and less likely to ‘delay gratification’”.

Case in point: former WestJet CEO Sean Durfy. The first “Generation X” CEO of a major Canadian airline, Durfy stunned the industry when he unexpectedly resigned in 2010 at age 43, saying he wanted to have more of a family life.

“I realized quality time with my family was not there,” Durfy told Canadian Business magazine in 2011. “My young fellah didn’t really even know who I was. I stepped back and said, ‘All this stuff is not good. This is not a good place to be.’”.

“In most cases, it’s not the corner office or a large paycheck that drives Generation Y,” a 2006 article for a U.S. defense industry trade publication noted, “but rather, the opportunity to work for a company that fosters strong workplace relationships and inspires a sense of balance and/or purpose.”

“[Millennials] expect a work-life balance unlike what we have seen before,” IEEE Engineering Management Review observed in 2011. “Their teamwork and creative energy is typically not organized well. This generation has the potential to refresh the thinking and core passions that drive just about everything society does in a similar way that large demographic groups like the Baby Boomers continue to do as they now retire and leave the workplace.”

If academia, corporations, the U.S. defence industry and the engineering profession are feeling a pinch because a younger generation wants to make family more important in their lives, then why should it come as any surprise that it’s getting difficult for political parties to attract leadership candidates?

Times and values have changed. The growing number of people taking a pass on the possibility of governing the province suggests that our sclerotic political parties and tradition-bound parliamentary institutions are having difficulty keeping up. That will only make it more difficult to attract good people to public office in the years ahead.

Don’t worry, Irving. You won’t get cooties.

“[Nine prizes have just been] awarded including yearly payments of $61,425 until the age of 75, office staffs, free postage, free haircuts, free massages, travel allowances, subsidized lunches and tax exemptions,” the New York Times reported in February, 1984.

“These are not the payoffs in a Canadian lottery; they are the benefits that go with appointments to the Senate,” the Times continued, noting that the upper house of Parliament is seen as “a dumping ground”.

Back then, the Canadian Senate was the butt of jokes. Twenty-eight years to the week after a Times correspondent filed that report, the Senate has demonstrated that it hasn’t changed much after all these years.

As Thursday’s Globe and Mail reported:

House of sober second thought, or first-grade birthday party?

In Ottawa, the Senate witnessed a showdown over seating arrangements earlier this week.

The newly elected chair of the Senate banking committee, a Conservative, didn’t want the vice-chair, a Liberal, sitting next to him.

However, when Tory Irving Gerstein asked Celine Hervieux-Payette to step away from the head table, she refused.

So Mr. Gerstein, who became committee chair this week, called a vote to kick Ms. Payette out of her chair.

With a Conservative majority on the committee, the motion passed Wednesday and the game of partisan musical chairs ended with Ms. Payette being forced to grab a seat farther away.

Why Gerstein didn’t want to sit next to Payette remains a mystery. Was she a little too fond of eating garlic at lunch? Were their knees touching under the table? We might never know.

But this business of politicians from different parties refusing to even sit together does no service to the nation that the politicians claim to be at the service of.

Excessive segregation along party lines can strengthen what is known as confirmation bias, the already powerful instinct among human beings to expend more energy seeking out information that confirms existing views than seeking out information that challenges those views.

It’s a bias we tend to have naturally as humans, and is possibly even beneficial in some ways as we tend to bond most readily to those we have something in common with.

But when the feedback loop gets too powerful, the results can be destructive.

“A political process in which like-minded people talk primarily to one another poses a great danger for the future of a democracy,” U.S. legal scholar Cass Sunstein wrote in his 2001 book, Echo Chambers.

“This kind of process can lead to unwarranted extremism. When various groups move in opposite directions to extreme positions, confusion, confrontation, accusation, and sometimes even violence may be the ultimate result.”

That scenario is playing itself out in full, grotesque glory in the United States. The growth of the ideology industry south of the border — encompassing cable TV networks, talk radio, magazines, web sites and think-tanks — allows both the left and the right to submerge themselves all day in a world that treats unflinching certainty as a virtue, and doubt or any attempt to humanize the opposition as treachery.

The result is a political system where modern-day reality is terrifyingly close to what was considered satire 25 years ago, as fans of The New Statesman, a clever late-’80s British comedy about a hyper-ambitious Thatcherite politician, might attest.

