Debating in the Dark Ages

by Phil DeMont

David Cameron and the end of ideology

by Phil DeMont

As David Cameron settles in as the United Kingdom’s new Prime Minster, he heads up a British parliament in which no single party has a majority of seats and the administration stays in office basically at the behest of the opposition.

Such tenuous governorship is non-existent in a republic and reasonably rare under the parliamentary form of government. But, there is a decided division among voters as to whether forcing an administration to listen somewhat to opposition politicians is a good or bad turn of events.

Supporters argue democratic dictatorships are stymied by forced appeals to other parties while opponents say such consultations doom decisive policymaking.

Canada has endured minority parliaments since 2004 and has groups arguing both sides of the minority coin.

And, now, commentators wonder whether Britain has caught Canada’s disease and is sliding into a prolonged period in which a majority will become an endangered species.

The immediate reason for the U. K.’s electoral indecision is simple enough – a government of which many people had grown weary, a main opposition which offers some attractive assets and a third party which has gained enough attention to draw off dissent voters.

In England, the reappearance of the Liberal Democratic Party has siphoned off sufficient support from the Conservatives to keep the Tories from forming a majority and from Labour to prevent that party from saying in power.

But commentators are wary of a British political ship unable to steer a straight policy course.

The way out of the stalemate, analysts opine, is for one of the three leaders – Cameron, a new Labour leader or the LP’s Nick Clegg – to develop enough charisma to win over fickle voters and gain a majority.

That puts the current dilemma of the United Kingdom – and by implication Canada – on the level of a returning guest on ‘American Idol’.

Essentially, if the politician can smile nicely in the next round, he will get the votes of Simon and the other judges and win the competition.

Now, the charisma argument of minority politics might be satisfying to people who ascribe voting troubles to incompetent politicians who cannot figure out proper policies and cannot communicate their ideas in an engaging fashion.

While possibly true, the argument is too superficial to explain the current parliamentary impasse.

In past decades majority governments were often the result of a political system in which parties had obvious and important differences.

In 1983, for example, Labour’s Michael Foote, with his party’s new socialist manifesto, offered a stark alternative to Margaret Thatcher’s tax cuts and assertive foreign policy. The result was an overwhelming victory for the ‘Iron Lady’.

In 1988, Canadian Conservative Brian Mulroney presented voters with a pro-free trade, U.S.-friendly platform by contrast to Liberal John Turner, with his border-erasing campaign ads in opposition to a trade agreement with the United States.

In that vote, Mulroney won the last majority for the Progressive Conservative Party in its history.

In effect, past decades saw political parties staking out different ends of the ideological spectrum, whether in levels of opposition to the Soviet Union or interest in cutting taxes.

Indeed, the middle-to-later part of the 20th Century was an era in which voters could assess alternatives because parties held varied positions on key issues.

Since that time, however, the Berlin Wall signalled the end to the communist bloc and the appearance of Democrats in the United States and Liberals in Canada willing to cut spending to balance budgets meant that left and right parties now were crowding into the centre of the political spectrum.

Even with 2008-09 recession, governments that once prided themselves on their fiscal rectitude ran record deficits in a bid to re-float sagging economies.

And, in the realm of foreign policy, many governments railed against state-sponsored terrorism and few administrations were interested in using other governments as regional proxies for Great Power struggles as was the case during the Cold War.

In the end, that pushing into the middle was the reason for the appearance of minority governments in some parliamentary democracies.

Parties cannot really present stark differences to each other because those differentiating points do not exist.

On the national finances, how to run the health care system and how to run foreign policy, many parties in many countries operate from a general consensus with radical alternatives receiving little credibility among voters.

Thus, politicians battle each other over small policy differences, usually insufficient to shake voters loose from other party, or how well they can communicate their brand of the same policy.

As a result, political campaigns do, in fact, come down to whether one leader’s smile can convince a voter that the person is trust-worthy or believable.

That means, until a politician emerges as a better storyteller than his brethren or a party finds a different – but credible – policy answer to the day’s burning questions, minority governments will remain a fixture in the landscape of parliamentary democracies for years to come.

