Year: 2015

Do truth and values (still) matter in politics?

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This column first appeared in National Newswatch on March 17, 2015



During the debate over the niqab last week, I couldn’t help but think of Karl Rove, the renowned Republican strategist and spiritual mentor of the Harper government. The jury’s still out on what really happened, but I’d love to hear his take on it.
Karl Rove was George W Bush’s senior political advisor and campaign strategist. He may be one of the most influential figures in recent political history. He also had a huge impact on the Harper government.
Rove’s political philosophy can be summed up in three basic points.
First, much to his credit, he recognized the value of Big Data long before most strategists had even heard the term. Rove used the Republicans’ huge database to identity key groups of voters that could be specifically targeted to turn elections one way or another.
Second, he was brilliant at using wedge issues to split these groups off from larger cohorts in ways that advantaged Republicans.
Third, he was indifferent about whether positions held by the Republicans were true or false, right or wrong, as long as they garnered votes. Indeed, Rove had little use for policymakers who agonized over truth, evidence and values. He famously attacked the “reality-based community” for wasting its time trying to be objective.
In Rove’s view, perception is reality. Whoever controls the message gets to frame the issue, which, in turn, defines the public’s view of truth. So in politics, controlling the message is what really matters.
This was a revolutionary idea. Traditionally, political strategy was about striking the right balance between virtue and expediency, that is, between advancing the values a party stood for and making compromises to help it win power. Rove declared that politics was about winning, pure and simple.
This doesn’t mean that the Bush administration held no values or that its leaders disbelieved in truth. Rove and his allies in the White House thought it was their job to set goals that served the public interest. They just didn’t believe the public was up to playing a significant role in this.
They saw the public as an impulsive prisoner of emotion. The politicians’ job was to push the right buttons to get the right result. Rather than a search for solutions, public debate was a means to an end, a step in the policy process that had to be observed.
It was the agenda that really mattered. Implementing that justified using whatever means necessary to win the public debate, including lying to people, suppressing information, or employing wedge issues to divide one group against another.
Rove’s three points provide the philosophical rationale for the Bush administration’s infamous “Straussian doctrine,” according to which the truth was known inside the White House, but could not be shared with the public outside of it. The role of communications was to tell the public whatever story was necessary to get it to support the government’s plan.
If this all sounds familiar, it should. Rove’s fingerprints are all over the Harper PMO, from micro-targeting to the use of wedge issues to play one group off another. The gun registry, the crime agenda and the energy pipelines are all examples.
We can also include talking points, omnibus legislation, time allocation, committee interference, and media control in this bag of tricks. All are quintessential Rovian tactics.
And the abandonment of truth? Here too the Harper government has followed suit, showing a sometimes ruthless willingness to deny, discredit and even suppress evidence that conflicts with its positions. It has done so on crime and climate change, for example, and is now doing so on the new security law, C-51.
But last week may have been a turning point of some kind. The Harper government seemed to be taking this Rovian story-telling to a new level.
Many Canadians—including this writer—have doubts about the niqab and the burka and harbor suspicions about the cultural assumptions behind them.
With the assertion that the niqab is a symbol of an “anti-woman culture,” the prime minister seemed to be playing on this, trying to link fears over terrorism to individuals in our midst.
Having already stoked public fears about jihadis, this may have seemed to the government like the next logical step in its Rovian story on terrorism.
But when the three opposition leaders rose to challenge both him and Canadians to take a step back from our emotions and reflect on the nature of our political rights, a very un-Rovian thing happened.
Many commentators began arguing that Muslim women’s right to wear the niqab was more important than their feelings of suspicion and doubt.
In Rovian politics, this is not supposed to happen. The public isn’t supposed to be reflective and rational, especially when they’re scared.
Of course, these responses came mainly from members of the political class. I don’t know what would have happened if the debate had carried on. Would ordinary people also have risen to the occasion? I couldn’t help wondering what Rove would say.
The clear lesson from last week is that we have two very different views of politics in our country and they appear to be getting ready to square off.
One is optimistic about citizens and expansive about democracy. It is hopeful about people’s willingness to engage and to distinguish between truth and fiction, right and wrong.
The other is skeptical of the mob. It sees leadership as a secret society and communications and marketing as the appropriate surrogate for public debate.
One of these views of Canadians is right and one is wrong. We deserve an answer.

