Why Justin Trudeau shook up Canada’s diplomatic corps, diversity

2016/07/21 Leave a comment

HoM 2016 appointments.001The above chart captures the diversity of all 38 Liberal government head of mission appointments in 2016 to date with respect to all appointments as well as those that are classified at the ADM level (EX4-5):

The Liberal government cleaned diplomatic house on Tuesday, announcing the appointment of 26 new ambassadors, high commissioners and consuls general from Havana to Tel Aviv. The list is heavy on foreign service experience, short on overtly political appointments and pristinely gender balanced. In a statement, Global Affairs Canada said the recalls and new postings “ensure its diplomatic leaders represent a wide diversity of Canadians.”

Ferry de Kerckhove, former high commissioner in Pakistan and ambassador to both Indonesia and Egypt over a long career in the foreign service, said the appointments signal a conscientious shift in approach for Justin Trudeau’s government. “We’re back to what I would call normalcy in diplomatic appointments,” he says. “It confirms the Prime Minister’s early statement about giving back to the foreign service its role in representing Canada abroad, and also giving back its ability to actually do their job, which is to report, comment and provide advice.”

Source: Why Justin Trudeau shook up Canada’s diplomatic corps

Tuesday morning started off with a big shuffle as 26 new diplomatic appointments were announced, some replacing political appointments made under the previous Tory government.

As it did with its last shuffle, the department included a statement at the top of the list of appointments stating the government’s “commitment to ensure its diplomatic leaders represent a wide diversity of Canadians and include a greater gender representation.”

While the appointments include 13 men and 13 women, the overwhelming majority of heads of mission being replaced are men. Only four female ambassadors have been rotated out, compared to the 22 men.

A few of the new appointments are simply rotations from ambassadorial positions in other countries, while a few brand new political appointees have been added to the heads of mission team.

Harper appointees replaced, more women added to Canada’s roster of ambassadors

Patrick Martin’s astute analysis of the postings to the Mid-East:

Israel has been watching for evidence of a shift since Canada’s Liberals won the October election. Within hours of being sworn in, Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion announced that Canada will strive for a more balanced policy in the Middle East, one that includes reaching out to “other legitimate partners in the region” besides Israel.

He even described Canada’s role as being that of an “honest broker” – no words make Israeli leaders shudder more than those two.

Stephen Harper’s government was very good to Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu’s government knew it had a staunch supporter in Canadian Ambassador Vivian Bercovici. It also knew the next Canadian representative could not be so one-sided.

But in Deborah Lyons, whose name as the ambassador-designate leaked two months ago, the Israelis are being mollified by the appointment of a fair-minded career diplomat of substantial seniority. Ms. Lyons, most recently, has been Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan, a posting that gives her credibility in conflict zones. But prior to that is where her résumé gets really interesting.

She served as deputy head of mission in Washington, as chief strategy officer of the Department of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa and as a trade counsellor for high-tech industries in Tokyo. Few words give Israelis goosebumps more quickly than “high-tech.”

Does this high-level appointment reframe Canada’s relationship with Israel and the Middle East? Perhaps, but it depends on what policy changes follow the appointment.

The departure of Bruno Saccomani as Canadian ambassador to Jordan will be welcomed by those Jordanians who care about such things. The Royal Hashemite Court grimaced at the appointment of Mr. Harper’s former head of security to lead Canada’s mission in Amman.

Mr. Saccomani lacked the experience of a foreign service officer, but also lacked the ear of the Canadian prime minister, which would have compensated for his not being a diplomat.

In Peter MacDougall, the Jordanians are getting an upgrade. Mr. MacDougall’s expertise is in refugees and in setting standards for admission to Canada – two very valuable traits in a country hosting nearly two million Syrian refugees and the place from which Canada chooses those it will allow entry.

The change of ambassadors in the United Arab Emirates is about equal in quality – both the outgoing Arif Lalani and the incoming Masud Husain are senior officials with lots of expertise and experience.

Which is a good thing, because the Gulf countries matter more than ever – with tensions over Iran, Syria and Yemen, and concern over the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

 Ottawa’s diplomatic shuffle signals shift in approach to Middle East 

Former Clerk and High Commissioner to London on the balance of skills that career and political backgrounds bring to appointments:

After several years watching appointments, I realized that political appointees do these jobs differently. Each person brings different strengths and skills to the job.

David MacNaughton and Gary Doer before him have a strength as Canadian Ambassador to Washington that most other ambassadors do not. They are seen as well-connected and understand politics. When they speak to American political or business leaders they know they speak with the PM’s voice. That is remarkably valuable in doing the job.

When I met political, cultural and business leaders in the U.K. and they heard I had been Secretary to Cabinet, they took me more seriously (more than I deserved to be taken). When we want to be taken seriously at the UN, or in Washington, London and Paris, then the person representing Canada may best be a career diplomat schooled in the intricacies of diplomacy, or a career public servant knowledgeable and experienced in the key issues of the portfolio, or a “political” appointee who has access to the prime minister. It depends.

However, there can be too many political appointees. To run a career foreign service we need to have senior offices available for the careerists to aspire to. However, that there are political appointees is not a bad thing.

