Obama's Budget Plan Shows He and Harper Really are Ideological Twins

Because a "pronounced move to redistribute wealth" is a Conservative idea right? Darryl Wolk - one of the few Conservatives that actually supported Obama before he was elected President - has tried to argue that Harper and Obama are so alike and that Canadians will see this and give Harper a majority as a result. Well I think if Canadians actually looked at the actions of these two governments they just might come to a different conclusion. Let's take a look at what Obama's $3.55 trillion Budget Plan proposes:
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"Mr. Obama's proposal signals a radical change of course by redirecting enormous streams of deficit spending toward programs like health care, education and energy, and paying for some of it through taxes on the rich, pollution surcharges, and cuts in such inviolable programs as farm subsidies.... The Obama administration will attempt to close the large fiscal gap even while starting a major health-care initiative meant to substantially extend coverage; to do so, it foresees increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans and using revenues from a new program: selling carbon credits (read: taxing carbon) to manufacturers as part of a cap-and-trade plan meant to slow climate change....The combined effect of the two revenue-raising proposals, on top of Mr. Obama's existing plan to roll back the Bush-era income tax reductions on households with income exceeding $250,000 a year, would be a pronounced move to redistribute wealth by reimposing a larger share of the tax burden on corporations and the most affluent taxpayers. "
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Sounds just like what Harper ran on in the last election doesn't it? Carbon taxes (coupled with cutting taxes for the low and middle income earners as the Green Shift did), raising taxes on the rich and corporations, redistribution of wealth from rich to poor, true blue Conservative policies.

Oh wait those are the sorts of policies Harper said would destroy the economy!

To be honest I think some of Obama's proposed policies go even a bit too far for my tastes, I don't support increasing corporate tax rates for instance, but I'm interested to see how the Blogging Tories portray this budget as in sync with the budget they put forth here in Canada.

I think they'll have a pretty tough time.

On the environment Canadians saw a budget here in Canada that completely ignored the issue, whereas in the U.S. it's seen as one of the central issues to address.

On human rights Canadians see a government still defending the "process" at Guantanamo Bay, whereas in the U.S. the government is shutting it down and banning torture.

On poverty Canadians see a government here that can't even bring itself to mention the word, whereas in the U.S. the government is taking major efforts to help the most vulnerable.

On post-secondary education Canadians see a government that treats it as an after thought (it received ZERO mention in their last election platform), whereas Obama is placing making his country a world leader on this issue a top priority of his first term.

On partisan co-operation, Stephen Harper can’t help but constantly pick fights wtih the opposition, while across the border Obama reaches out to his rivals for consensus.

On transparency and accountability Canadians see a government that becomes more and more secretive versus one in the U.S. that is opening more windows on how government is operating by the day.

And I could go on. So Conservatives can try to latch themselves to Obama all they can, but their actions (or lack of actions) speak far louder than their words and I don't think Canadians will be fooled.

If Conservatives like Darryl wish we were actually taking the kinds of bold of approaches in Canada as Obama is, I'd strongly encourage them to join them to join the Liberal Party to help make that happen :).

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(h/t CanPolitico for the NY Times link)
For more info on Obama's Budget Plan for the 2010 Fiscal Year see here and here.

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The Daunting Prospects of a Liberal Majority Under First Past the Post: Why Liberals Should Prefer a Preferential Balloting System

Last post in this little mini-series (which is also the most comprehensive): So let's say in the next election (or the one after that after some time in govt) the Liberals get the following results:
Ontario: We equal Dalton McGuinty's seat count of 71 out of 106 (+33)
Quebec: We pick up 20 seats in Quebec and win 34 of 75. For context, Jean Chretien's high water mark was 36 seats with 44.2% of the vote (21.5% more than our 2008 numbers) and with the Alliance, PCs and NDP scoring a combined 13% of the vote at the same time (Conservatives, Greens, and NDP had 37.3% combined in 2008)
Newfoundland: We keep our seat count of 6 of 7 seats (NC)
PEI: We win back the 4th seat for 4 of 4 (+1)
Nova Scotia: Win 7 of 11 seats (+2)
New Brunswick: Win 7 of 10 seats (+4)
Manitoba: Win 5 of 14 seats (+4)
Saskatchewan: Win 3 of 14 seats (+2)
Alberta: Win 2 of 28 seats (+2)
BC: Win 12 of 36 seats (+7)
NWT: Win back the seat (+1)
Nunavut: Win back the seat (+1)
Yukon: Hold the seat (NC)
TOTAL: 154 out of 308

That's STILL shy of a majority (the other parties would ensure we would get speaker so our real number would be 153).