Trudeau on liberty

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This column was first published on the National Newswatch website on March 11, 2015



What is it to be free? In a democracy like ours, there may be no more important question. Justin Trudeau gave a speech in Toronto on Monday night that engages this question with the seriousness it deserves.
Freedom, he tells us, is a core value that will “motivate (political) leaders’ decisions, whatever events may throw at them.” For Trudeau, liberty is the moral compass that guides our leaders and his speech is an impressive effort to spell out his views on it.
Stephen Harper also figures in the speech, cast as the chief architect of a competing view of freedom, one that Trudeau believes is taking hold in Canada today, and which he fears. To bring out the difference between the two versions, first we must spend a bit of time on the history of liberty.
Bear with me.
To be free is to be able to make choices, such as a career, a spouse or where to live. On this much, liberals and conservatives agree, but then they part company.
While conservatives are inclined to see freedom as the absence of restrictions, liberals believe it is more. After all, there may be no law preventing a poor person from becoming a doctor, but poor people are far less likely to become doctors than those born into privilege. So what does it really mean to say they are “free to become doctors”?
According to liberals, if all citizens are to enjoy their freedom, the right economic and social conditions must be in place to support them, such as food, shelter, education and medical care. Without these, freedom is often little more than an abstraction.
So for liberals, freedom is not something you either have or you don’t. It comes in degrees and stages; and it grows, changes and develops over time. To promote the growth of freedom, liberals endorse Equality of Opportunity. This allows governments to tax the wealthy so they can help the less fortunate develop the knowledge, skills and tools they need to exercise and enjoy their freedom.
Conservatives, on the other hand, believe it is wrong for the state to take away one person’s property to enable another. It violates their liberty.
This disagreement over liberty has been a constant tug-of-war between these two sides for almost a century. Yet, curiously, Trudeau says nothing about equality in his speech. Instead, he focuses on the role of community. What should we make of this?
Trudeau’s speech not only has a deep affinity with traditional liberal thinking on equality, it expands and deepens it in a way that makes it even more relevant for our century.
Much as 20th century liberals argued that education or heath care enables freedom, Trudeau believes that in the 21st century liberals must come to terms with a whole new category of enabling conditions: community participation. He explains this through two key ideas: inclusion and collective identity. Let’s start with inclusion.
Suppose a wave of immigrants arrive in a town where their customs, language and dress are different from the residents. Should the locals be expected to make adjustments to their lifestyle to accommodate the immigrants?
Many conservatives would see this as an infringement on their liberty, much like taxes. They would say it is wrong to ask the locals to give up their freedom to accommodate “outsiders.”
Trudeau sees things differently. For him, freedom is not a zero-sum game where a gain by one side is a loss for the other. Inclusiveness gradually expands the range of freedom within the society as a whole—and that is good for everyone.
For example, it challenges Canadians to see immigration as a two-way street where everyone should be open to new experiences and new choices. This, in turn, develops and deepens everyone’s understanding of freedom.
Collective identity, which is the second aspect of community, is like the flipside of inclusion. While inclusion is a way of expanding the boundaries of our experience, collective identity ensures these boundaries don’t just dissolve.
Liberty is meaningful only if the choices we are free to make reflect our sense of who we are and of what is important to us. Membership in a distinct social, cultural, ethnic or linguistic community is a critical part of meeting this identity condition and, as such, a key enabler of freedom that must be recognized and safeguarded.
In future, societies like Canada will become increasingly more diverse, not less. Striking the right balance between the “centripetal” force of collective identity and the “centrifugal” ones of inclusion will be among the most pressing and potentially stressful challenges facing democracies like ours.
For guidance, Trudeau believes Canadians should look to the Charter, which he sees as a key instrument to help us strike this balance. But while the Charter is central to this view of liberty, it is not enough to ensure it, which brings Trudeau to his third and final theme: political leadership.
He tells the story of a Muslim woman who recently appeared in a Quebec court. When the judge asked her to remove her headscarf, she refused on religious grounds. The judge, in turn, refused to hear her case, even though the federal court had confirmed a woman’s right to wear the hijab.
Trudeau was furious. But even more disconcerting, he notes, Harper has promised to appeal a ruling allowing women to cover their faces during the citizenship ceremony and that, on announcing this, went on to described Muslims’ refusal to remove the veil as “offensive.”
The anecdote is meant to bring out the difference between the two kinds of freedom, as well as the role of leadership in promoting them. Trudeau believes Harper sees diversity and difference as a threat to liberty, rather than an enabler of it. In Harper’s view, granting immigrants special freedoms will only diminish those of other Canadians.
Nor does Trudeau think Conservatives trust the courts and the Charter to help strike the right balance. But without the Charter and the courts to discipline politics, Trudeau fears Canadians could become hostage to a view of freedom that is inward-looking, reactionary and xenophobic. Indeed, he thinks this is already happening.
In response, he challenges us to see Canada through a very different lens—as a great experiment that is changing the rules of social organization. We are a “constitutional superpower” that is leading the world in the practice of liberty and we have been widely recognized and praised for it. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether we are really ready to give up on this now.
In the end, Trudeau’s view of liberty is very much in keeping with the liberal tradition he defends. Indeed, it can be traced back to the original triad of democratic values in the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (Community).
As for the Charter, it is much more than a collection of rights and freedoms. It is a tool for aligning these three values within a single system of social organization. This achievement goes beyond the handful of Canadian First Ministers who created the Charter. It is a legacy of 250 years of hard work and often bitter experience from the liberal tradition.
Trudeau is simply trying to bring this learning fully into the 21st century.