The appointments announced Tuesday should be judged on the quality of the people and not on whether they helped get the Prime Minister elected. Every prime minister has appointed former ministers, party apparatchiks, and business people, career public servants as well as career diplomats to the rank of Ambassador or High Commissioner. They should be judged on their talents, what they bring to the job and ultimately on what they accomplish.

I like to think that because I had been a senior public servant with access, I added value to representing Canada that was more than many others could do. My predecessors each brought different strengths to the job and did it differently, not better or worse.

All those Ambassadors and High Commissioners announced Tuesday will do their best to represent Canada well. Many of them will do a very good job and accomplish great things. We should wish them all well.

 Judge diplomatic picks on talent, not their relationship with Trudeau 

 

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Political Correctness Is An Absolute Must | TIME

2016/07/21 Leave a comment

One of the better long-read pieces on the political correctness charge canard by Mark Hannah (former Democratic staffer):

Political correctness has been a whipping boy of the right wing for decades, and lately Trump is cracking the whip with abandon. He recently told a group of evangelical leaders that they shouldn’t pray for President Obama because “We can’t be… politically correct and say we pray for all of our leaders, because all of your leaders are selling Christianity down the tubes.” (Never mind that Trump places prayer within the scope of self-interested transactions.) Remember his response to Fox host Megyn Kelly when she asked him about his temperament after calling some women “dogs” and “fat pigs”? It was: “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct.” After being skewered by all sides for racist comments about a federal judge? “We have to stop being so politically correct in this country.”

If you’re like many Americans, you might have been persuaded political correctness is one of our country’s primary problems. Trump badly wants you to believe this, but you’d be wrong to do so. Trump is effectively positioning himself as the anti-PC candidate. Whereas Hillary Clinton thinks and speaks in the strategic—and sometimes subtle—language of diplomacy, Trump explicitly proposes himself as undiplomatic and politically incorrect. In doing so, he is cheapening and polarizing our political debates and, more important, he is making our country less safe.

You might think politicians speak in too much coded language, designed to cloak their true positions and to avoid offending everyone. But let’s be clear: The opposite of political correctness is not unvarnished truth-telling. It is political expression that is careless toward the beliefs and attitudes different than one’s own. In its more extreme fashion, it is incivility, indecency or vulgarity. These are the true alternatives to political correctness. These are the traits that Trump tacitly touts when he criticizes political correctness. And these are the essential attributes of Trump’s candidacy.

This is not the first time our political discourse has been crass. When he traveled to the United States fifty years after the nation gained its independence, the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville noticed a “vulgar turn of mind” among American journalists. Journalists back in France often wrote in “an eloquent and lofty manner” but, according to Tocqueville, the typical American journalist made an “open and coarse appeal to the passions of the populace; and he habitually abandons the principles of political science to assail the characters of individuals.” Sound familiar? This vulgarity might have been characteristic of that era’s journalists, who brazenly competed for readers and hadn’t yet developed common standards of professionalism and ethics. But it wasn’t characteristic of the types of Americans who sought the nation’s highest political office.

Trump’s vulgarity is so vivid, in part, because it contrasts so starkly with Barack Obama’s civility and cool-headedness. I predict that the more Trump debases our political climate with his brand of political incorrectness, the more we will come to appreciate the qualities our president embodies. Regular Obama critic David Brooks recently praised the president for his “ethos of integrity, humanity, good manners and elegance.” Yet when the president challenges us to “disagree without being disagreeable” and to be careful not to conflate an entire religion with the hateful ideology that seeks to exploit and debase that religion, we watch as his detractors accuse him of political correctness.

You probably heard the accusations: Obama is pussyfooting around the phrase “radical Islam” because he’d rather protect the feelings of terrorists rather than the lives of Americans. Or something like that. On one hand, the intense scrutiny on the president’s language reveals a conspicuous lack of substantive criticism of the president’s foreign policy. As President Obama wondered aloud in a recent press conference, “What exactly would using this label accomplish? Would it make ISIL less committed to killing more Americans? Would it bring in more allies? Is there a military strategy that is served by this?” Of course not. It is, as the president said, a “distraction… a political talking point, not a strategy.”

But on the other hand, we are wise to focus on the language used in the critically important issue of knowing who our enemies are… and who they are not. This is an issue that has the greatest political consequences. It is a political issue on which we need to be correct. And yet in that press conference, the president himself dismissed “political correctness,” underscoring the concept’s status as a universal pariah, even as he defended his terminology. Obama explained, “the reason that I am careful about how I describe this threat has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with defeating extremism.”

Just as no serious firefighter would actually fight fire with fire, we can’t fight the extremist language of foreign adversaries (and the insecurity and simplemindedness that propel it) with our own extremist language, insecurity and simplemindedness. It would be geopolitically incorrect, if you will, to do so. It would alienate our allies and motivate our adversaries.

After all, as conservative foreign policy expert Eli Lake has pointed out, our biggest allies in the Middle East are people in countries, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, whose brand of Islam strikes American sensibilities as “radical.” After special forces raided his compound, Osama bin Laden’s notebooks revealed that al Qaeda recruiting activities were disabled because, according to Bin Laden, Obama administration officials “have largely stopped using the phrase ‘the war on terror’ in the context of not wanting to provoke Muslims.” Nothing would help ISIL’s recruiting strategy more than an American president lumping together—rather than drawing a distinction between—terrorists and the world’s billion and a half Muslims.

