Canada Post Cancels Home Delivery? Maybe Not...

Last month, Minister of Transport Lisa Raitt announced that Canada Post will be ceasing all door to door deliveries of mail.  The operations are to be suspended over a 5 year span, as community mailboxes are erected throughout the country.

Conveniently, Ms. Raitt made said announcement days after Parliament ended for the Christmas session, effectively ending any form of debate on the issue.  I suspect, the announcement was also made as close to Christmas as possible, to minimize media coverage as well.  However, it seems as though the Conservative Government under estimated the passion of Canadians for the service.

Deepak Chopra: Mail Scrooge?

Numerous MP's returned to the Parliament for an emergency session, and simultaneously hauled in Deepak Chopra, the CEO of Canada Post to explain his rational for why ending home delivery was necessary.

Chopra came up with a series of fantastic answers to the MP's grilling session.  At one point, he suggested that the feedback he had been receiving from Canadians was positive, and that Canadian seniors have told him they welcome the opportunity for more fresh air and exercise by walking a few blocks each day to retrieve their mail. 

Chopra and Raitt indicated that the end of mail delivery to our doors was necessary, as Canada Post is facing a $100 million deficit for the year, and the projections for the next five years look even worse.  Not surprisingly, Chopra dodged a series of questions in which he was asked point blank if he received a bonus in the last year, and exactly how much his bonus was.  The closest he would get to providing an answer, was to say that his salary is "a matter of public record".

Well I agree!  His salary SHOULD be a matter of public record.  However, it is not.  Most Canadians would never have known that Chopra's salary is nearly $500,000 a year, or that his bonus was paid out at 33% for an additional sum of close to $200,000 unless NDP MP Paul Dewar hadn't stated so during this parliamentary committee meeting.  In fact, in 2012, the Toronto Sun filed an access to information request for a number of bonus payouts to Canada post employees over the previous four years.  They also asked for a breakdown of how much was paid out to 23 members of the executive committee.  All of the individual payment numbers were refused based on "issues of privacy".  What they DID find out was that 7,402 Canada Post employees were paid some sort of bonus during the time period, including all 23 members of the executive board.  Clearly his salary and bonus is not a matter of public record.  It should be noted that Canada Post posted a net loss before taxes of $327 million in 2012.  A significant portion of which came because of a 25 day strike by postal workers.

I find it rather objectionable that anyone received a bonus when the company is bleeding money.  While good personal performance should be rewarded, it should not be done so when the company is hemorrhaging money.

A number of ways Canada Post could increase revenues was suggested by the parliamentary committee, including offering banking services at its branches in remote locations, or small towns where regular bank branches do not exist.  A wise suggestion.  The Swiss Postal service implemented this service several years ago to great success.

While the Conservative Government seems intent on ramming through the end of mail delivery as we know it (the first communities to lose this service are scheduled to be announced this summer), there may be some hope after all.

Thomas Mulcair: Defender of the Post

Thomas Mulcair, leader of the NDP, and Olivia Chow, Transportation Critic are set to introduce a motion in the house tomorrow declaring home mail delivery an invaluable service to Canadians.  They will force a vote on the matter, which should be an interesting political stone to throw.  An election will be held next year.  Forcing MPs to effectively vote for or against mail delivery will no doubt come to haunt some MPs who find themselves in tight electoral races in their own districts.  And you can bet, the NDP will make it very public come campaigning time which Conservatives voted to kill off their constituents delivery.  

It will all play out in the Commons tomorrow, and it should be interesting to see if Stephen Harper cracks the party whip, or if he lets MPs vote on their own.  I would suspect that independent voting will mean that the NDP motion will pass, which will likely see the plan of killing mail delivery dead on the floor.  If the whip is cracked... well... I guess we will see who will survive re-election.

Patriot Games: Election 2011

Not even a week has passed since Canada's ruling government was toppled, and already political posturing and scandals abound.

Last Friday, in an historic move, the Conservative Government was found in contempt of parliament on scandals of hidden costs of military jets and corporate tax cuts, to lying cabinet ministers and document doctoring.

Not 10 minutes after the final session of Parliament wrapped up did Stephen Harper's attack dog, John Baird, begin his annual fear mongering session on national news magazine's cameras declaring a conspiracy by opposition parties to form a coalition government that would throw our country into economic and political fires of Hell.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff did his best to answer reporters questions about the possibility of a coalition government with the NDP without actually giving a yes or no answer. He did this for a couple of days then finally broke down and gave a resounding "NO!" to the question.