If you give First Nations students the tools they need, they will succeed

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The youngest and fastest growing segment of the Canadian population is underperforming academically to a dramatic degree. Nearly 40 per cent of indigenous Canadians do not graduate from high school, and the figure is nearly 60 per cent for First Nations people on reserves, rates that far exceed the Canadian average. What these statistics show is that the majority of First Nations students are not reaching their full potential and the question is why not?
The answer can be found in many areas, from extraordinarily high poverty levels to the underfunding of both healthcare and primary and secondary school education by the federal government. It was in this latter context that some of us enacted the Model School pilot project in September 2009.
Based on the very successful Turnaround Schools program developed by the Ontario government over a decade ago, the Model School project, known as Wiiji Kakendaasodaa: (Let’s All Learn Together) was a partnership between the Martin Aboriginal Education Initiative (MAEI), the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at  the University of Toronto, the leadership of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation and Walpole Island First Nation, students, teachers and parents at the two host schools: Hillside School and Walpole Island Elementary School.
The project taught teachers new teaching methods, raised expectations for students and introduced a mandatory 90 minutes of daily reading and writing instruction. The results, announced in Toronto a few weeks ago were nothing short of outstanding.
Before the program began, 13 per cent of First Nations students at the two participating schools reached the provincial standard on Grade 3 reading tests, and 33 per cent met the provincial standard in writing. In Grade 6, 17% of students met the provincial reading standard and 39% of Grade 6 students met the provincial writing standard.
After implementing new teaching methods in the Model School Project, almost 70 per cent of Grade 3 students achieved the reading provincial standard and more than 90 per cent hit Ontario’s writing provincial standard, which surpassed the provincial average. In Grade 6, 72% of students met both the reading and writing provincial standard.
Also of particular note was the fact that the percentage of students identified as having special needs greatly decreased. During Wiiji Kakendaasodaa, the percentage of students identified for special education services decreased from 45% to 19% in Senior Kindergarten to Grade 3; the percentage decreased from 24% to 4% in Grades 4 to 6.
These results provide irrefutable evidence that First Nations students can and will succeed if given the opportunity. For this reason the project should be replicated in every First Nations community where it is needed across this country.
Teaching literacy is a moral obligation. It is also essential to harnessing the economic potential of Canada for Indigenous children, who represent the youngest and fastest growing segment of our population.
What should be done? The Government of Canada should act. Proper funding will make the difference. The proof is here.
To see the full report: http://www.maei-ieam.ca/pdf/Model-School-Feb%2022.pdf