Conservatives might tell us Obama is “politically correct” and Trump “tells it like it is.” But when it comes to the debate over the phrase “radical Islam,” Obama is playing chess and Trump is playing dodge ball. If politics is about strategy, political correctness is arming oneself with a sound strategy while political incorrectness is strategic recklessness.

Many on the left think conservatives demonize political correctness because they resent having to suppress their own prejudices. That might be true for some. But as someone who teaches a college class on political rhetoric, I’ve come to appreciate that anti-PC attitudes are part of a longer tradition of suspicion toward carefully calibrated language. Throughout history, our species has tended to distrust people who have a knack for political oratory. Part of this stems from the fact that most people are not good public speakers at the same time most people have an affinity for people who are like them. This is something psychologists call “homophily,” and is the reason so many of us tend to want to vote for somebody we’d “like to have a beer with” rather than someone smarter than us.

Conservative politicians who criticize Obama and “political correctness” understand that eloquence is often perceived less as a mark of intelligence and personal style and more as a product of artifice and self-indulgence. This is why they can muster up the backhanded compliment that Obama is a “good speaker” or a “gifted orator.”

Why do we hate political correctness so much? Our suspicion of sensitive political language goes back to ancient Greece, when the sophists got a bad rap for going around Athens training wealthy kids to become more talented speakers so they could win votes or dodge prison time. Plato famously distrusted rhetoric, although his student Aristotle would rehabilitate its reputation as an essentially virtuous endeavor. Political correctness, in which public officials are careful to avoid language that alienates or offends, requires a certain type of expressive competence. In the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump has critiqued this expressive competence while being wholly unequipped with it.

But political correctness is a longstanding American tradition and a deeply rooted value. Our country’s founders placed a premium on the ability to persuasively articulate opposing viewpoints. They rejected government censorship precisely because they trusted individuals could and would regulate themselves in our proverbial “free marketplace of ideas.” They didn’t prohibit offensive speech because they believed truth lost its vigor unless confronted with falsehoods, and tolerance lost its social acceptance unless it could stand in contrast with ugly prejudices. They knew the value of an idea laid in its ability to gain favor in debates, which should be, in Supreme Court Justice William Brennan’s words, “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” Trump can say what he will about Muslims and Mexicans, but thoughtful journalists and pundits can and should say what they will about Trump.

If you are one of the many Americans who think political correctness is a detriment to politically vibrant debates in this country, you have it all backwards: People who use politically correct language aren’t trying to stifle insensitive speech. They’re simply trying to out-compete that speech in a free and open exchange.

Every time Trump says something that’s ugly or false and then claims political correctness is “the big problem this country has” and something we “can’t afford,” he’s basically blaming this free marketplace itself. He’s petulantly arguing with the umpire. He’s blaming you and me—the public—for exercising the freedom to decide which ideas are good or bad. In the end, many of you don’t like or want what he’s peddling. You reject his racist tirades and narcissistic antics. You support common-sense gun legislation which would help prevent another terrorist hate crime like the one that occurred in Orlando. You reject praying for political leaders based on those leaders’ party affiliations. And you don’t think women deserve to be compared to “pigs” or “dogs” by people seeking our country’s highest office. I happen to think you’re correct, politically.

Source: Political Correctness Is An Absolute Must | TIME

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USA: “Islands” That Separate Education Haves From Have-Nots : NPR

2016/07/21 Leave a comment

Fortunately, Canadian school system funding (at least in Ontario) is funded at the provincial level, ensuring relatively equal funding levels between schools (although parental fundraising etc means some differences):

The school district of Freehold Borough, N.J., has a 32 percent poverty rate. It is fully surrounded by another school district, Freehold Township, which has a 5 percent poverty rate.

Freehold Borough is what a new report calls an “island district” — and it’s not alone. The report, from a nonprofit called EdBuild, maps 180 of these islands around the country: Districts that, by historical accident or for political reasons, lie completely inside other systems with a disparate poverty rate and often different funding levels.

And that can correlate with very different outcomes for students — something educators in Freehold Borough have long struggled with.

“Surrounding communities are able to provide a better education than we are,” says Rocco Tomazic, superintendent of the K-8 district. “It’s not supposed to be that way per the state constitution.”

Source: Education Week, U.S. Census Bureau

As we noted in our School Money project, around half of school funding in the U.S., on average, comes from local property taxes. That means districts with high poverty often struggle with limited resources, a one-two punch.

“We have a mismatch between the way we’re funding schools and what we’re expecting schools to deliver,” says Rebecca Sibilia, the founder and CEO of EdBuild, which focuses on school finance.

Though they are rare, Sibilia argues that these island districts serve as vivid examples of a larger pattern that holds true in many places throughout the country: The resources available to your local public school may depend on your zip code, or sometimes even your specific address at birth.

