Bernier picks ridings where PPC has best chance to win in bid to join leaders’ debate

2019/08/26 Leave a comment

Looking at the choices by percentage of immigrants and visible minorities, quite a range. Appears selection criteria weighted towards candidate name recognition and profile (for full riding detail, see diversityvotes.ca):

  • Beauce: 1.4 percent immigrants, 1.1 percent visible minorities
  • Etobicoke North: 58 percent immigrants, 75.7 percent visible minorities
  • Nipissing-Timiskaming: 4.6 percent immigrants, 2.4 percent visible minorities
  • Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley: 13.1 percent immigrants, 10.2 percent visible minorities
  • Pickering-Uxbridge: 30.2 percent immigrants, 36 percent visible minorities

People’s Party Leader Maxime Bernier has provided five ridings to the federal commission organizing the election leaders’ debate in a last-minute effort to enter the highly anticipated event.

In a letter sent to the Leaders’ Debate Commission, Bernier picks five ridings based on “candidates who are better known in their riding as public figures, and therefore will start this campaign with an advantage that others don’t have.”

It includes his Quebec riding of Beauce and the Toronto riding of Etobicoke North, where Renata Ford, the wife of late former mayor Rob Ford and sister-in-law of Ontario premier Doug Ford, is running.

The commission had asked Bernier to provide it with three to five ridings where he thought People’s Party candidates had the best chance of winning, after saying on Aug. 12 that Bernier did not meet the criteria needed to qualify for the leaders’ debates slated for early October.

Commissioner David Johnston had preliminarily ruled that the People’s Party, as it stood, did not have a “legitimate chance” of electing more than one candidate in the upcoming election.

That determination is based on recent political context, polling and previous general election results. A final list of invited parties will be published on Sept. 16.

The three other ridings are Nipissing-Timiskaming, where local councillor Mark King is representing the People’s Party; Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley, where former Conservative cabinet minister Steven Fletcher is running; and Pickering-Uxbridge, where former Tory MP Corneliu Chisu carries the party banner.

Bernier states in the letter that his understanding of the criteria is that “it simply states that our candidates must have a legitimate chance to be elected in the general election, and not at this time in the election cycle.”

“The election campaign could have a huge impact on this legitimate chance. More so for the other reasons I explained regarding the recent political context, including the high level of volatility and disaffection of the electorate, and the fact that populist parties similar to the PPC have experienced very rapid growth in other Western countries,” Bernier wrote.

He said as the People’s Party is very young, it had little information about the regional distribution of its support across Canada and its concentration in specific ridings. Nor did the party have the money to conduct polls in 338 ridings.

Bernier also included data obtained from Meltwater, a media monitoring company, on how often his name popped up in online and print sources over the last year compared to other party leaders.

The numbers state his name popped up 23,518 times, more than Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet.

As well, data included in the letter shows his name popped up on social media 1.67 million times, more than NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, May and Blanchet.

Bernier also included in his letter columns in publications such as the Toronto Star, National Post and The Post Millennial arguing in favour of his entry into the debate.

Among candidates, Renata Ford, though a political novice, carries name recognition through her politically involved family members.

Meanwhile, King is a council member in North Bay. He was supposed to run for the Tories, but the party removed him as a candidate last month for allegedly using a corporate credit card to purchase party memberships for himself and close family members. He then joined the People’s Party.

Fletcher was a Conservative MP from 2004 to 2015 and had served as ministers of state for democratic reform and transport. Chisu was a Tory MP from 2011 to 2015.

An Aug. 5 Mainstreet Research poll for iPolitics found Bernier to be running neck-and-neck with the Conservatives in his southeastern Quebec riding.

According to the commission’s letter sent to Bernier, the information he provided will now be relayed to an independent pollster before returning to the party for a final comment.

Source: Bernier picks ridings where PPC has best chance to win in bid to join leaders’ debate

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , ,

Fletcher: ‘Diversity’ won’t tell you if a politician is competent

2019/08/16 Leave a comment

Former Harper government and current PPC candidate Fletcher has some valid points regarding life experience diversity and that standard measures of diversity (women, Indigenous, Persons with disabilities, visible minorities) are incomplete and imperfect measures.

Less convinced by his arguments that the standard measures have been at the expense of competency:

What does a picture of a group of people tell us?