Green Oil

By Satya Das

Being an energy superpower sit uneasily with Canadians: Alberta’s oil sands, the largest hydrocarbon deposit in the world, would be a blessing to many nations. Yet too many of our citizens see them as a burden.

We cringed when a global environmental awareness campaign, initiated by such luminaries as former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, framed and branded oil sands production as “dirty oil.” A 2008 report predicting the demise of millions of migratory birds as a result of oil sands development gathered worldwide attention and coverage.

We do not think to assert that “dirty oil” could be turned into clean oil, with the application of strong political leadership, a stringent regulatory framework, advances in technology, and an insistence on best-practices in energy production.

Now, with the Obama administration championing a greener energy future, Albertans – the owners of the oil sands – and Canadians must learn to lead, for one compelling reason: geology has thrust leadership upon us, and this is a responsibility we cannot evade.

Beyond an accident of geology, we have a strong moral obligation to lead the responsible development and stewardship of the incredible wealth the oil sands represent. From my perspective, the option of abandoning the oil sands, leaving them shut in, would be an act of profound negligence.

There are some strong Albertan and Canadian voices calling for the easy appeasement of walking away from “dirty oil.” Such abdication would be comprehensively wrong. We can use the enormous wealth the oil sands can confer to build the common good. We can use it to pay for the transition to alternative energy, built on a platform of much greener hydrocarbon production.

It is not at all paradoxical to think that developing this high-carbon-emission resource in a more sustainable way will, in fact, accelerate the development of the low carbon economy: by giving us the means to pay for it, by investing in both the research and development and the implementation of this greener future. Nor is my thinking at odds with my own ecological values.

To the core of my being, I believe that the arrogance and hubris of our species leads us to disrespect and damage the bounty of nature. Since the beginning of the industrial age, we have despoiled our natural heritage with scant regard for consequences. We have forgotten the teaching of every great faith: one of humility in the face of nature, and the responsibility of stewardship. We are mere keepers and stewards of what we have inherited, and we must nurture the gifts of the natural world for future generations.

On the other hand, I enjoy the advanced lifestyle enabled by a massively prosperous market economy. And I know it is supported by the consumption of fossil fuels, which are the prime source of greenhouse gases. Is there a magic-bullet solution that will let me keep my lifestyle without despoiling the planet?

That’s the real question we need to explore. It’s especially pertinent for Albertans because we are the owners – and stewards – of the oil sands, the world’s largest hydrocarbon deposit. Unless we develop this resource as responsibly and sustainably as possible, we will continue to feed and even accelerate greenhouse gas production. I am enough of a realist to know that “not developing it” is in the realm of magical thinking. Consider: this is a $15 trillion asset, in a world that remains addicted to hydrocarbons. If we Canadians try to say “no development” are we really in any kind of position to stop those who want our oil? I suppose we can wave sovereignty and international law in the face of tanks – and tankers – as they roll in. Seriously, though, I come back to our obligation of stewardship. As owners we need to exercise our rights of ownership as responsibly as we can: because that’s the Canadian way.

After thinking through these issues for the last five years, I’ve put my thoughts together in a new book. It’s called Green Oil: Clean Energy for the 21st Century? and explores what it will take to turn the question mark into a statement. Green Oil is meant more to be a book of questions than definitive answers.

As Copenhagen draws closer, I am aiming to “set the table” for a thoughtful and comprehensive conversation on using the wealth generated by the responsible development of the oil sands to pay for and build a “green future” that will evolve away from fossil fuels.