Source: “Islands” That Separate Education Haves From Have-Nots : NPR Ed : NPR

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StatsCan says government’s IT agency providing ‘slower, lower quality services’

2016/07/20 Leave a comment

Government IT is one of the most complex areas given the range and scale of services needed. But this report, along with the current problems with the Phoenix pay system, provides pretty compelling evidence that the officials who sold the concept – which I support – did not adequately address implementation issues.

The political level is equally to blame for not having asked the needed questions and likely for under-resourcing the initiative:

Setbacks and shortcomings at the federal government’s tech support agency could delay Statistics Canada’s release of “mission critical” information required by the Bank of Canada, Department of Finance and commercial banks, according to a report.

The document, submitted to Canada’s chief statistician Wayne Smith, is one among more than a dozen reports, drafted at Smith’s request from all of his directors general. Smith asked for the reports in an effort to fully understand the impact of Shared Services Canada (SSC) on his department.

The memos, obtained by CBC News under access to information laws, detail how yet another federal ministry is embroiled in a dispute with SSC over services standards, red tape, billing and the capacity of IT infrastructure to keep up with departmental demands.

SSC was created by the previous government to centralize and standardize information technology services in a bid to save money.

At the end of February, in the run-up to the 2016 Census, Smith shared the results of this report with Canada’s top civil servant, Privy Council clerk Michael Wernick. The correspondence is entirely redacted except for the subject line, which reads Heightened Program Risks at Statistics Canada.

“Numerous challenges in terms of reliability, timeliness, effectiveness and affordability are being experienced, impacting delivery of programs, projects and plans across all program areas,” wrote Lise Duquet, director general of the StatsCan informatics branch.

She said the savings expected from consolidating services under SSC have not materialized, pointing to how ongoing support from the IT Help Desk is now more costly than when StatsCan operated the email service.

Lack of accountability

Despite “harvesting” $38 million from Statistics Canada with the promise to upgrade IT infrastructure, Duquet said StatisCan was told it would have to cover the cost of migrating all information to new data centres — something she said the agency cannot afford without putting its programs at risk.

Governance at SSC has been identified as a problem by other departments. Duquet echoed those frustrations, “Governance is very complex and there is a lack of accountability to deliver on expected outcomes that are critical to programs.”

Another recurring theme that surfaced in the reports is that SSC can’t or won’t meet StatsCan’s IT requirements because it refuses to upgrade computer infrastructure.

Daniela Rivandra, director general of the industry statistics branch at the agency, warned of the risk of a bottleneck of processing capacity this year. “This will translate into many programs having to delay releases and not meeting legislative requirements for providing the data,” she said.

“Having to delay their release would be unprecedented and will impact the ability of key users (e.g. Bank of Canada, Department of Finance, commercial banks, etc.) of making timely decisions, translating into considerable embarrassment to the government of Canada.”

Due to the poor level of service provided by SSC, the corporate services support division decided to self-fund a unit of 3 persons to provide support to our employees and to ensure that some SSC initiatives get done.– Yves Béland, director general StatsCan operations branch

The directors general’s reports also reveal deep concerns about  branches running out of server space. Craig Kunz said the operating system on which the Consumer Price Index depends, is at an elevated risk of failure, yet SSC has frozen procurement with no apparent contingency plans.

‘Slower and lower quality service’

Telecommunications is another persistent irritant.

“Our relationship and experience with SSC with regards to telecommunications have been quite difficult to say the least,” reported Yves Béland, director general of the operations branch. “Due to the poor level of service provided by SSC, the corporate services support division decided to self-fund a unit of three persons to provide support to our employees and to ensure that some SSC initiatives get done.”

Assistant chief statistician Connie Graziadei said service is slower and lower quality, especially on the rollout of cellphones to census employees working in the field.

She described how SSC provided cellphones with the wrong area codes or “incorrect cellphone providers were sometimes assigned to a phone, making it unusable in the geography where the phone was intended to be in operation.”

In one case, an employee had an unusable phone for more than two months. A StatsCan manager sent the woman a spare phone on the Bell network, instead of Rogers. While the employee was thrilled to finally be able to do her job, a long string of emails shows SSC was more concerned about StatsCan overstepping its authority.

“You are not able to simply “re-assign” devices when there is an issue. We have procedures in place to deal with issues like Dana was having,” wrote Todd Mair of SSC on Feb. 2, 2016.

David Kudlovich of StatsCan fired back.

“Two months without a phone [is] far too long when this is the sole device they receive from SSC. Two weeks is actually far too long. There are occupational health and safety concerns when an employee doesn’t have a means of communication and the employee cannot do their job they’re hired to do,” he said.

Yet the documents show the problems continued for several more months.

Source: StatsCan says government’s IT agency providing ‘slower, lower quality services’ – Politics – CBC News

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Harper’s Accountability Act, ten years on: Flumian and Salgo

2016/07/19 Leave a comment

This lengthy commentary is well worth reading and is should provoke considerable and deeper discussion both within and outside government beyond the online comments.