Blog: Building Ottawa (and Canada) through healthy babies and healthy children

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In the draft budget for 2015 tabled by the City of Ottawa, one seemingly small but critical program is at risk: Healthy Babies Healthy Children. Launched by the province of Ontario and run by the Ottawa Board of Health, it is program on the proverbial chopping block that is worthy of national attention.
The early years – from birth to age six – are critical in a child’s development. Healthy Babies Healthy Children helps to support pre-natal and post-natal care for all citizens in the city. Three avenues of programs and services provide this support.
First, to help parents learn about pregnancy, preterm labour, breastfeeding, and caring for an infant, free online and in person prental classes are offered in English and French in various locations across the City throughout the year.  In addition, public health officials facilitate ‘pregnancy circles’ that are offered in English, French, and Chinese, for expectant parents who may need extra support.
Second, after a baby is born in Ottawa, a public health nurse calls to check in on the health of the newborn. Asking fundamental questions, these simple phone calls connect parents to the outside world at a time of vulnerability and uncertainty. It lets families know that they are not alone and that there is someone out there that they can call if need be.
Third, drop-in centres are open on a rotating basis every day of the week all across the city. Facilitated by public health nurses, nutritionists and lactation consultants, the centres provide a safe and warm environment for parents with young infants to visit. Here, babies are weighed, ‘tummy-times’ are had, and communities are built. Moms having problems with breastfeeding can learn new tricks to make it easier for them, parents worried about the development of their babies can have questions answered, nurses are given face-to-face opportunities to explain the benefits of vaccines (all the more important given the recent measles outbreak), and everyone gets to share their stories about the joys and challenges they are facing with young infants at home.
Individual benefits for babies from such programs are clear. While nothing really prepares you for bringing a baby home, prental classes nevertheless give parents good information to increase infant well-being. Regular weekly weigh-ins that is charted provides early warning signs if something is wrong. Or, weekly weigh-ins may calm nervous young parents keeping them out of doctors’ offices. Even as early as three months, contact with other babies furthers cognitive and emotional development. Such individual benefits for the babies should be enough to convince any government to keep these programs running.
Benefits, however, are not restricted to the individual babies. Collective benefits for families and the community writ large are invaluable.
Post-partum depression, for example, is a major illness that can affect moms, dads, and parents who adopt [1]. Caring for an infant is often extremely isolating, amplifying the symptoms of post-partum depression. Having a safe space to visit and regularly meet with other people can help parents see if they are experiencing the symptoms of post-partum depression and seek the help that they need.
Ottawa, like many cities across Canada, is also filled with families that have just moved who don’t have access to an extended network of aunts, uncles, and grandparents that they can rely on. The drop-in centres held under the Healthy Babies Healthy Children program help build communities. From clothing exchanges to informal parental baby-sitting networks, these centres provide a hub for new residents helping them to integrate into the place that they are now calling home.
That, in a nutshell, is the Healthy Babies Healthy Children program and some of the key benefits that it offers. What, then, is the problem?
In her report submitted to the City, Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Isra Levy draws attention to the fact that Ottawa Public Health faces ‘significant long-term funding shortfalls’ caused by inflation and insufficient support from the Government of Ontario due to caps on provincially funded programs [2]. A funding gap has thus appeared.
To fill the gap, Ottawa Public Health is planning to restrict access to the three avenues of service for clients with ‘identified risk factors’. In other words, a program that was once open and available for all families in the city will now be limited to only those who meet defined criteria.
If the City does this, a universal program will be transformed into what policy wonks call a means-tested service. A poor strategy for two reasons.
First, restricting the program to ‘at-risk’ clients will increase the administrative costs of the programs. Staff members will now need to spend time determining whether or not a person should actually access the service, rather than simply working with everyone who comes through the proverbial door.
Second, universal programs help build solidarity and foster shared understanding. Such programs also have a greater number of people concerned that are ready and willing to fight for them should they be threatened with cuts or cancellation. When services are means tested, such advocates disappear and, overtime, the benefits are at a bigger risk of withering or vanishing altogether.
Contrast this proposal with a long-standing practice in Finland. There, for more than 75 years, expectant mothers are given a box by the state. With clothes, sheets and toys it gives all Finnish children, regardless of their background, the same start in life.  And, according to researchers like Mika Gissler, professor at the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Helsinki, the boxes have played a major role in improving family health overall in the country [3].
So what should happen? To start, the Province of Ontario should index the funds to ensure the costs of the programs it launched are sufficiently covered. Ironically, Ontario is subjecting municipalities across the province to the same critique often lobbed at the federal government: the province started a ‘boutique program’ while leaving the other level of government holding the financial bag. The City of Ottawa could be a bellwether for other municipalities across the province, and the entire initiative may be on route to its demise.
Even more importantly, particularly given Canada’s egregious and stubborn rates of child poverty, provinces and territories from coast to coast should offer similar programs and improve on the Ontario model [4].  An integrated yet diversified network of such programs dedicated to young children should be established and made available and accessible for all families regardless of where they live in the country. Healthy babies and healthy children should be a benefit enjoyed by all who live in Canada.

Jennifer Wallner is an Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Political Studies. She can be contacted at jennifer.wallner[at]uottawa.ca