I don't worry at all about our ability to win a minority government in the next election, but I don't think many would disagree that the above would be an absolute ideal scenario in each province for quite some time and if we are really honest I would say those Quebec numbers will be extremely tough to obtain now that the NDP, Greens and Conservatives (Alliance/PCs in those days) don't score a combined 13% in Quebec like in 2000. In Ontario the McGuinty results were with 42.2% Lib, 31.6% Con, 16.7% NDP, and 8% Greens which compares with 39.2% Con, 33.8% Lib, 18.2% NDP, and 8% Greens in Ontario in the last election so that would require a pretty big turnaround (which I don't at all rule out) just to match that seat count but I would say McGuinty's result is probably the best we can hope for in the province for the foreseeable future. As well, the number of seats out West where the Conservatives won with over 50% of the vote is also huge and the NDP poll better than us in may parts of the West so the possibility of doing better in the Western provinces than those totals is very unlikely for quite awhile (though I'd LOVE to be proven wrong). In fact the province by province results above are probably out of reach for many more elections and yet they are still not quite at majority levels.

We won majorities with the help a divided right in Ontario that allowed to take almost every seat there. That reality no longer exists. In fact if you look at the 1993, 1997, and 2000 election results and knocked our Ontario seats down to the McGuinty count of 71 in those elections and left everything else the same, we would have had a bare majority in 1993 (150/295 seats) and minorities in the other two elections (1997: 125/301 seats and 2000: 143/301 seats).

At a minimum just to get 154 seats now would almost certainly require higher national popular vote totals than we ever received under Chretien in 1993 (41.2%), 1997 (38.5%), and 2000 (40.9%) since those majorities were obtained with a divided right, the NDP never scoring above 12% and the Greens being a complete non-factor (and even under those conditions in 1997 we only won 51.5% of the seats).

So given this reality, if we as Liberals believe that a Liberal majority is the best form of government for this country isn't it time we admit that an electoral system that benefits the Bloc Quebecois more than any other party (note how even in 2000 we beat them by 4% in the popular vote and they still won more seats in Quebec than us) and gives the Conservatives drastically more representation out West than they deserve (based on the popular vote) is no longer in our partisan interests (not to mention the national interest)?

Isn't it time we had a SERIOUS discussion about supporting electoral reform?

I wrote my thoughts making the case for electoral reform back in October (though only posted yesterday), but that was more from why this was the right thing to do from a fairness/good governance perspective and the last post was about why it is right thing from a national unity perspective. Here is why it's the right thing for Liberals to support from a partisan perspective.

The Liberals Would Win More Seats Under Preferential Balloting than First Past the Post and Conservatives Would Become the Permanent Opposition

Just as an example under IRV (STV is obviously more complicated to do the math to lay out), ANY riding (in STV it would be a designated region) where the winning party won with say less than 45% of the vote and we finished second would become easily in play for us. Strict partisans could still just cast their first choice for their party of choice and not make any other rankings while others could at least give their 2nd or 3rd choice a better chance of winning - so if you are a progressive NDP supporter you would rank Liberals 2nd (or perhaps 3rd to the Greens) and help them beat the Conservative (if you wouldn't rank Liberals ahead of Cons what were you doing supporting the coalition then?).

This way of electing MPs would work towards ensuring that every Liberal government had greater representation from rural areas, Francophone Quebec and the West than we've ever had in a Liberal government in over 40 years.

The alternative is hard feelings in the West each time a Liberal government comes to power because the Western representation in government gets cut by more than 1/2 and Conservatives continuing to win ridings with less than 40% of the vote (e.g., as David Graham noted, in Guelph Conservative Gloria Kovach came within a few percent of winning and she would have been the last choice of Liberal, NDP and Greens voters so she'd have no chance under IRV).

To be honest a Liberal majority would still be difficult under a new system and sometimes we may fare worse than under FPTP (though I think it would be rare) but if you believe that the current system makes it easier for the Liberals to obtain a majority than one based on preferential balloting I would say that belief is very difficult to justify. FPTP may have served us well from a partisan perspective when the right was divided and our opponents on the left could never gather more than a combined 10% but those glory days are well behind us now.

At least under a new system such as IRV or STV, while neither is truly proportional representation, the popular vote would take on more significance and coalitions would be more acceptable in order to provide greater stability when any one party failed to achieve a majority and the coalition would always be led by Liberals.