Michael Ignatieff Plays Dumb: "What's a Coalition?"

This likely indicates that the Liberals will be running an all-or-nothing campaign on the election trail, as I believe a coalition had being enthusiastically discussed prior to the government falling. Now that Ignatieff publicly stated that no such agreement would occur after the election regardless of the results, it seems likely that his career would be quickly eviscerated should he go back on his word.

Since coalition is out of the question now, this puts the Liberals in a pressure cooker to perform drastically better than the last election, if not actually form a government. It is unlikely that Ignatieff would be allowed to keep his job as Liberal leader if the party fails to gain a significant amount of seats in the House.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper seemed to be sitting pretty for the first few days of the campaign while the heat was on his arch-rival. Until Sebastian Togneri turned up like a bad penny again.

You may remember Togneri's name. He was a high ranking government aide for many years until he was forced to resign over allegations of interfering in several requests for government information made under the Freedom of Information Act.

Very recently, even Conservative Minister Rona Ambrose had no choice but to call for an RCMP investigation into Togneri's interference with the requests for information. (Though, I find it odd that the RCMP were called in a year after Togneri's resignation). Unfortunately for Stephen Harper, the request for an RCMP investigation coincided with a Parliamentary inquiry into Minister Bev Oda's alleged altering of government documents.

Well, now Togneri's name was in the media again, as some lucky reporter discovered that he was working on the campaign for Conservative hopeful Ryan Hastman in the Edmonton Strathcona riding.

Linda Duncan: A Little Orange Fish In A Big Blue Sea

Hastman has a somewhat uphill battle in front of him to begin with. In the 2008 election, NDP candidate Linda Duncan wrestled the riding away from Conservative incumbent Rahim Jaffer (after Jaffer himself suffered several political scandals). From all accounts, Linda Duncan, a long time Edmonton Lawyer is well liked, and has been made high-profile by the NDP since it was the first time an Alberta riding has been anything but Tory blue since the Anne McLellen days.

Unfortunately for Hastman and Stephen Harper, it doesn't look good having a disgraced government aide currently under police investigation helping out with a new Conservative candidate's campaign.

Things turned from bad to worse for both Stephen Harper and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff the last two days as Green Party leader Elizabeth May burst on to the scene in a blaze of controversy, fighting for her political rights.

Elizabeth May Is Going To Debate Your Ass Off. Deal With It.

You may remember from the 2008 election, when the Green Party was just starting to gain credibility and a lot of media attention, that the Canadian Broadcast Consortium (basically a handful of executives from Canada's 4 main TV networks) decided that May would not be entitled to participate in the electoral debates. This prompted a huge public outcry, and a chance for all party leaders to look like the good guy on national television by stating that they believed May should be included in the debate. Finally the consortium relented, and May had her day in the spotlight. (She actually did quite well- check out my review of her performance here.)

This week, for some bizarre reason, the consortium again decided that May, despite being the leader of a national party that received 6% of all votes in the last election (that's 1 million votes - more than the Bloc Quebecois received) and that runs a candidate in every riding across Canada, was not worthy of participating in the debates because her party does not have a current, elected MP.

Let's not bother taking into account that the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance Party, which are now both known as the Conservative Party, did not have elected MPs either during their first elections, but were still allowed to participate in the debates.

May has since launched a very public battle against the Consortium, and has retained a high profile lawyer to argue her case to the courts to sneak her way in to the debates.

This is particularly bad news for both Ignatieff and Harper. Partly because May seems to be very good a debating, and neither man likely wants her there. That being said, since Harper endorsed her presence in the last election, he can hardly say that she isn't entitled to be there for this election. He has since said he is open to her being there, but that all parties should submit to the rules put forth by the Consortium. Ignatieff on the other hand, has his barrels firmly aimed at Harper, and the more people included in the debate may lead the public to decide that there are other voting options rather than just the Liberals or the Conservatives, as he has been trying to prove in the media all week.

Foolishly, after May made her public tirade about not being included in the election debate, Ignatieff stated he was most keen on having a second debate televised solely between himself and Stephen Harper. Harper seemed keen on the idea as well, and all but issued a public challenge to his rival. Ignatieff then ran in front of the nearest camera and said it was on. However, as media attention intensified around May and her rhetoric of the debates being anti-democratic for shutting her out, Harper quietly back-peddled on his two-man debate idea. This gave Ignatieff an opportunity to call Harper "chicken", but also gave the impression of him being an elitist.