Would be interesting to hear from some of the former public servants who worked on the Act for their take:

Still, our own view, bluntly, is that both the Act and the audit culture it sustains are fundamentally wrongheaded, and have contributed to a normative culture that is a roadblock to modernization. Far from fostering genuinely efficient stewardship of public resources, this culture over-manages minor risks in government, ignores far larger ones, and stifles appropriate risk-taking and innovation. If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is serious about its focus on delivering better outcomes for Canadians, it needs to shift to a system of accountability that is itself more focused on outcomes and less on micro constraints and the avoidance of blame.

To this day, the FedAA — which was actually part of a broader program of initiatives described as the “Federal Accountability Action Plan” — stands, we would argue, as the definitive legislative monument to risk-averse, blame-avoiding institutional rigidity in the government of Canada.

So, as the Act approaches its tenth anniversary, we may well ask: Accountability for what? Has government become more accountable as a result of the act? More to the point, has the FedAA and similarly-spirited initiatives contributed to better societal outcomes? Does it position the Canadian government to evolve nimbly to meet the challenges of governing in the digital age?

…A methodologically rigorous assessment of the impact of the FedAA — like one of the need for it — remains to be conducted. To date, much reported criticism draws on a broadly negative assessment by the public service textured by compelling personal anecdotes. A public service thumbs-down is neither definitive nor something that should be casually dismissed. Indeed, a systematic survey of public service experience would make a good starting point for a robust analysis. In the meantime, however, our principal basis for assessing the FedAA remains a parsing of what the legislation did and did not do.

Before assessing the individual elements of the legislation, let’s consider its overall thrust. Did this act about accountability have anything to say about being accountable for better outcomes? For working collaboratively on horizontal files? Did it give deputy ministers the responsibility and flexibility to improve the bottom line? Indeed, did it include any inducements to work pro-actively for improvements?

On the contrary, almost every provision was a further proscription, a more refined behavioural restraint, an intensification of scrutiny to smoke out unknown misdemeanours. And more to the point, the requirements of this regime could be satisfied in a purely negative way — that is, not by actually delivering something good, but by keeping your head down and avoiding blame.

As befits accountability legislation, the FedAA strengthened internal audit requirements in government departments and designated deputy heads as “accounting officers” for their organizations, meaning that they had to account in some way to Parliament for their managerial custodianship. Now, internal auditing is itself a laudable practice — one that that should actually be welcomed by a CEO as a tool for keeping tabs on the organization. However, the actual impact of internal audits on government departments is an area that merits closer study; the decision to conduct an audit by external committees may at least initially have reinforced a tendency to see the function as something to be managed rather than embraced.

As for the accounting officer function, this was evidently structured to minimize the risk of public servants becoming politically accountable to Parliament (itself a defensible goal). Partly for this reason, the responsibility is cast heavily in terms of demonstrating compliance with Treasury Board rules. But again, that is really not an outcome-oriented focus for deputy ministerial accountability, and it is highly unlikely that disregard for Treasury Board requirements was a significant problem in the deputy community. There is also the possibility that it reinforced a siloed focus on one’s own department.

…We need to replace what the FedAA has given us — more detailed rules and more costly and powerful people to oversee them; a chilling effect on public service and engagement with the outside world; and redoubled focus on departmental siloes and accountability conceived as compliance — with a system oversight and accountability that hones in on real risks across the system and that encourages collaboration, innovation and a focus on outcomes. Are public servants accountable for ticking boxes, or for helping the government of the day improve the lives of Canadians in meaningful ways?

If there is a real risk to the effective governance in Canada today, it is the risk that government will not meet these challenges, diminish in relevance, and be beaten at its own game by external providers of goods and services with no mandate to look out for the public interest.

Source: Harper’s Accountability Act, ten years on

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Government by referendums is not democracy – Cappe and Stein

2016/07/09 Leave a comment

One of the better articulations against referendums by Mel Cappe and Janice Gross Stein:

The value of representative democracy has been clear since Edmund Burke wrote in the eighteenth century. Public policy problems are by their nature complex. Representatives, meeting again and again formally and informally, can study, analyze and deliberate before they make their judgments. Referendums, by definition, require simplified “yes” or “no” choices and a one-time only opportunity to vote.

This is not, as some populist critics allege, a defence of “elitism” or the “hubris of experts.” Rather, it is an acknowledgment that it is the full-time responsibility of elected representatives to deliberate and come to an informed decision. They are accountable to the voters if they do not, and can be removed from office. Members of the public, by definition, have no such responsibilities or accountabilities.

Referendums also polarize opinion and sharpen divisions among the electorate. It is almost an inevitable result, as partisans on both sides seek to mobilize voters, often by invoking stereotypes and playing to the fears of the public. Witness Jacques Parizeau and Nigel Farage.

The public often responds emotionally to these arguments, especially in a climate of insecurity that is in part the result of leaders on each side manipulating fear to get out the vote.

Especially in these kinds of circumstances, the debate that leads up to a referendum can ride roughshod over the rights of minorities. Immigration in Britain from former colonies surpasses immigration from other countries in the European Union and far exceeded immigration of Syrian refugees. But Nigel Farage used his Breaking Point poster of refugees from the Middle East to whip up passions against the EU. There was no discussion during the period before the referendum that Polish plumbers and Romanian hair stylists were generally doing jobs that Britons were not disposed to do. Polls after the referendum showed that these kinds of attacks against minorities and refugees worked; immigration was the overriding issue among those who voted Leave.