Conservatives would spend decades out of office unless they completely dropped all their right wing ideas (there is after all a progressive majority in this country who would never rank the current Conservatives as their 2nd choice).

We Elect Our Party Leaders (and Potential PM's) This Way, Why Not Our MPs?

The NDP and Conservatives may oppose IRV or STV for partisan reasons (the Liberals are the second choice of more voters than their parties' are), but if I'm not mistaken both of those parties elected their leader by IRV so if they are ok with electing their party leader (and in the Conservative case, the potential PM) that way, why not our MPs?

The same question could be asked of Liberals who support one-member one vote for our leadership selection since surely an IRV vote by all the membership (hopefully at least weighted by riding though) will be what will be proposed for the constitutional amendment on the convention floor.

What About Failed Provincial Referendums?

As well, using failed provincial referendums as a reason for not having a national debate fails to take into account that the reasons for electoral reform nationally are FAR different than those provincially. In fact the case is much less convincing provincially. For instance, in Ontario we don't have problems of Ontario unity (at least nowhere near the national scale), we don't have perpetual unstable minority governments, and we don't have a system that overly benefits a separatist party.

The Status Quo Doesn't Leave Partisan Liberals Great Options

If we don't hold a national referendum on changing the current electoral system (and if the referendum fails so be it) then I would say the only options left are:
A) Seriously considering another Liberal-led formal coalition down the line (though not necessarily right after the next election) as the only way to actually have a stable governing majority under First Past the Post that lasts more than 2 years
B) Simply just getting used to unstable minorities as far as the eye can see: having national elections every 1.5-2 years and always being on election alert.

Those who opposed the coalition probably don't like A, but B isn't exactly too appetizing in my view. So let's look for another way.

I see this as one clear issue where the interests of the country and our party are best served with another system where individuals are allowed to rank their preferences (e.g., IRV or STV) so that their vote counts no matter where they live. I don't like it that my party is resented in several corners of the country and I think the best way to remedy that is, as Michael Ignatieff has said, to gain more representation from those communities in government.

Any preferential electoral system would accomplish that much better than First Past the Post.

Canada deserves a truly nationally representative government and electoral reform is the best way to make it happen.

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Final Notes: Yes I'm sounding like a broken record, but this should be my last post on this for some time. Since only a small number of Liberal bloggers discuss this issue I just thought I would do a little blog bursting of my own. And if you wonder why I don't take a clear stand for IRV over STV it's because I think either are a major improvement over FPTP and I believe the ultimate system on the ballot should be decided by broad consultations so I'm not going to wed myself to one approach over another at this point in time.

People first have to be convinced of the need to replace our current system before we move towards a consideration of the alternatives. They may reject the alternatives but I believe our current system is the source of enough problems it warrants an extensive debate on whether we want to keep the one we have.

I would hope no one argue that the people of this country should have the final say on the matter.

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Electoral Reform Is a National Unity Issue

The last post was written back in October - now for a post that better reflects my current thinking: Here's some unfortunate stats on Liberal results out West and in Quebec from the last 3 elections. Notice how not once in any of these regions has our proportion of seats been as high as our percentage of the popular vote, in many cases not even close. Meanwhile the Bloc and Conservatives get the opposite results.

2004 Election

Party	BC			Alberta			Saskatchewan			Manitoba			Quebec
	% vote	% seats	% Diff	% vote	% seats	% Diff	% vote	% seats	% Diff	% vote	% seats	% Diff	% vote	% seats	% Diff
LIB	28.6	22.2	-6.4	22	7	-15.0	27.2	7.1	-20.1	33.2	21.4	-11.8	33.9	28.0	-5.9
CON	36.3	61.1	+24.8	61.7	92.9	+31.2	41.8	92.9	+51.1	39.1	50.0	+10.9	8.8	0	-8.8
NDP	26.6	13.9	-12.7	9.5	0	-9.5	23.4	0	-23.4	28.6	23.5	-5.1	4.6	0	-4.6
BQ	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	48.9	72.0	+23.1