Often, in the media and in the general public, a photo is used to demonstrate diversity. People may look at the colour of the skin, hair colour, eye colour, age, gender, size of the people in the picture and assume that the group is diverse and therefore qualified.

In elections, political parties use the appearance of diversity to suggest competency. This diversity “picture” seems to be strongest on the left of the political spectrum in Canada, but it certainly has infiltrated all parties. However, judging competency based on appearance is really quite ridiculous. The diversity “picture” championed by the left assumes a monolithic view of visible minorities.

The electorate should not vote based on appearance of diversity, but on the diversity of the competency of the candidate. We should look to the diversity of skill sets when voting.

Skill sets cannot be determined by gender, skin colour or any of the other stereotypical characteristics that too many people associate with diversity. The assumptions people make about other people they do not know are usually wrong. A photo tells us nothing about an individual’s ability to represent any of us.

Diversity needs to include people who have education, experience and knowledge that best allow for good public policy development and implementation. It can also include life experience.

There are not enough engineers, accountants, trades people, medical professionals and numerous other skill sets in any party. Parliament is weaker as a result. In fact, there are probably too many lawyers and liberal arts graduates taking up space.

At present, the diversity test seems to be a binary choice between male/female ratios or visible minorities. But visible minorities and gender are not homogeneous in their views. Just because someone is purple doesn’t mean they represent all the purple people.

When I first entered politics, it was assumed that I was an NDP supporter and sometimes a Liberal. This assumption arose because I happen to be a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down.

It is true that for a lot of good reasons many of the activists in the disabled community are left-of-centre. It was striking how common this assumption was made when I first started door-knocking for the federal election in 2004.

People also assume that because someone is in a wheelchair, it affects the hearing and cognitive functions of that individual. People sometimes raise their voice when explaining something.

Another misconception is on the cognitive side. I recall a radio interview on the main station in Winnipeg, CJOB, when the announcer asked me on live radio, “Why would anyone vote for you over the star Liberal candidate, especially given your condition?” My reply was, “I believe the constituents would rather have an MP that was paralyzed from the neck down than the neck up.” I wasn’t applying to be the quarterback of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers; I was applying for a position that I was qualified to perform. Half a dozen stereotypes were blown out of the water in that radio interview.

I was recently in a “higher learning” program for executives for corporations. In the program, we were shown a photo of an example of what the program called “a model of a corporate board.” The class was asked to comment, and most of the class responded robotically and positively towards the photo. Not me.

The photo provides no information; it simply allows people to impose their own biases and stereotypes onto the images without merit.

The foremost criteria must be competency, always. Competency may include diversity, but diversity does not guarantee competency.

A recent example in Manitoba is when the largest Crown corporation in the province, Manitoba Hydro, saw an entire board resign en masse. They did this on principle, due to government interference. The replacement board of political appointees certainly appeared to be photographically politically correct. But in an unusual demonstration of self-awareness, these political appointees demanded the government add members, because the board as appointed did not have the skill sets to fulfil its responsibilities.

The government was caught out by its own appointees in its misguided attempt to be politically correct.

In 2011, a federal NDP candidate was elected and became famous because she hadn’t actually done much campaigning. She spent a part of the election in Las Vegas, worked as a waitress at a bar and was a single mother. This MP was mocked from all sides.

It was my impression, which is shared by many others, that she is one of the most effective and talented MPs for the NDP, or any party, for that matter. The diversity she brought was in her different life experience and work ethic.

Recently, a Liberal MP was whining about the MP workload. Good grief.

I worked underground in the mining industry. That was hard work: dangerous, long hours and no breaks. Perhaps, a few hard-rock miners should go to Parliament to demonstrate work ethic.

The political establishment in Canada is collectively responsible for reinforcing stereotypes for political gain – gaming Canadians to put appearance ahead of the competency of the candidates. The political party space-takers are denying many more qualified people the opportunity to run for Parliament.

The foremost criteria must be competency, always. Competency may include diversity, but diversity does not guarantee competency.

Hopefully, in this election Canadian people will vote for the person rather than the party. In exchange, whoever becomes an MP must represent the people, not the party. Can you imagine?

Source: Fletcher: ‘Diversity’ won’t tell you if a politician is competent

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,