Blog: One-size childcare policy fits no-one

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There are a little more than 4 million children in Canada aged 0 to 12 years.[1] They need care and education. I don’t think anyone really disputes this–youth 13 and older obviously also have needs for care and education but they’re not the focus of this post. In most cases, decisions about that care and education are made by parents or legal guardians who will have the bests interests of their children at heart. I don’t think anyone disputes this either. Those children and the families making decisions for them are really, really diverse. So why do we keep trying to produce national public policies on child-care that are one-size solutions?
Sometimes one-size fits all means everyone gets the same kind of choices for childcare.
Supply-side solutions look for ways to increase the number of spaces for children in quality childcare programs. For example, Quebec’s provincial childcare system provides all families with a regulated space in a childcare centre or in licensed homecare and regulates the out-of-pocket costs to parents. In a long-overdue move the province has started to tie that fee to household income. The 2005 federal-provincial agreement on childcare was similarly intended to increase the supply of regulated spaces in the rest of the country. All provinces in the country provide some financial support (from some combination of federal transfers and their own tax revenues) for the early learning and care services in their jurisdiction. In 2006-07, there was also a short-lived federal effort to look for recommendations to encourage employers to create more childcare spaces for their employees. That last effort ended quietly.
It’s not totally clear we have a supply-side problem when it comes to learning and care for kids. Our indicators on the supply of childcare in Canada are a bit problematic in that they exclude other options used by families like after-school recreational programs and homecare with too few clients to require a license.[2] What we do know is that there were 585,274 licensed spaces (in centres or licensed homecare) across Canada (outside Quebec), which makes it sound like as many as 85% of kids are going without childcare from infancy to middle school. In reality, we have to adjust that ratio to account for other factors like access to parental leave, private care arrangements and programs that may be high quality and developmental but fall outside provincial regulation. Furthermore, depending on the age of the child, between 40 and 60%[3] of families say they don’t use any daycare services (note the switch here to “daycare”) at all. How do they manage?  Well, probably through some combination of private arrangements, adjusting their work hours and relying on things like full-day kindergarten (where they can) and after-school recreational programs. When parents are asked what matters most to them when they choose their childcare, parents report that location, trust in the provider and affordability are, in descending order, their 3 primary criteria with location by far the most frequently-cited factor.[4] So, getting the supply-side right has to mean attention to a really wide range of types of care, the market price of that care and even the minutiae of where that care is physically located. That’s a tall order if you want to rely on just one policy instrument, no matter what that one instrument is.
Sometimes, one-size fits all means giving everyone the same financial support, regardless of need or ability to pay. This is when really strange things can happen.
Demand-side solutions look for ways to reduce the need for childcare or to subsidize the market price of that care. For example, all provinces outside of Quebec offer income-tested subsidies for licensed childcare services. Quebec did away with subsidies when it introduced its universal daycare plan which has led to an interesting puzzle: Among households who say they use childcare, Quebec households are more likely to say they pay $10 a day or less, but modest income households (making under $40,000/year) are significantly more likely to say they pay $0 out-of-pocket for that care if they live outside Quebec than inside Quebec.[5]  In short, swapping subsidies for flat fees seems to mean that costs for childcare are lower on average across all households but are actually higher for lower income households.
Federally, there are two key instruments intended to help families with the costs of childcare. The Child Care Expenses Deduction (CCED) lets parents deduct eligible out of pocket childcare costs, within certain limits. It was recently increased to $8,000 for each child under age 7 starting in the 2015 tax year. When the 2005 federal-provincial supply-side agreement on childcare was cancelled, the money was used to create a new flat cash transfer of $100 per month for each child under 6 years–the Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB). Financing the UCCB also meant diverting money out of the income-tested Canada Child Tax Benefit system.[6] The UCCB was recently expanded so each child under 6 creates a flat entitlement to $160 per month and each child aged 6 to 18 years generates flat entitlement to $60.
The CCED and the UCCB are both responsive to parental income in some weird ways. The CCED has to be claimed by a working (or student) parent with the lower income and the UCCB is taxable in the hands of the lower income parent (regardless of their labour force activity).  Let’s take a simple case, where two parents in a household have equal incomes, or at least incomes in the same federal tax bracket. Figure 1 (below) shows the maximum federal benefit they could receive out of the CCED and UCCB for one child under 7 years of age in the 2015 tax year.
CCED and UCCB
The net effect is that direct federal demand-side support generally rises with household income. The UCCB purposefully pays the same amount, before taxes, no matter a household’s actual expenditure on learning and care.  The CCED lets families claim some tax relief only after they’ve spent the money on eligible forms of daycare–an approach that works far better if a family can afford the cashflow pressures in the interim and has enough tax liability get some real benefit out of a deduction.
Policy proposals that promise the same amount of money to all families, whether they are supply-side or demand-side solutions, are politically attractive. They make for nice pithy bumper-sticker commitments that are easy to communicate. But they come with real problems because neither is able to adjust to the needs and means of Canada’s diverse families. In either case, some strange things seem to happen.
Maybe the primary problem in the current childcare policy debate is that it has pitted families who use daycare against families who don’t. Families who use daycare are reduced to supporting a one-sized supply-side approach.  Families who don’t are reduced to supporting equally one-sized demand-side option instead.  In neither case does the debate acknowledge or respond to a more realistic range of preferences, needs and ability to pay.
What if instead, our starting point was that:

  1. Childcare is what all families provide for their kids.
  2. All of those kids need learning and care.
  3. Many, but not all families meet their kids’ needs for learning and care through daycare.
  4. Different families will have different demands for early learning and care in their community.
  5. Different families will have different abilities to pay and out of pocket costs.

 
There are lots of different levers that could be used on the family policy front and it’s time they started to be used in more nuanced, integrated ways.  This route doesn’t lead to simple policy solutions of $X per day or $X per month. Maybe we’ll just have to start making some bigger bumper-stickers.