So to recap, in the last two weeks or so, we have had the government charged with contempt, allegations of creative bookkeeping, Ministers engaged in doctoring documents, police investigations, candidates receiving help from disgraced government aides, finger pointing at undemocratic television execs, threatened legal action, political threats and challenges, and a good deal of back-peddling from most of the party leaders. And we've just gotten started. Imagine where we will be in another 4 weeks!

Patriot Games: A Canadian Election For A New Generation

Oh, it's on, baby.

So last Friday, (March 25th) the Conservative's minority government was toppled when a confidence motion tabled by the opposition parties found the ruling conservatives in contempt of parliament.

The Look Of Contempt: Stephen Harper

This is intriguing for two reasons.

First, since the beginning of March, it was widely assumed that Prime Minister Stephen Harper would be forced to dissolve the parliament, but it was assumed that the motion of confidence that would be the downfall of the ruling government would be the Conservative's proposed budget. Not a decision that the government was in contempt of parliament.

Secondly, it's important because never through all of the political scandals or outrageous diatribes of the 144 years of parliament in Canada, has a ruling party found to be in contempt.

There were several reasons why the Conservative Government had been found in contempt. Firstly, there was the matter of 65 new F35 fighter jets that the government announced it would purchase for a reported $9 billion ($18 billion once a maintenance agreement was signed). The purchase announcement was made in July of 2010, but recently, the Parliamentary Budget Officer went public with his estimation of nearly double the cost to a whopping $30 billion.

Needless to say, this caused a frenzy on Parliament Hill, with the opposition parties attacking the Conservatives like rabid dogs on a lame rabbit. The opposition demanded to see numbers on paper, and their requests were repeatedly rebuffed. At the same time, it had been implied that the government was similarly down playing the expected costs of tax cuts being proposed for big corporations.

The second and more bizarre catalyst was the inquiry into International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda's document tampering scandal.

Bev Oda: Document Doctor

In 2009, a church based aid group known as Karios applied for renewal of it's international development grant. Oda stated publicly that the decision was actually made by the Canadian International Development Agency. However, upon digging up documents on the matter, it was discovered that the CIDA actually signed a note recommending the approval of the grant. And, that the note in question had actually been altered when the word "not" had been manually written before the word "approved".

Bev Oda later admitted in front of a committee that she had been the one who ordered the alteration of the document (if not altered it herself). And of course, no sooner had the admission left Oda's lips, were opposition MP's calling for her head to roll down the aisle of the House of Commons.

Predictably, after the committee wrapped up on Oda's case, the information that had been gathered on the F-35 fighter jets and the corporate tax cuts were all wrapped into one bundle of government-toppling joy. The final bow that had been attached to the bundle was the fact that the Liberal party intentionally stalled on voting on the Conservatives proposed budget, so they could bask in the glory of toppling the government on charges of contempt, rather than the budget.

And so, on March 26th, 2011, Stephen Harper was forced to seek the Governor General's approval to dissolve parliament, and presto! Election in May. So far from what we have seen, all of this political manoeuvring and scandal will just be the tip of the iceberg.

Naheed Neshi: New Mayor of Calgary

So I have been terribly busy these last few weeks. It seems like I have a million things to do each day, and I never get them all done.

That being said, never fear, as I always keep track of topics I want to write about on the blog.

One hot topic this week was the municipal election here in Calgary. This is the first election that I have not voted in. With recently relocating here, I felt that I did not know enough about the history of the candidates to make an informed choice on who to vote for. Sure, you can always find the candidates online and read their platform, but I like to know some history about the candidates: were they in politics before? Did they live up to previous promises they made? Are they reputable business people? Personally, I believe idiots that make an uninformed decision on who they are voting for are far more dangerous than those who abstain.

But I digress.

Much to many people's surprise, Naheed Nenshi, who was considered a distant third runner up during the entire campaign won by a reasonable margin.

Naheed Nenshi Celebrating (photo from www.nenshi.ca)

Naheed Nenshi ran against Barb Higgins, a well know former news anchor on CTV news, and Ric McIver, an older white businessman and former city alderman, who people seem to either somewhat like or openly despise.