The ideology industry faces (thankfully) poorer prospects here in the smaller Canadian market, where only about one-in-fifty Canadians is a political party member — and most of them are thought to be over the age of 60, with not a single child or grandchild showing any interest in following in their footsteps.

Some of the harmful effects that Sunstein observed might start to be felt here in Canada, however, if MPs and senators from different parties can’t even be bothered to be civil to each other.

It won’t help the parties’ sell their fading charms, it won’t boost weak public confidence in Parliament, and it won’t help the nation unless the irresponsibilities of the parliamentarians are held in check by a brassy civil service and judiciary.

That might eventually be welcomed by the public if Parliament comes to be seen as too much of a bad joke.

Perhaps it might help if senators and MPs, aside from cabinet ministers and party leaders, were seated in constituency order, as Swedish MPs are seated, rather than by party.

At the very least, MPs and senators, if you’re serious about running the country and doing a good job of it, do as a moderately memorable ’80s antiperspirant ad recommended: get a little closer — don’t be shy.  (But, for crying out loud, stay away from the Brut 33!)

Modern governments need to explain what they’re doing, and why

A group of unusually young-looking anti-pension-reform protesters in France, Oct. 2010. (Click for source)

“You lied to us,” 63-year-old Solange Denis scolded Prime Minister Brian Mulroney outside the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa one day in June, 1985.

“You made promises that you wouldn’t touch anything. I was made to vote for you, and then it’s goodbye Charlie Brown,” she continued.

A TV network’s recording of the feisty near-senior putting the prime minister in his place made for electrifying television, and turned Denis into a temporary celebrity.

In fact, Denis herself had likely never voted Conservative at all, given that she had been an active Liberal Party volunteer in the Eighties.

“I have always supported the Liberals,” she publicly announced a decade after she confronted Mulroney.

But the point had been made.

The issue then: Finance Minister Michael Wilson’s plan to scrap a guarantee that the federal government’s Old Age Security (OAS) payments would keep up with inflation. Days after the Mulroney-Denis confrontation made the news, the government hastily retreated.

Conventional wisdom has it that governments tinker with pensions at their peril. Thus, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced this week that still-unspecified changes are coming to federal pension programs — thought to include a rise in the minimum eligibility age from 65 to 67 years — it brought back memories of the Mulroney government’s u-turn more than a quarter-century earlier.

Harper need not fear a confrontation with Solange Denis, who died in 2004 at age 81. In these more security-conscious times, it’s unlikely that the prime minister even shakes hands as freely with tourists, as Mulroney was doing when Denis began scolding him in 1985.

Some even doubt that “grey power” is as effective against Canadian governments as it is often thought to be. “Far less vocal and well organized than its U.S. counterpart, the Canadian ‘grey lobby’ has never played a truly central role in pension politics since [the mid-'80s],” academics Daniel Béland and John Myles wrote in a 2003 paper on pension reform.

Yet backlashes sometimes do work, as illustrated by the U.S. Congress’s embarrassing Jan. 20 retreat on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), 48 hours after the world’s most-used web services fought back in one of the swiftest and most successful public awareness campaigns in living memory.

It was even more remarkable that the bill’s congressional backers seemed unable to explain what they were doing, and why they were doing it.

That fueled suspicion that SOPA was not based on wide-ranging research and consultation — as all sound public policy should be — but was rather a law bought and paid for by campaign contributors.

So, how can a government avoid being SOPA’d on pension changes or any other controversial change?

The most important thing to do is to frankly explain what the government is doing, and why.

Like Canada, Italy is struggling to figure out what to do about a growing age imbalance — a bounty of older Italians and a dearth of younger Italians. In 2000, there were roughly four working-age Italians for every Italian aged 65 years or over. That ratio is expected to drop to three-to-one by 2020 and two-to-one by 2040.

That will make traditional pension benefits difficult for governments to pay for. This inspired Tito Boeri and Guido Tabellini at Milan’s Bocconi University to take a closer look at what works best when a government is trying to make pension changes.

“We find that individuals who have read newspaper articles or watched TV debates on pension reform are not better informed than the other citizens,” they wrote in a paper most recently updated in 2010.

“One interpretation . . . is that individuals read newspaper articles or watch TV programs on the issue just to confirm their [prior beliefs], more than to collect new information.”

Yet, in a 2007 experiment with 267 adults, they found that when people were directly given information about the state of the Italian pension system from a neutral source, they became more likely to support pension reform than were those who had only heard about these changes through the media.