Parliamentary debate is a different kind of process. Debates are a matter of public record and representatives are accountable for their comments. In well-functioning democracies, parliamentarians – not always but often – work to find solutions that serve the interests of the majority but simultaneously protect the rights of minorities. The debate on the right to assisted death in Canada was an example of exactly that kind of debate. For electoral reform in Canada, parliament should study it, consult the public, deliberate and then allow members a free vote on the issue.

Finally, there is a challenge function in parliamentary debate that helps to inform representatives and correct glaring errors of fact. This is especially the case when an independent and vigorous media report on parliamentary debates. This challenge function was largely absent in the run up to the British referendum. Boris Johnson disavowed his allegation that 350-million pounds a week that was going to the European Union would go to the health care system … but only after the vote. Nigel Farage’s charge that Britain would be overrun by immigrants from Turkey was finally exposed as an entirely imaginary issue … but only after the vote.

Misrepresentations and outright lies dominated the referendum debate in ways that would have been unsustainable in a contested parliament where members can challenge each other.

Source: Government by referendums is not democracy – The Globe and Mail

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Can Jason Kenney throw a rope around Alberta’s unruly Right? Delacourt

2016/07/07 2 Comments

Good column by Susan Delacourt on Kenney’ s move to Alberta politics and his many strengths, with a nice shout out to my books:

One of the events obliged panelists to give quick answers to provocative questions posed by the audience. “Who’s the best cabinet minister in Ottawa right now?” someone asked. I didn’t even have to pause for thought: “Jason Kenney,” I said. Many others on stage and in the audience shared that view.

It wasn’t just his reputation for hard work, although that certainly was a factor. Kenney was everywhere in the old Conservative government, building his clout on the political front (with those cultural communities and others) but also on the policy front. I was told once that Kenney had a representative at every meeting in Ottawa, keeping tabs on all kinds of decision-making processes, even those beyond his ministerial brief.

open quote 761b1bKenney does have strong views (no one’s going to mistake him for a Red Tory) but the caricatures ignore his practical side. And party mergers need practical politicians.

For a sense of what kind of minister Kenney was, I tend to urge people to take a look at books published by Andrew Griffith, a former director general in Kenney’s old department of Multiculturalism. Griffith has written revealingly of a public service coming to grips with a minister who had definite ideas about how to blend policy and politics, evidence and anecdote.

And where many ministers hewed to the PMO diktat and avoided contact with the media, Kenney was eminently approachable. I don’t think he ever said no when I asked him for comment on one thing or another. (Though he hasn’t replied to a message I sent him today as I was writing this article.)

For years he held annual Christmas parties at which reporters were not only welcome, but positively encouraged. The reward for attending was getting to hear Kenney tell funny, behind-the-scenes stories about the Harper government — nothing headline-making, just anecdotes that presented his political workplace as a little less stuffy and aloof.

And it was never hard to find opposition MPs during the Harper years willing to say that Kenney (along with John Baird) was one of the more co-operative ministers in cabinet, willing to occasionally drop the hyper-partisan posture that characterized so much of that government’s style.

This version of Jason Kenney is at odds, naturally, with the caricature painted by his critics — of a rigid, even scary, ideologue. Kenney does have strong views (no one’s going to mistake him for a Red Tory) but the caricatures ignore this high-energy politician’s practical side.

And party mergers need practical politicians. Harper was a pragmatist when he set about uniting the old federal PC party with the Canadian Alliance back in 2003.

Still, I will concede that I’m finding it hard to square the more nuanced Kenney I saw with the politician who tweeted out his support for the Brexit vote a couple of weeks ago. Given that much of Brexit’s support came from hostility towards immigrants, it seemed odd, to say the least, to see a former immigration minister — a courter of cultural communities — on that side of the question.

Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose, I noticed, also seemed at a loss to explain the support for Brexit from the likes of Kenney and Tony Clement in an interview last weekend on CBC’s The House — suggesting vaguely that it might have something to do with friendships they’ve forged abroad.

Perhaps it was just Kenney keeping things interesting, blurring the tidy lines of the boxes people want to throw around him. If he is going to seek the leadership of the Alberta PCs, that in itself is a bit of a surprise; many people expected to see him seek the leadership of the federal Conservatives.

It may not be a good sign for those federal Conservatives that Kenney sees his future elsewhere right now. He became pretty adept — as his old boss would attest — at figuring out where there was room for growth in the conservative movement.

Could he pull off a merger in Alberta? I wouldn’t put it past him. Kenney has developed a knack for doing — and being — the unexpected.

Source: Can Jason Kenney throw a rope around Alberta’s unruly Right?

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Donald Trump Is Mainstreaming Anti-Semitism and White Supremacy | Nicole Hemmer

2016/07/07 Leave a comment

All too true and worrisome:

The friendly relationship between Trump and the alt-right represents a genuine reversal of conservative and Republican politics. In the 1950s, conservatives at the journal National Review made a concerted effort to expel anti-Semites from their ranks, banning anyone from the magazine who wrote for anti-Semitic publications. A decade later the magazine extended its ban to members of the John Birch Society, which, while not primarily an anti-Semitic organization, welcomed a number of prominent anti-Semites as spokespeople.