Please join the conversation over the coming days, weeks and months at www.greenoilbook.com

Satya Das offers strategic advice and counsel to leadership in the public and private sectors. satya@cambridgestrategies.com

Manufacturing Intelligence

by Matt Stambaugh

It’s here!  The Utopian ideal of free education for all is closer than ever thanks to the Interweb.  While the ‘open classroom’ concept has been evolving for several years, many prestigious universities and colleges are now offering high quality audio and even video recordings online of their classes.  I’ve been taking an online physics course (I know, N-E-R-D…) from MIT for the past several weeks and the quality is exceptional.  Some great places examples include;

• MIT Opencourseware
• UC Berkley Online
• iTunesU (Includes courses from Stanford, Oxford, and many more.  To access open iTunes, goto the iTunes Store, and then select iTunesU)

This is a spectacular idea.  Education is a powerful tool and I cannot applaud the participating institutions enough for providing this content.  I highly doubt that by posting topical and freshmen courses online they will lower their enrollments, while providing information and content that other schools and students from around the world can use to enrich the quality of their courses and educations.  What’s interesting is no Canadian post-secondary institutions currently offer this service (at least not that I could find), and only two of them – Athabasca and Capilano College – are part of the OpenCourseware Consortium.

Since most schools in Canada are largely funded with public dollars, there is a strong case to be made that schools should provide these courses online for public consumption.  This would allow Canadians to appreciate the high quality of our post-secondary system and perhaps help to increase our willingness to fund our universities and colleges so that we may continue to compete globally in the ‘knowledge economy’.  Or, if our schools stink, maybe forcing them to post some of their classes online will light the fire they need to increase the quality of their education.  In any case seems like a low cost/high return program.  Let’s get on it…

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Matt Stambaugh is an Information Security Consultant who dabbles in media, primarily as a weekly national technology columnist with CBC Radio. This post is cross-posted to www.mattstambaugh.com.

Let’s Focus our Aid

by Matt Stambaugh

Successful foreign aid programs are notoriously difficult to execute, and in the past appear to be as much of a PR tool for governments as an actual attempt to provide assistance to those in need around the globe.  This is not always due to nefarious reasons on the part of our leaders, but it appears that the global foreign aid system is rather complicated and difficult to manage to say the least.

As such, in order to ensure public dollars are most effectively deployed, perhaps we as a country should focus our efforts on being the best at one or two specific niches of aid, instead of responding in a haphazard way to global issues, attempting to spread our dollars a mile-wide but only an inch deep. Our government is starting down this path by further focusing the number of countries that receive aid, but there still doesn’t seem to be a specific focus for our primary aid agency, CIDA.

To start, why don’t we pick a specific global need and strive to become the best at responding to this issue. These goals shoud be measurable and results-based.  For example we could become the most effective country in the world at providing potable drinking water to developing nations or areas affected by a natural or man-made disaster. Recent developments in nano-technology such as the Lifesaver bottle or Lifestraw allow for measurable results in an area that requires fresh water (the Lifesaver bottle is currently marketed to militaries and adventure seekers so a special ‘humanitarian’ cost structure would have to be negotiated).  The next time there is a hurricane Katrina Canada would have a repeatable process to initiate immediately that would allow for potable water to arrive in the stricken area.

Or perhaps Canada could be the world leader in providing and developing micro-electrical stations to communities, a technology that would potentially provide experience and innovations at home that could then be marketed world-wide. Basic education, micro-credit, and food security are all other areas that we could focus on developing niche expertise in.

While there are a variety of options to choose from, it’s time for our national aid strategy to focus on excellence in a specific solution, not just on what countries will receive aid. We have limited resources to spend on aid, let’s make sure that we are very, very effective when it comes time to help those in need around the world.

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Matt Stambaugh is an Information Security Consultant who dabbles in media, primarily as a weekly national technology columnist with CBC Radio. This post is cross-posted to www.mattstambaugh.com.

Dead Aid: Dead On or Dead Wrong?

John W. McArthur — CEO of Millennium Promise, an international non-profit organization that supports the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals to halve extreme poverty by 2015 — argues in a blog post that “when holding a hammer in your hand, every problem can look like a nail. Dambisa Moyo’s book Dead Aid gives fresh meaning to this old adage, applying the perspective of a top-tier investment banker to the plight of the poorest people in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

What’s your take on Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid? Why not register now to see what she has to say for yourself?