Informing the public “cannot just be delegated to the media,” they wrote in their concluding remarks, adding that the public would be more likely to support changes if  citizens are sent credible information “explaining to citizens how much they are paying into the system, what they will be entitled to, and whether the system is currently in deficit or in surplus.”

While many people in most countries have no idea how much they have paid in to the pension system or how much of a difference a slightly earlier or later retirement makes, Boeri and Tabellini highlight one government that has dealt frankly with its population when it comes to pensions: Sweden.

In Sweden, everyone paying in to the pension system receives an “orange envelope” every year — a statement that includes basic information on the pension system, plus “a statement of past contributions and projections of the annual entitlements under three retirement ages and for two assumptions on economic growth.”

The “orange envelope” plan hasn’t worked perfectly — a 2006 World Bank report noted that even though public confidence in the new system was high, many Swedes still didn’t fully understand how the pension system worked.

Yet Sweden’s relatively smooth experience in changing over to a pension system that offers fewer pay-out guarantees, but is at least financially sustainable, stands out in contrast to the experiences of France, Britain and Belgium.

In those countries, public mistrust of their elected representatives led to serious backlashes — including rock-throwing and car-burning youths (!) in France’s case.

Trust that reform is based on a careful study of the facts and an eagerness to be frank with the public — not on ideology or an industry buy-off of legislators — is what separates Sweden’s relatively successful pension reform from other European countries’ failure in that area, and from the U.S.’s SOPA failure.

Here in Canada, the government will need all the public trust it can earn. It should not assume it will come easily in these cynical times.

Reflections of a 94 percenter

It’s still there on my fridge door: “Election for School Trustee. Winnipeg School Division, Ward 1. Your Voting Location on Election Day, Saturday, November 26, 2011 between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. is Grant Park High School, 450 Nathaniel St.”

I know — ideally, it shouldn’t still be there, but rather have been redeemed for a ballot at the polling station.

I admit it: I didn’t vote in the Winnipeg School Division Ward 1 by-election to replace former trustee Joyce Bateman, who was elected to Parliament as a Conservative MP in the May 2011 federal election.

In fact, very few residents voted.

Only six percent of enumerated voters actually cast ballots in the Nov. 26 Ward 1 by-election: 2,626 voters showed up in the ward covering Fort Rouge, River Heights, Osborne Village and Crescentwood, an area containing more than 25,000 households — and normally one of the city’s most electorally engaged neighbourhoods.

In a part of town that tends to spread its electoral bets — my federal MP, provincial MLA and city councillor are, respectively, a Conservative, a Liberal and a man whose family has long been associated with the NDP — it’s perhaps fitting that the Liberal-turned-Conservative Joyce Bateman has been replaced on the school board by the NDP-affiliated Mark Wasyliw.

Personally, I’ve voted in most election since turning 18, just enough years ago to remind me that I’ll soon be 40, missing just one provincial election along the way in a bout of cynicism.

It’s the one gap in what has been otherwise a proudly inconsistent voting record. (I’ve voted for each of the three parties represented in the Legislature at least once, and for a similar number of federal parties.)

Now there’s a second, admittedly small, gap in my voting record.

This lapse comes just a few days after Elections Canada released a report examining why it’s so painfully difficult to get younger Canadians aged 18-34 years out to the polls or interested in politics.

Elections Canada records show that about 36 percent of enumerated 18-34 year olds turned out to vote in the May 2011 federal election. Factor those who were never enumerated at all into the equation, and the real turnout was probably much lower.

The single most common reason why younger Canadians didn’t vote in the federal election, according to the Elections Canada/R. A. Malatest telephone survey of 2,665 voters and non-voters: being “too busy” with other things.

I suppose that category adequately describes my own reason for not voting in Saturday’s school board by-election. Had I been sitting at home, bored, I probably would have spent a couple of hours reading up on the candidates, and then would have walked over to the high school to vote.

Yet, I was neither bored nor sitting around at home. A low-stakes school board election just wasn’t all that important; an opinion reinforced by the fact that the only signs I saw of a campaign were two brief on-the-street encounters with the energetic and affable Ben Shedden* and an irritating pre-recorded voice mail message in which someone whose name I’ve forgotten endorsed someone else whose name I’m not sure of — possibly Mark Wasyliw. (That goes to show how much attention I pay to this tacky campaign technique.)