2006 Election

Party	BC			Alberta			Saskatchewan			Manitoba			Quebec
	% vote	% seats	% Diff	% vote	% seats	% Diff	% vote	% seats	% Diff	% vote	% seats	% Diff	% vote	% seats	% Diff
LIB	27.6	25.0	-2.6	15.3	0	-15.3	22.4	14.3	-8.1	26.0	21.4	-4.6	20.8	17.3	-3.5
CON	37.3	47.2	+9.9	65.0	100	+35.0	49.0	85.7	+36.7	42.8	57.1	+14.3	24.6	13.3	-11.3
NDP	28.5	27.8	-0.7	11.7	0	-11.7	24.1	0	-24.1	25.4	21.4	-4.0	7.5	0	-7.5
BQ	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	42.1	68.0	+25.9

2008 Election

Party	BC			Alberta			Saskatchewan			Manitoba			Quebec
	% vote	% seats	% Diff	% vote	% seats	% Diff	% vote	% seats	% Diff	% vote	% seats	% Diff	% vote	% seats	% Diff
LIB	19.3	13.9	-5.4	11.4	0	-11.4	14.9	7.1	-7.8	19.1	7.1	-12.0	23.7	18.7	-5.0
CON	44.4	61.1	+16.7	64.6	96.4	+31.8	53.7	92.9	+39.2	64.3	48.8	+15.5	21.7	13.3	-8.4
NDP	26.1	25.0	-1.1	12.7	3.6	-9.1	25.6	0	-25.6	24.0	21.4	-2.6	12.1	1.3	-10.8
BQ	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	---	38.1	65.3	+27.2

The argument that electoral reform would promote national unity is even stronger now than it was before the last election: If we had a system that more closely resembled the popular vote, the last election would have seen the Liberals, Greens and NDP have the majority of seats in House with solid representation from each province, the Liberals would have had more seats than they do now and the Bloc and Conservatives considerably less. The response to a coalition in a House of Commons that actually reflected more closely the popular vote would have been markedly different: no Bloc and much stronger Western representation. I think it’s pretty clear that it was the regional divides and presence of the Bloc that made the largest contributions to the Liberal-NDP coalition’s unpopularity. That’s why Paul Wells, once a major skeptic now has now recently come on board with the idea of electoral reform at the national level and I’m sure he’s not alone (The Globe and Mail , who opposed MMP in Ontario, is another such example). But we won’t see a referendum on electoral reform unless the Liberals support the idea and I think it’s now past time they do.

Michael Ignatieff makes many decisions with respect to how it will affect national unity and is particularly sensitive to the issue of Western alienation, so I hope he does no less when thinking about electoral reform. It should be clear to everyone that our current electoral system greatly exacerbates regional and urban/rural divides in this country.

I fully realize that our MPs are elected to represent their riding, not their province, and that obviously Liberals need to do much more (regardless of what system we have) to truly earn higher popular vote numbers out West and in Francophone Quebec, but our electoral system makes the regional representation issue much worse (particularly when so many Conservatives are elected solely because of a divided left that allows them to run up the middle) and it's a vicious circle - the system encourages us to write off more than 100 seats as unwinnable before each election - that in my view hurts national unity.

Whether Liberals like it or not, if we win the next election the West and rural areas will have far less representation in government than they do now and will likely be unhappy about that and even if we beat the Bloc in the popular vote in Quebec (which is a daunting task in itself) they could still easily have more seats than us there (we beat them by almost 5% in Quebec in 2000 and yet they still won 2 more seats than us and that was when all the other federalist parties scored a paltry 13% combined in Quebec).

But it doesn’t have stay that way at all.

If we are willing to hold a referendum on changing our system and it’s successful we would better ensure that EVERY government, no matter the stripe has significant representation from all regions and communities.

For those who dismiss the possibility of a successful referendum based on the results of MMP in Ontario you should realize that the justifications for electoral reform are FAR different than those in favour of it provincially - see the last post where 3 of the 4 reasons given only apply to the national context - and MMP is surely the least likely option to be put on a national ballot as it is.

As an added benefit, the promise of holding a referendum on electoral reform (following public consultations on the system to be put on the ballot) provides an excellent path to persuading NDP and Green leaning voters to support electing a Liberal government in the next election (remember where the bulk of our votes came from the last time we went from opposition to government) as we know a united right Conservative Party likes the current system fine the way it is and would oppose a referendum every step of the way. Interestingly, before Stephen Harper helped "unite the right" he supported proportional representation (see that last line of the article), now he's got no problems with our current system, I wonder why? Could it be that our current electoral system is the only reason his party holds together?

A Liberal government is the ONLY way we would ever change the system, and I hope that as Prime Minister Michael Ignatieff would allow people to have a say on this issue so we may choose between a system that would bring Canadians closer together and the current one that drives us further apart.

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