Jennifer Robson is an Assistant Professor at Carleton’s School of Political Management. Contact her at jennifer.robson[at]carleton.ca

Blog: Five big ideas for Canada, but one is the biggest

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This column was first published on the National Newswatch website on February 28, 2015



Last Thursday, Canada 2020 invited five thought leaders to Ottawa to give TED Talks on a Big Idea for Canada’s future. While I loved them all, for my money, one speaker stood out. No, it wasn’t astronaut Chris Hadfield, but a retired bureaucrat named Morris Rosenberg.
Rosenberg is a highly respected, former deputy minister of Justice, Health and, most recently, Foreign Affairs. He now heads the Trudeau Foundation. If his talk stood out, it was not because he is a smarter or more engaging speaker that the rest. (As a speaker, Hadfield beats them all, hands down.)
Rosenberg’s edge comes from his long experience as a deputy minister, whose job is to connect the machinery of government to the political leadership. This makes him an expert on the one issue that trumps all others: governance.
That was evident from his talk, which was peppered with terms like “complexity,” “collaboration,” “emergent properties,” and “risk-management.” Pretty wonkish stuff.
Especially when compared with, say, Tom Rand from MaRS, who argued passionately that climate change is the issue of our time. If we don’t get CO2 emissions under control, he warned, everyone on the planet is in serious trouble.
Now, the end of the world as we know it is a tough act to follow, but Rosenberg made a convincing case that one issue is more serious and urgent: a policy process that is foundering so badly that it can no longer even respond to such a threat.
According to Rosenberg, our governments were designed for a time when issues were thought to have clear boundaries and good solutions had well defined objectives.
That worked pretty well before globalization, the digital revolution and population explosion. Then suddenly the world shrank. Issues became way more interconnected and a lot more complex.
Today, an issue like climate change is not just an issue, but a diffuse constellation of issues that stretches out across policy space, linking the environment to transportation, urban planning, health, education, agriculture, Aboriginal issues and so on.
As a result, an effective strategy to address climate change must mobilize and align different departments, governments, members of the business and NGO communities, and even ordinary citizens. In a word, it requires collaboration.
Moreover, such issues are never “solved.” They are always with us, and always mutating. Good policy aims at managing them. And here we got a glimpse of what it must be like to be a deputy minister today.
That’s not what’s happening, said Rosenberg flatly. Politicians like issues that are clear and solutions that are permanent. They dislike processes with too many players in the field and too many links to other issues. It’s too easy for something to go wrong.
As a result, our politicians have become very reluctant to tackle Big Issues; and so the Big Ideas to solve the Big Issues rarely get beyond the testing stage.
You don’t have to read between the lines to get the point: A vicious circle has formed inside government where the riskiness of the policy process is making the leadership increasingly risk-averse—to the point where we are not even trying to develop the processes, skills and knowledge needed to respond, say, to the prospect of calamitous environmental change.
In short, governance is in big trouble and if we don’t fix it all the Big Ideas in the world will get us nowhere. To underline the point, let’s take a quick look at those proposed by the other four speakers, starting with Hadfield.
He made a convincing case that space travel is on the verge of a major breakthrough. Within a few years, reusable rockets could dramatically cut the cost of putting satellites into orbit.
That, says Hadfield, would revolutionize our use of these space technologies by making it cost-effective to use them for all kinds of purposes, such as extending internet service to the 60% of the world’s population that doesn’t yet have it.
As for Tom Rand, having made the case that with climate change we are sleepwalking our way to disaster, he contended that the only real solution is to put a price on carbon and use it to promote rapid development of alternative energy sources.
Jacline Nyman, President and CEO of the United Way, spoke movingly about the huge cost of poverty to Canadians. Not just in terms of the taxes to support social services, but the loss of human capital that comes with poverty. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a strategy that invests in people, she asked?
Finally, Jennifer Keesmaat, the spirited Chief Planner from the City of Toronto, showed how the infrastructure needed to support suburban living is simply too costly to keep building. But with creative thinking and leadership, she claimed, it could be refurbished to transform how communities work and how people live.
All are inspiring ideas and worthy of deeper discussion and experimentation. But if Rosenberg is right, not one of them will be achieved without the right kind of political leadership, backed up by effective policy processes.
So here’s the big lesson I took away from Five Big Ideas for Canada: Leadership and process are two sides of the same coin. Good leadership must be supported by governance machinery that can turn a good idea into a good policy, and a good policy into a good initiative. Increasingly, we have neither.
We may have entered a new policy environment, but our political system is stuck in the past. The question now is: What are we going to do about it? Will we do anything at all?
Now that’s what I all a BIG ISSUE.


—
Dr. Don Lenihan is Senior Associate, Policy and Engagement, at Canada 2020. Don is an internationally recognized expert on democracy and Open Government. His recent projects include chairing an expert group on citizen engagement for the UN and the OECD; and chairing the Ontario Open Government Engagement Team. The views expressed here are his alone. Don can be reached at: [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at: @DonLenihan 