All other candidates — and issues — were out of sight and out of mind.

Evidently, the other 94 percent of enumerated voters who never showed up felt much the same way.

But, as is often the case with open-ended survey questions, the “too busy” label only scratches the surface. It’s an answer the interviewer accepts without much further investigation before moving on. (With public patience for telephone polls and telemarketers becoming scarce, the interviewer has little choice.)

Scratch the surface, and you’ll find that when someone tells the interviewer that they were “too busy” to do something, it really means that it just wasn’t that important. If it had been important, they would have made time for it.

The “too busy” answer is simply a way of being polite.

How can politics and voting be made more important? There is no easy answer to that, as it is difficult to make people care about things unless you can show some kind of personal impact or tug at their heartstrings.

Few people give more than a fleeting thought to politics in their day to day lives. They’re spending most of their waking hours thinking about how to protect themselves against life’s uncertainties, solve their immediate problems, and scanning the crowd, looking (or at least window shopping) for a good set of genes or a good provider to mate with.

They sometimes care about other issues, but not that much.

In a previous era, politics fulfilled people’s social needs. In a small community, taking part in politics was a productive way of meeting people, and a welcome break from the monotony of small-town life and the isolation of farm life. In an era when political patronage was considered more acceptable than it is today, becoming involved in politics also made sense from a business and financial point of view.

Small-town life, however, is no longer the norm in Canada, as the nation continues to consolidate into 6-8 major metropolitan areas and their hinterlands. Public tolerance for political patronage has worn thin (and rightfully so), leaving the vast majority of the public, aside from those few with political aspirations of their own, with nothing to be gained by joining a party.

So here’s an idea: let’s recognize the “your vote is important” message for being the insincere flattery that it is. Most younger Canadians know when their vote is important and when it’s not.

Let’s toss out the idea that the key to getting more voters to the polls is through e-voting, a faddish idea that would put the integrity of the electoral system at risk. If people really want to vote, they’ll find a way of getting to the poll.

Let’s shelve the old argument that those who don’t vote have no right to complain. Few young Canadians fall for that kind of manipulation. They know that human rights law and their citizenship backs up their right to complain.

Let’s recognize that mass participation in politics is not always a healthy thing for democracy. Though high voter turnout tends to be a sign of strong levels of public trust in their institutions and each other, high levels of partisanship are signs of a more troubled society. Aside from the United States, most countries with high levels of party affiliation are undesirable places to live, usually due to the corruption and patronage that is likely making it worthwhile to take out a party membership to begin with.

And as the U.S. example shows, high levels of partisanship can make disputes much more difficult to resolve. In a healthy democracy, card-carrying party members should make up no more than two to three percent of the population.

Let’s allow the old myth that politics is so important that the vast majority of the population should be involved at all times — politics are important, but not that important — to recede gracefully into the past, and accept the right for people to increase or reduce their political engagement as it suits them.

–

* – Had Shedden simply mentioned that he was the only education professional running for election — an angle I uncovered while writing this post — I would have made a conscious note to go out and vote for him. Unique qualifications do stand out — but only if the voter knows about them.

U.S. Republicans could learn from former N.D. governor

Eisenhower, Ford and Reagan must be rolling in their graves at what their old party has become.

One major candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Michele Bachmann, has said that the U.S. should seek compensation from Iraq to cover the cost of the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation. Previously, she had also suggested that some newly hired teenagers should be paying their employers instead of the other way around.

Another candidate with significant support from the party’s libertarian wing, Ron Paul, caused more than a few chuckles and rolled eyes when he announced that ”[the U.S.] should be like 1900; we should be like 1940, 1950, 1960…” Paul is also an advocate of returning the U.S. dollar to the gold standard.

A third candidate who has become popular more recently, former restaurant CEO Herman Cain, markets his economic plan as if it were pizza, calling it the “9-9-9 Plan”. Candidate Bachmann has already tried to link this to the supposedly satanic “6-6-6″. Few, however, have noticed that “999″ is the local equivalent of North America’s “911″ emergency number in Hong Kong, the U.K., Ireland, Singapore and several other countries; nor that nein, nein, nein is German for “no, no, no”. Candidate Cain’s web site also helpfully suggests that “a dollar must always be a dollar just as an hour is always 60 minutes”. Americans are no doubt waiting with baited breath for Cain’s “2 for 1 Special”.