Buy-buy Nortel, Bye-bye Canadian R&D spending

The international competition for R&D is extreme (source).

• China’s R&D spending has grown by 22 per cent a year since 1996.
• Australia spends 2 per cent of GDP on research and development, having grown 8 per cent a year since 1996. Not satisfied with this, government recently released its innovation policy agenda to 2020.
• Austria, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United States spend more than 2.5 per cent.
• Finland, Japan, South Korea, and Sweden spend more than 3 per cent.
• Israel spends more than 4 per cent.

Canadian industry research spending in 2007 was only 1.03 per cent of the country’s GDP, putting Canada in 12th place among the industrialized nations. According to Statistics Canada, the private sector spent $16.3 billion on R&D in 2008, up slightly from $16.1 billion in 2007 (source). The majority of the private sector investment in R&D is actually done by a small handful of companies: in 2007 the top two private R&D investors spent more on R&D than the next eight investors combined (source). Those top two were Nortel and BCE.

More troubling, R&D spending by Canadian businesses has been decreasing since 2002 (source).

University of Toronto President David Naylor recently addressed the Economic Club of Canada on May 14, 2009. Naylor is worried that Canada is still falling behind in many innovation metrics. He thinks research-intensive universities need to step up to fill this troubling gap. He also argues that ongoing misunderstandings of the role of government, business, and universities in innovation, which he discussed in his speech.

Now that Nortel is being broken into a million little pieces, what will happen to Canadian R&D spending?

Branding Canada: A Big Step for Identity Building

By Ed Bernacki

Paul Lavoie’s message about ‘brand’ Canada is dead on.

I lived overseas for 13 years and continue to work internationally. I am dumbfounded by the lack of ‘Canada’ internationally.
When speaking at international conferences, I often ask the audience if anyone can name a product from Canada. Few people can—even if they own a Blackberry.

The main response is “maple syrup.” RIM makes little effort to promote its “Canadianness.” In Australia, Lululemon makes no obvious link to Canada, nor does McCain Foods.

Why is there no advantage to showing off a product’s Canadianness?

Italy, Sweden, Norway are being joined by the Aussies and other countries with strong national brands that add to the nation’s bottom line.

Canada is world class in a small number of industries but our collective inability to create branded consumer products for the world is simply bizarre.

We need a new vision and a new confidence and conviction that we Canadians can create products with global appeal and then create the brands and infrastructure to sell to the world.

The idea of a brand for Canada is a big step forward for building our identity around the world.

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Ed Bernacki is an internationally sought after speaker on how to manage ideas. He is the author of several books, from how to be an idea factory to how to design more innovative conferences. He can be found at www.wowgreatidea.com.

Schreiber’s Circus

by Matt Stambaugh

While I am sure to be missing something, why are we still hearing updates on the Mulroney/Schreiber train wreck?

Unless there is a possible outcome whereby taxpayers are able to claw back some of money awarded to Mulroney in the Airbus libel suit this form of entertainment seems better left to the arena of American Idol, where Kris vs. Adam  can keep us gossiping for at least a couple more weeks. I don’t think anyone is going to change their opinion of either individual in this case at this point, and if Mulroney broke some tax laws then let the justice system play out and we can all move on.

Amazing how we focus on his tax bill but almost no one wants to talk about the lasting impact of the failed Meech Lake or Charlottetown Accords that gave us a decade of Quebec separatist resurgence evolving into the recent awkward truce between our two founding nations.  Or the fact that the introduction of the GST may have been one of the most painful, but important modifications of our tax structure in the previous century as consumption taxes have an important role to play in regulating our economy (albeit hopefully when matched by accompanying reductions in income or payroll taxes).

What are your thoughts on the GST, should we be lowering it at all costs, maintaining it where it is, or increasing it once the economy picks up  in an attempt to keep our federal budget in the black for the future?  Is it time for Canada to have a serious look at it’s federal tax structure, especially with the movement to Harmonized Sales Taxes (HST) in more and more provinces?