From the End of History to the End of Progress

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A few years ago, we began noticing something very different about the way the public looked at the economy[1]. The public seemed to believe that we were encountering an end of progress. The idea of a “better life” or what is known to the south as the American Dream seemed to be slipping away. Among citizens of both Canada and the United States, there was a growing recognition that the middle class bargain of shared prosperity, which had propelled upper North America to pinnacle status in the world economy in the last half of the twentieth century, was unravelling.
In this brief consideration of the political implications of the problems of the middle class, we will examine both perceptions and behaviour (and values). Our work reflects the grand insights of major recent scholarly work by Daron Acemoğlu, Thomas Piketty, Richard Wilkinson, Miles Corak, and others. We believe that this percolating crisis of the middle class is the greatest challenge of our time and we have argued this narrative to very senior audiences in Canada and the United States – whoever will listen and act.
Despite near public consensus on the severity of the issue, and impressive empirical and expert support, many in the media and elsewhere deny the problem. And yes, there is still relative prosperity in the Canadian economy – we certainly aren’t Spain, let alone Greece. The trajectory, however, is clearly to stagnation and decline, except for those at the top of the system.[2]
The public are not deluded, nor hysterical. The clarity of public concerns around the issue of middle class decline is remarkable. Moreover, when we unpack this across generational cohorts we can see that the unravelling is much more evident as we move from seniors to young Canada. So while still eminently fixable, the trend lines lead to a very gloomy prognosis which is currently infecting public outlook and threatening to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Fears are highest when turned to the future, particularly concerns about retirement, and the fate of future generations. Whereas the middle class used to mean one could attain a house and a few luxuries and a better life than one’s parents it is now all about security, which has become the elusive lacuna as it applies to the ability to get by and to retire with security. The grey outlook on the present turns almost black as the public ponder the fate of future generations.
Consider the troubling syllogism laid out below:
GRAVES GRAPH 1
There is a virtual consensus that a growing and optimistic middle class is a precondition for societal health and economic prosperity. This consensus position reflects the historical record of when nations succeed.[3] Yet if this consensus is correct, we note with alarm that almost nobody thinks that these conditions are in place in Canada. To the contrary, the consensus view is that the middle class is shrinking and pessimistic.

What has changed?

There are important barometers of confidence and we have tested these the same way in repeated measures for twenty years or so; the trajectories are clear and revealing. Never in our tracking has Canada had such a gloomy outlook on the economic future. Never in our tracking has the sense of progress from the past been so meager. The right wing commentariat may seize upon partial stories/research to suggest: i) this is a non-issue – only of concern to “wonks”; and ii) things are swimmingly well and even if public show fears, they are being foolish. We say the public are right.
The point isn’t that Canada is in a state of privation and economic distress – it clearly isn’t. The point is that the factors that produced progress and success don’t seem to be working in the same way anymore. And the problem is accelerating as we move down the generational ladder.
The current generation sees itself falling backward and sees an even steeper decline in future. The typical optimism of youth is very muted as they encounter an economy that doesn’t seem to offer the same promise of shared progress available to their parents and grandparents.
GRAVES GRAPH 2
So it appears that we have at least temporarily reached the end of the progress, the defining achievement of liberal democracy.

Vertical mobility eroding

GRAVES GRAPH 3
The chart above shows a sharp rise in the rate of downward intergenerational mobility as we move from seniors to younger Canada (a nearly threefold increase). Arguably, the prime driver of this is rising inequality which is increasing quickly across all advanced western economies.[4] Notably, as Miles Corak notes,[5] the incidence of upward vertical mobility across generations is dropping most sharply in those places which are becoming more unequal at an even faster pace.
The economic ladder is missing rungs in the middle and people are less motivated to try climbing with those conditions in place. Merit is less relevant as the system is now “stickier” at the top and bottom of the social ladder. This failure of the incentive system is hobbling innovation and effort and creating a more tepid growth pattern where the relatively more slowly growing pie is appropriated by an ever slenderer cohort at the top.[6] We are literally killing the goose that lays the golden eggs underpinning healthy middle class economies.
If one thinks this problem is self-correcting or going away, ponder the chart below which is a couple of days old. Very few Canadians think their financial situation is improving but the sense of progress seems to get smaller as we move from ten to five to one year comparisons. What does it say about an economy which defines shared progress as an economic and moral imperative that less than one in five thinks their lot improved last year?
GRAVES GRAPH 4
 
GRAVES GRAPH 6
For those who think it has always been like this or that Canada is either immune or charting a differing path, it is not so. In broad brush strokes, four Anglo-Saxon economies have followed the same curve, which seems to be leading to a reproduction of the original gilded age of robber barons which predated the great depression.

Conclusions and going forward

GRAVES GRAPH 7
Will the issue of middle class progress be an issue in the coming election? There are good arguments that once the emotion and chauvinism surrounding terror and ‘cultural’ issues fade, this issue will reassume its pinnacle position.[7] What will Canadians think in the fall when the inevitable early enthusiasm for another Middle East adventure doomed to yield disappointment yet again fades? They will look at a relatively moribund Canadian economy lurching along at sub-two-point growth with nothing available for any members of the depleted middle class. They will ponder the prudence of a long term bet on the short term prospect for carbon super power status. They will look enviously at an American economy moving at twice the clip of ours under the explicit framing of what Obama calls ‘middle class economics”. They will look to their prospective leaders and ask who has the most plausible blueprint to restart middle class progress?