Amid it all, the more presentable Mitt Romney, a seemingly competent former governor and corporate executive, tries to bolster his appeal to the Republicans’ influential Christian Conservative wing, which views his Mormonism as being only slightly less distasteful than if he were to be an atheist; while Jon Huntsman, another competent former governor and diplomat, and Mormon, struggles to make an impact at all. Rick Perry, an incumbent Texas governor who at least looks presidential even if his qualifications are the subject of much debate, struggles to keep his once-promising campaign from going off the rails.

It’s strange that North Dakota senator John Hoeven, who governed Manitoba’s southern neighbour state for 10 years from 2000 to 2010, hasn’t been suggested yet as a compromise candidate, given the casting-about that the Republican Party has been doing in its search for a viable presidential candidate.

Less than a year after leaving Bismarck for Washington, D.C. and handing over the top job to now-governor Jack Dalrymple, North Dakota still looks like the land that the brutal U.S. recession somehow forgot.

In September 2011, North Dakota had the lowest unemployment rate in the U.S., at just 3.5 percent, far below the U.S. national unemployment rate of 9.1 percent.

North Dakota’s real GDP grew by 7.1 percent in 2009-2010, powered by the relatively strong mining and wholesale trade sectors.

In 2000, North Dakota ranked 21st in terms of the percentage of residents aged 25 years and over who had completed high school. In 2009, North Dakota ranked 11th — a change in standing only rivaled by Hawaii and the District of Columbia, and a sharp contrast to Texas (which dropped from 45th to 51st under Rick Perry’s watch), Utah (which dropped from 2nd to 8th between 2006 and 2009, when Jon Huntsman was governor) and Massachusetts (which drifted up and down in the upper-teens during the 2000s, which included Mitt Romney’s 2003-07 governorship.)

In 2009, North Dakota was one of the 10 safest U.S. states to live in in terms of violent crime rates — bested by Utah, but still boasting fewer than half as many violent crimes per 100,000 people than in either Texas or Massachusetts.

Perhaps even more importantly, Hoeven is a proven vote-winner, having increased his respectable 55 percent of the vote in 2000 to 71 percent in 2004, and further still to 74 percent in 2008.

He is, however, a Catholic (not necessarily an asset with the important Christian Conservative base noted above) and is considered to be fairly moderate in his views and reluctant to get dragged into hot-button social issues (definitely not an asset with the above!)

The two latter items alone are probably enough to prevent him from advancing any further in his political career than his current position in the Senate.

It’s a shame, because the U.S. deserves better than a zany congresswoman, a guy offering the hope of a better yesterday, and a Texas governor who led his state to the country’s worst high school attainment rate during his time in office, among others.

Compulsory voting, E-voting leave root causes of low voter turnout unresolved

“Aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda,” goes an old Spanish saying. “Although the monkey dresses in silk, it is still a monkey.”

It’s a reminder that spin and cosmetic changes designed to mask an underlying structural problem ultimately cost a lot of money, but fail to correct the original problem.

We’re seeing some of that in response to the fact that only 57 percent of enumerated voters, or roughly 45 percent of the province’s voting-age population, turned out to cast ballots in the Oct. 4 election — one of the lowest rates in Manitoba’s history.

Talk since then of Manitoba needing compulsory voting or e-voting to boost voter turnout suggests that some people are ready to call in the tailor to start taking the monkey’s measurements.

Compulsory voting certainly does get voters out to the polls. In August 2010, 81 percent of voting-age Australians turned out to elect 150 members of the country’s lower house of Parliament, under the threat of a $20 Aus. ($21 Cdn.) fine for unexcused no-shows.

This came shortly after Belgium’s compulsory June 2010 elections, in which 89 percent of registered voters turned out to vote on the threat of fines starting at 50 Euro ($70 Cdn.)

E-voting is still in the experimental stages worldwide.

But compulsory voting and e-voting both have a flaw: these changes assume that the distaste that many Manitobans feel for politics is unwarranted.

Their distate for politics is, in fact, perfectly legitimate. For a generation that grew up in a world where diversity, choice and individuality were next to godliness, the political world has little to offer.

Experience shows that cajoling people to vote does not build a better or more respectful relationship between the political world and the rest of the public.

A 2005 survey of 1,393 Australians for the World Values Survey found that only 34 percent of Australians had “a great deal” (4%) or “quite a lot of confidence” (30%) in Parliament.