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Matt Stambaugh is an Information Security Consultant who dabbles in media, primarily as a weekly national technology columnist with CBC Radio. This post is cross-posted to www.mattstambaugh.com.

Searching for the New Jerusalem

by Phil DeMont

When Gene Lang talks about the desire to find a new paradigm, he essentially is looking for a new way to view the world. In this case, the economic world.

The old model, based upon freer and freer markets, certainly does appear to have broken down. As a result, public policy practioners are trying to find a new set of ideas to replace the governing economic tenants.

Thus, much like politicians of the past century, these analysts are now looking for a new path of enlightenment – a “new Jerusalem” to use a term made famous by former NDP leader Tommy Douglas.

That voters and political types are seeking a different way should not come as a surprise.

After all, Canada, Europe, the United States and most industrialized countries are stuck in a long-standing – and generally perplexing – recession.

Seemingly endless drop
Started by consumers who were exhausted after prodigiously spending for the previous eights years or so, a gentle economic slowing became a full-fledged monetary smack-down as the global credit crunch turned mortgage and corporate lending into a very risky business.

As a result, executives at formerly-solid financial institutions found core assets worthless and flew off as fast as their private jets would take them to various national, provincial and state capitals. They were seeking taxpayer-funded bailouts lest their firms too become economic casualties of the worst slowdown since the Great Depression.

For their part, politicians, besieged by voters concerned about possible unemployment and shell-shocked company-types relaying ever-gloomy news, drifted between a ‘shoulder-shrugging’ re-emphasis on market forces to bootstrap a recovery and pushing as much cash at as many different industries as possible.

The later appeared based upon a theory similar to throwing cooked pasta at a wall – some of it is bound to stick.

That leaves analysts flipping through obscure academic journals in the hope – much like the judges on American Idol – that they will uncover some hidden gem of untapped talent.

Too much – not too little – agreement
Unfortunately, the problem is not impending theoretical detective work. Instead, political types find themselves in a world where economists in fact believe they have already done the heavy lifting and are roughly saying the same thing.

But, while that consensus might satisfy the canons of academic debate, it does precious little to assist elected officials who are stuck trying to deal with common concerns in an era of economic uncertainty.

This was not the world that public policy faced thirty years ago.

Back then, the economic debates were the stuff of philosophical kings. Milton Friedman and John Kenneth Galbraith faced off over the true role of government; Paul Samuelson battled Martin Feldstein over how people reacted to taxes. And Robert Lucas yelled at everyone.

The fights were fun to watch and the outcomes important to politicians and academics alike.

The boring consensus
Unfortunately, over the years, economists have narrowed the areas of disagreements. No one argues anymore about whether the money supply matters or whether taxes act as a disincentive for work or whether people will act to frustrate government policy, all crucial debates in the 1970s.

Instead, questions arise over arcane details such as the applicability of withholding taxes for corporations or what goods should be exempted from a general consumption tax.

Such discussions are important but hardly illuminating a path to a new economic nirvana.

The consensus has left politicians essentially to their own devices in dealing with the current economic downturn.

Even in the latest round of stimulus, the goal is not to inject enough cash into the economy to generate sufficient buying and lending activity, an essentially Keynesian idea.

Instead, elected leaders are trying to show enough commitment to an economic recovery to induce financial institutions to lend and companies to borrow, a kind of fiscal boosterism rather than straight-up economic stimulus.

In fact, the economic consensus over the past thirty has killed off the economist as public policy adviser.

After all, as economists mouth the same truisms, political parties, which thrive on exploiting differences, will turn to other advisers in different sectors, such the environment or social areas, to highlight policy debates.

The new consensus has turned economists into painters, able to describe what they see but distinctly unable to change the picture.

And, until someone comes along with a new General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Keynes) or A Monetary History of the United States (Friedman and Schwartz), economists will become increasingly irrelevant, unable to articulate policies to change a society’s current course.

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Philip DeMont, a veteran print and television journalist based in Toronto, is a co-author (with Eugene Lang) of Turning Point: Moving Beyond Neoconservative.

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