Barb Higgins, a well known television personality and attractive white female, was considered the front runner in the race the week prior to the election, though she jumped on the political band wagon relatively late in race.

But, in a rare turn of political progression, Naheed Nenshi pulled ahead when it really counted. Naheed is a Harvard Graduate with a Masters in Public Policy, and has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Calgary. He currently is a professor at Mount Royal University here in Calgary.

So he has solid credentials. Why would this be considered a progressive political choice? Because not only is Naheed a visible minority, (a first for Calgary mayors) but he is now the first Mayor in Canada who is Muslim.

Yes, I said Muslim.

Lets be honest. Muslim is an attention getting word these days. I think draws more attention in the US, certainly, but even still it is capable of causing heated debate here in Canada.

Now the funny thing about it all is I have heard a few people talking about the record voter turn out for the recent election. There were more than 300,000 votes cast which means an estimated eligible voter turn out of approximately 46%. I have heard several people mention that they felt Nenshi won because many of Calgary's visible minorities made sure they got to the polls this year.

While that may be true, I am not sure that the motives were race or religion oriented. Calgarians en masse were definitely ready for a change. Over the course of the last year, most of the local media ran editorials about how the city needed a political change. Additionally, many opinion based publications called for an all out recall of city council. And, if that wasn't convincing enough, there were a record amount of candidates for the mayors chair. At one point during the election, there were 15 declared candidates.

As an added analysis, here are some brief statistics about Calgary:

Population: 1,079,000 (2006 census)

Visible Minorities 23.7% (2006 census)

Number of declared Muslims 26,000 (2001 census)

So looking at all of the numbers, even if every declared Muslim in the city of Calgary was eligible to vote, and casted a ballot for Nenshi, it still would be less than 25% of the votes received. Add that to the amount of eligible minority voters, and it still would not have put him over the top.

After all of that, I think the only fair way to sum up this election, is that the best man won. Simple as that. Nenshi is a well educated, succinct speaker who ran a clean campaign and had a solid platform.

I don't believe the media will let the minority issue or religious affiliation drop anytime soon. But, I hope that Nenshi is clever enough and tactful enough to use it to his advantage. If he spins the media attention correctly, he can bring more positive attention to the city of Calgary and attract a lot of important investment and cultural opportunities to the city.

Good Job Naheed, and good luck with the political career.

The Canadian Coalition?

This week, the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc all stated publicly that they would NOT support the Federal Conservative's economic update.  They claim multiple reasons for this, including the fact that there is no sign of any type of economic stimulous included in the update, the fact that the Conservatives are trying to take away any public servants ability to go on strike (or effectively renegotiate their contracts for their own benefit) , and the fact that the Conservatives would do away with the subsidy provided by Elections Canada to the political party.  

As you well know, all three parties voting against the Conservatives bill would bring down the minority government.  That leaves us either with a Coalition government or another election. 

So the Conservatives seem to be on their way out, and the Liberals and NDP in.  Interesting turn of events considering we Canadians just had an election 6 weeks ago.

I hear people bitching on both sides of the matter.  Those with Conservative view points tend to think that it's mutiny at best - as a whole, the Cons won more seats than any other party, and therefore, should lead the government.

Those on the Liberal or NDP side of the fence point out that not only did the Cons not win a majority government, but they also only had 35% of the votes.  So why not let a coalition of Liberals and NDP, who together received 50% of the vote run the country?  These people argue that at least this way, more Canadians will be represented in government.

Personally, I think there is merit to a coalition.  Not because of a numbers game, but simply because it will force the majority of our MPs to work together and compromise whether they want to or not.  Either they co-operate, or we go back to the polls again.  

Going back to the polls would likely not sit well with the bulk of Canadians, who are pretty much 'electioned' out.  We have had 3 federal elections in 6 years.  Add to that the overwhelming media saturation of the American election for the last two years, and that's a hell of a lot of politics.

I say bring on the damned coalition and get back to work!  Be done with it already.  We are in the midst of an economic crisis, and political instability is the last thing we need.  Aside from racking up a costly bill, another election within 6 months would likely see us back in the same situation we are already in.

Canada is ready for a new type of government.  There has not been a coalition since the 1920's.  I think that they Canadian People's political views are diverse enough that the bulk of Canadians would support a coalition government.

Just don't let Stephane Dion play Prime Minister.  There are at least two other men available who would do a much better job.

Rainn