When the same question was last asked in Belgium in 1999, only 36 percent of the 1,830 Belgians polled expressed confidence in Parliament (3% “a great deal” and 33% “quite a lot”).

This was comparable to the 38 percent of 2,036 Canadians, asked the same question in 2006, who expressed confidence in our own Parliament (4% “a great deal” and 34% “quite a lot”).

There is further evidence that compulsory voting in particular is no magic cure to voter apathy:

• A 2010 discussion paper from the Study Center Gerzensee in Switzerland found that “compulsory voting increases the share of uninformed voters, thereby making special-interest groups more influential” which “thus receive more generous rents under compulsory voting…. Compulsory voting may thus well lead to policies that make even less privileged citizens worse off.”

 

• A 2003 Elections Canada report examining foreign compulsory voting systems found that any compulsory voting scheme must be backed up by the will and the resources to fine and/or prosecute non-voters: “[C]ompulsory voting does not really have any effect unless penalties are stipulated for electors who decide to abstain. A merely symbolic obligation is not sufficient.” This could become controversial if these fines fall disproportionately upon the poor, as they inevitably would, or if people avoid the possibility of being fined by simply refusing to be enumerated.

 

• A 2008 study of enforced voting and political awareness by three political scientists at the Université de Montréal found that “avoiding forgoing money cannot be assumed to be a sufficient motivator for getting [voters] to learn more about politics,” thus casting doubt on the idea that compulsory voting will lead to a better-engaged public. The study involved two groups of students: “half the students were required to complete two surveys; the other half were also required to vote.”

As for e-voting from the comfort of your home or a public computer, the risks to the integrity of the electoral process are downright alarming, as one report on Estonia’s experiences with e-voting noted:

“E-voting brings along many concerns of fraud and privacy associated with remote balloting, including the risk that voters who do not cast their votes in the privacy of a voting booth, may be subject to coercion, or that voters have the opportunity to easily sell their vote. During the last elections in Estonia some vote-buying incidents became public and the problem has been blown up in mass media. This is partly the reason why the e-voting concept suggests that the re-voting should be allowed. The fact that voter has always a possibility to re-vote, even in the controlled area on elections day, can minimise the number of manipulative attempts.”

Those interested in improving voter turnout rates here in Canada would be well advised to take a closer look at Sweden, where more than 82 percent of the voting age population showed up at the polls in the 2010 parliamentary election — the third consecutive election in which turnout was higher than it was at the previous election.

What’s remarkable about Sweden is that it’s all voluntary. No one in Sweden is compelled to vote.

Even the young turn out to vote. In 1998, 74 percent of Swedes aged 18 to 22 years turned out to vote. This was considered alarmingly low by Swedish standards:

“A fall in 1998 started a debate about declining voter participation in Sweden. The problem was considered especially serious since the average turnout was even lower among first-time voters: 74 percent for those aged 18–22. A lack of confidence in politicians or politics as a means of changing the world was advanced as possible explanations. Established political parties also reported, and still report, a declining interest among young people in becoming politically active. At the same time new groups and organizations with a strong political message are gaining support, mainly from young people.”

Some notable differences between Sweden and Canada:

• Swedish MPs are seated according to the multi-member constituencies they represent, not by party. This reinforces the concept that MPs are expected to work (and even socialize) together across party lines.

 

• Sweden’s parliament is elected by proportional representation to a fixed, four-year term. Since there is no threat of a snap election, and since special interest groups cannot cause large-scale political career terminations by mobilizing small numbers of voters, party discipline need not be as militaristic and kowtowing to politically crucial subgroups need not be as obligatory as it is elsewhere. In other words, there’s more latitude to tell the truth.

 

• Swedish culture has a solid “moderation in all things” ethic and a strong egalitarian mindset. Therefore, attack ads and appeals to narrow groups of voters to the exclusion of others are considered even more distateful than they would be here.

New Zealand has also been successful in getting voters out to the polls voluntarily. Nine of their past 10 parliamentary elections saw 75 percent or more of the voting age population turn out to vote. (Why voluntary turnout is so high in N.Z. remains a bit of a mystery, but it’s worth looking into. Perhaps it’s related to New Zealand being a small and isolated society with a remarkably open and honest system of government.)

But don’t hold your breath waiting for anyone in the political game to look overseas for inspiration and then act on it. It’s much easier to just dress the monkey up in silk.