Conservative leaders believed this sort of distancing was necessary in order to gain respectability, and thus political power, in mid-century America. And by and large, that has been true ever since. It’s why code words and dog-whistles became so important – because open anti-Semitism and racism had become so disqualifying.

As a candidate, Trump has dropped the dog whistle and started speaking in openly prejudiced terms. His decision to do so did not keep him from winning the Republican nomination. Some have argued that he won because of his racism; I think it’s more complicated than that. But either way, he has become the Republican nominee, thus legitimating his decision to un-code his language.

Trump certainly sees no reason to change course. Since capturing the nomination, he has doubled-down on political racism and anti-Semitism. There’s the Star of David tweet, the attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s Mexican heritage. And there’s a telling incident that unfolded a few days ago on the campaign trail, when an audience member asked Trump to fire TSA workers wearing “heebee-jabis” and give their jobs to veterans. Trump said he was looking into it.

The incident was useful not only because Trump expressed openness to religious discrimination, but because the incident had a close parallel to the 2008 campaign. Then, John McCain fielded a question from a woman who said she could not trust Obama because she had heard he was an Arab. McCain visibly blanched, shaking his head and defending Obama as a “decent family man” and “citizen.”

How times have changed.

There are no longer the sort of gatekeepers that can keep groups like the alt-right far on the fringes of American politics. Republican leaders tried to stop Trump. They failed. National Review came out hard against him. It failed, too.

And political journalists, who have cataloged the many incidents of racism and anti-Semitism in the Trump campaign, now face a tough choice. Because Trump is the nominee, there is going to be tremendous pressure to air “both sides” of these controversies in order to appear balanced. CNN, for instance, gave former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who it has hired as a commentator, airtime to call criticism of Trump’s Star of David tweet “political correctness run amok.”

If that’s the kind of coverage that dominates this campaign season – rank anti-Semitism met with largely unquestioned “on the one hand, on the other” reporting – then the mainstreaming of prejudice will continue unabated over the next several months. And if that happens, win or lose, Trump’s legacy will be secure: making America hate again.

Source: Donald Trump Is Mainstreaming Anti-Semitism and White Supremacy | US News Opinion

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Michael Den Tandt on the Brexit and Canada: Two crucial lessons for Liberals

2016/06/28 1 Comment

Good commentary by Den Tandt on some of the lessons for the Liberal government, not to mention the Conservative opposition and the observations regarding Jason Kenney and Tony Clement’s support for Brexit:

Dear Prime Minister David Cameron, Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and the rest: Thank you, so very much. You’ve done the twin causes of stability and unity in your former Dominion of Canada ever so much good.

For what Canadian provincial or federal leader now, witnessing the catastrophic cock-up of your Brexit referendum, will do other than duck for cover next time there’s talk of a plebiscite here to dramatically restructure anything more important than a yard sale?

It was curious, bizarre even, to see senior federal Conservatives emerge on social media early Friday, as the “victory” for the Leave side in the Brexit vote became clear, to beat the drum for St. George. “Congratulations to the British people for choosing hope over fear,” enthused former minister-of-everything Jason Kenney, “by embracing a confident, sovereign future, open to the world!” Tony Clement, erstwhile Treasury Board president, called it a “magnificent exercise in democracy,” before slipping in a renewed call for a referendum on Canadian electoral reform.

Or, here’s another thought: The Liberals could shelve electoral reform and focus on more important stuff, this term, such as jobs.

Democracy is, indeed, magnificent. That’s why the Scots are now ramping up at breakneck speed for a do-over of their own 2014 referendum on independence from Britain, which post-Brexit surveys suggest will now swing in favour, because the Scots wish overwhelmingly to remain European.

Ireland, only recently at peace, now faces renewed turmoil at the prospect of a hard border separating Northern Ireland, still part of the United Kingdom, from the Republic of Ireland, soon to be Europe’s Westernmost outpost. Irish union, as the United Kingdom comes apart at the seams, is not out of the question. Hope over fear, indeed.

This is assuming, of course, that the UK leaves the European Union at all. Though it seems wildly improbable to imagine the referendum, 51.9 per cent for Leave, 48.1 per cent for Remain, being set aside, it is in theory possible, as long as Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which governs an EU member state’s withdrawal, is not invoked.

…All of which brings us back to Canada. Brexit is xenophobic; Brexit is anti-immigrant; Brexit is nostalgic, insular, anti-international and anti-globalization; Brexit is, most of all, an expression of English ethnic nationalism.The federal Conservatives under Stephen Harper, with Kenney himself in the lead, founded their 2011 majority on openness to ethnic pluralism. They undid much of that good work in 2015 with their niqab debate and “barbaric cultural practices” tip line. That any Conservative, Kenney most of all, should have failed to connect these dots is astonishing. Perhaps that’s why Canadian Conservative Brexit cheerleaders have also gone eerily quiet since those initial outpourings of joy.