Frank Graves is founder and President of EKOS Research, and is one of the country’s leading applied social researchers, directing some of the largest and most challenging social research assignments conducted in Canada.

Canada’s cities need more than cap-in-hand solutions

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The mayors of Canada’s biggest cities have a clear-eyed focus on Canada’s challenges.   They also know that they don’t have the money to fix these challenges alone.
In meeting mayors in Toronto, I heard about traffic congestion, affordable housing and integrating new immigrants to Canada – the vast majority of which end up in cities.
A common theme to all big city mayors was the mismatch between their revenue-raising powers and the essential services and infrastructure cities must provide.
Why should Canadians care?
Simply put, well-functioning cities are drivers of economic growth and innovation.   From a domestic perspective, getting cities right is essential to getting the economy right.
Cities are also an essential part of Canada’s global value proposition to attract investment and knowledge workers.   In determining where to locate new investments and where to live, firms and skilled workers have choices that are global in scope.
The fiscal challenge is that cities have little flexibility in the forms of revenue they can raise.
Property taxes and fees form the majority of city budgets.  Even these revenue raising tools can face restrictions set out in provincial legislation.
The amount raised through these forms of revenue is also insufficient to pay for large-scale infrastructure.  Transit in cities can’t be paid for through property taxes alone, for example, or it “would cripple people”, says Toronto Mayor John Tory.
Long-time watchers of city politics have noted that mayors have a cap-in-hand approach to the provincial and federal government.  But really, what choice do they have?
Mayors are forced in to constant pitching for their personal projects, often knowing they are in competition with the mayor next door, or the mayor one province over.  This is not a winning strategy for a smart country.  Nor does it advance the needs of citizens.
It’s time to recognize that Canada’s fiscal system is broken.
This is not an argument for increasing taxes.  Rather this is an argument for aligning what level of government taxes Canadians with the responsibilities they’ve either been given or down-loaded, and examining what is taxed and at what rates.  It’s a tall order.
Let me suggest three paths forward.
One – solving a problem means recognizing it and taking the steps to correct it.  Cities need to be formally recognized and given more diverse sources for revenue.
Provinces could give cities, especially Canada’s largest cities, any taxing power the province itself has.   Not all municipalities should have such an independent power.
Giving Canadian mayors the power to set tax rates and choose the right tax tool for their local area would also make mayors politically responsible to citizens for what is spent.   As one federal politician put it to me, under the current system “Mayors want money, but let federal politicians wear the headache of justifying taxes.”   It may be time to share the burden.
A formal tax-sharing agreement between provincial and federal governments with big cities may also be a way forward.
As Dr. Enid Slack at the University of Toronto has argued, current revenue sharing practices are unpredictable.   Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson has made this point concerning the Alberta Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI).
At some point an archaic system doesn’t need more gears and a bit more grease, it needs a total re-think.  A formal tax-sharing agreement as a start may pave the way to longer-term solutions, such as writing cities in to the constitution as Mayor Gregor Robertson of Vancouver has suggested.
The U.S. constitution permits municipalities to conduct various forms of revenue-raising that Canada’s does not.  New York, for example, receives revenues from property tax, sales and use taxes and income taxes.
Two  – while waiting for that re-think, stable and long-term funding is required.
Problems such as water and housing can’t wait.  Cities shouldn’t have to win an Olympic bid to build mass transit.
As Mayor Naheed Nehshi has suggested, the next federal election could be fought on which party has the best urban strategy, including predictable long-term funding.
This suggests mobilizing voters in Canada’s major cities to ask local candidates and leaders what their commitments are to investing in cities, given they have the power to make a difference.
Mass transit plans, major bridge and highway construction and affordable housing funding are three areas for discussion.  Specific, concrete plans should be presented to tell citizens what, exactly, will be funded and over what proposed time horizon.
City mayors must also be clear about their proposals and costs.  Detailed identification of priorities will permit a discussion on the role of other forms of financing, such as road tolls, to make up any shortfall.
Three – cities could be using the revenue powers they do have more effectively.
User fees related to the volume of what is consumed rather than flat fees, such as on water and garbage, are one example.   Pricing private transit use more appropriately – such as through parking rates and the gas tax – would also help set fees for public transit.
As Professor Chris Ragan and the Ecofiscal Commission have pointed out, how governments raise revenue matters.  A dollar is not simply a dollar.  Fiscal structures shape incentives and behavior.  To this I would add that city governments can be a powerful source in structuring incentives to solve challenges, if they are given the choice of tools to do so.
These paths forward on a fiscal re-think for large Canadian cities could move at different speeds.  As big city mayors will tell you, the point is Canada needs to get moving.   The country’s global competitiveness depends on it.

Ailish Campbell is the Vice President, Fiscal and International Policy, at the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.  She serves on the Advisory Board of Canada 2020.  The views expressed here are her own.

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