What makes a city worth moving to?

Moving, in search of a better life

Election campaigns nowadays are too often dominated by wedge issues and efforts to make mountains out of molehills, but there are some encouraging signs that more substantial quality-of-life issues are wiggling their way into the nascent Manitoba provincial election campaign.

Take for example an article by Derek Holtom which appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press recently, asking why more people move away from Manitoba to other provinces than move here.

Between 2007 and 2010, 12,655 people left Manitoba for other provinces. During the same time frame, Saskatchewan added 14,393 from other provinces. And according to a report done by TD Economics, the trend appears set to continue. Manitoba is projected to lose another 6,750 to other provinces in 2011 and 2012, while Saskatchewan is projected to add another 7,434. Alberta and British Columbia are also projected to add more people from other parts of Canada, making Manitoba a big loser in terms of interprovincial migration in Western Canada.

Of course, Manitoba has done exceedingly well in terms of immigration. It does so well, in fact, that the province continues to grow despite interprovincial migration losses. Last year Manitoba welcomed 15,805 immigrants, more than making up for those who left between 2007 and 2010.

But the question remains, why are people leaving? Some argue taxes are an issue. Manitoba tries to position itself as a more affordable place to live with a lower cost of living. But Saskatchewan’s lower taxes and higher wages cannot be ignored. For example, Saskatchewan just raised their personal income tax exemption by $1,000 to $14,535. Manitoba just increased their exemption by $250 — to $8,384. That’s a stark difference when it comes to paying your taxes in May.

So why do people leave?

Manitoba is hardly alone in pondering this question. Statistics Canada data shows that eight out of 13 provinces and territories saw more people move out to other parts of Canada than move in in 2008-09. The only net gainers were Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon Territory.

And Manitoba, where 92 domestic migrants moved in for every 100 who moved out, was hardly the worst province in this regard.  Only 72 people moved into Quebec for every 100 who moved out to other parts of Canada, suggesting that the beauty of la belle province doesn’t make up for a perceived lack of opportunity.

The Northwest Territories also suffered a major shortfall, attracting only 74 domestic newcomers for every 100 who moved out.

Even Ontario, the traditional economic powerhouse of the Canadian economy and still a popular destination for immigrants, seemed to lose a lot of lustre in the eyes of Canadians, attracting only 80 people from other parts of Canada for every 100 who moved out.

To answer the question of what drives people to move from place to place around Canada, I took a second look at some data I had on hand with more than 90 pieces of data on each of 25 Canadian cities. Most of this data came from the 2006 census.

Specifically, I looked at how each piece of data correlated with the proportion of city residents who had moved in from out of province within the past five years. The further the score was from zero on a scale of -1 to +1, the stronger the relationship between the two factors.

An interesting picture began to emerge, as shown below. Canadians, it seems, are drawn to the coasts, or at least away from the heartland where the winters are the harshest.

Not surprisingly, Canadians also tend to move to places that have better job prospects, hence a strong relationship between a city’s employment rate and the concentration of recent out-of-province newcomers living there. Similarly, places with high levels of dependency on government income support tend to have little attraction to other Canadians.

(* – All factors above are statistically significant. Click to enlarge.)

But the types of jobs that a city offers also has the power to attract or repel people. Cities with larger business services and construction sectors tend to draw more people, as do those with jobs in the sciences, management, business, finance and administration. Manufacturing-dominated towns, however, were seen as distinctly unattractive places to live.

Cities with larger numbers of secondary and post-secondary graduates also tend to be more attractive. Yes, it’s true that those who are already well-educated tend to be more mobile than those who are not, but a city also needs a well-educated local population before it can start drawing similarly well-educated migrants from elsewhere.

Finally, there are signs that lifestyle plays a role. Cities where it’s possible and practical to walk or ride a bike to work have an advantage over more car-dependent cities; and cities with lower reported stress levels tend to be more attractive than higher-stress cities.

Median pre-tax and after-tax family incomes showed some signs of influence, but there was little to suggest that the difference between the two plays much of a role in choosing a place to live.

Housing costs were also neither a distinct advantage nor liability.

So the next time you hear Manitoba’s interprovincial migration rate being discussed in the media, remember this: it’s about climate, it’s about finding work, and it’s about lifestyle. And that Manitoba is neither alone in worrying about people moving away, nor is it the hardest-hit province in this regard.