But it’s not just the Tories who can watch and learn. There are now two threads connecting populist, anti-internationalist, xenophobic movements worldwide. The first is income inequality and poverty among the rural working class, which in England voted as a block for Brexit. The second is the fear of Islamism, manifested in suspicion of immigrants and refugees, which fueled the Leave campaign.

Fixing inequality, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals say, is their job one. But they face a looming economic catastrophe in the resource sector, which can only be addressed through pipeline development and freer trade. Working people need decent-paying jobs. From where will these come in Canada, if ideological and mostly urban anti-pipeline advocates, together with anti-globalization tub thumpers, are left to own the debate, as they do now? The Liberals need to build the case for pipelines and for liberalized trade, while they still have an audience for such.

As for Islamism, the Syrian civil war and ISIL continue to threaten Southern Europe and by extension the West. Until ISIL is destroyed and its territory taken away, there will be no end to the northward flow of refugees, and no political stability in Europe. Canada can do more and should do more to help Europe in this fight — while there remains a Europe to help.

Source: Michael Den Tandt on the Brexit and Canada: Two crucial lessons for Liberals | National Post

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Federal government prepares biggest refresh of its web offerings ever

2016/06/28 Leave a comment

From my time at Service Canada 10 years ago, I am a firm believer in organizing information and services around citizen needs, rather than departmental and bureaucratic structures.

But IT alone is not the solution, as policy makers need to reflect on how they can make programs and services easier to access and more seamless across citizen needs.

One of the ironies of this move is that in my current role as a researcher, I am finding information harder to and more time-consuming to locate:

More than 1,500 disparate, and often completely different looking websites, with strange and long Internet addresses, are in the process of being combined under the easy to remember Canada.ca umbrella.

Everything from the way Canadians access information about the weather to how they apply for government jobs, access benefits and even inquire about financial matters such as taxes is about to change.

“I’m really excited about this project. Canada.ca is such a great way to improve our service delivery to Canadians,” said Michel Laviolette, director general, digital service directorate of the federal Citizen Service Branch. “We are working with 90 partner institutions to migrate their content from their old environment to Canada.ca. If you go on Canada.ca, you will notice it’s organized differently by themes and tasks, such as ‘find a job’ or ‘get a passport’. We are organizing the content that way.”

While some may already know about the government’s internal push to a unified email system using @canada.ca for all government email addresses, this is the first update that the government has given on its efforts to completely overhaul the websites of its departments and agencies.

The rollout of Canada.ca is being undertaken by Services Canada with the help of Adobe Corp., which won an open competition to help with the transformation in 2015. Adobe will provide cloud-based web hosting services for the federal government. The company will manage, support and operate the new website. It is being handled at arm’s length from the federal government’s @Canada.ca email address initiative, which has faced numerous delays and aims to replace more than 350,000 federal government email addresses. The email address initiative is being handled by Shared Services Canada.

The Canada.ca website initiative will also see Vancouver-based Hootsuite manage all of the government’s social media accounts, allowing for quicker dissemination of information across platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

The idea of consolidating thousands of pages of various government websites under one unified address began in 2013. The Canada.ca website was launched in December, and the first departments to dump their old websites and start using the new web address were added in April. Laviolette said all the federal government’s departments and agencies will be under the Canada.ca banner by December 2017 if all goes according to plan.

“Canadians expect their government to adapt to new technologies and to provide up-to-date and reliable information about their services and programs,” said Jean-Yves Duclos, minister of Families, Children and Social Development. “As we continue to develop and improve the website, Canada.ca is becoming a central hub for Government of Canada information. I am proud of the innovative work the Public Service is doing to bring the public the information they deserve using the very best in modern technology. ”

The initiative isn’t just aimed at streamlining information and services to a single web portal. Adobe analytic software will analyze which information and services are being accessed by Canadians the most and present that more prominently, making it easier to find. The site will also feature sections for each of the government’s 90 partners and departments, which will offer information specific to their area of responsibility. All content on those sections will be provided by the departments, but the sites themselves will be administered by Adobe on behalf of the government.

The biggest change that Canada.ca will allow is for better functionality with mobile devices and applications, allowing Canadians on the go to better access information and services on their cellphone or tablet.

The move toward an umbrella web portal, a one-stop shop for Canadians, is being done in concert with a series of other initiatives aimed at reducing redundancy in the federal government’s technology departments. One initiative by Shared Services Canada aims to reduce the number of federal government data centres from 300 to fewer than 20. Another by that department aims to combine more than 100 email systems into one and a third is underway to reduce the 3,000 overlapping computer networks that now exist to serve the 377,000  federal government employees working in more than 3,500 buildings across the country.

The hodgepodge approach to technology integration in the past has led to patchwork evolution of technological solutions that offer no uniformity and haven’t been able to keep up with Canadians’ demand for new online services and faster information delivery. It’s also led to security breaches, including a cyber attack that crippled the Finance Department and Treasury Board in 2011, which was linked with attempts to gather data about the potential takeover of Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan. It took officials more than a week to alert the department responsible for national cyber-security about the attack due to the difficulty in tracking down information on various government networks.

Source: Federal government prepares biggest refresh of its web offerings ever | Ottawa Citizen

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