Here we go: Boy dies after being hit in head by hockey puck

A 10-year-old boy from Guelph, Ont. is dead after being hit in the head with a hockey puck on the weekend.

Nicholas Lambden was playing hockey with his friends at an outdoor rink on Sunday when he was struck by a stray puck from another group of players.

Tragedy? Freak accident? Reminder of the cruel randomness of the universe? No, political opportunity.

Guelph City councillor Bob Bell represents the ward where Lambden was killed and he says the incident reinforces the need for children to wear helmets while playing on ice.

"I think kids should wear helmets when they're playing hockey," he said. "Kids and parents need to associate helmets with skates as they associate helmets with bikes.''

More »

Why the public might buy into a carbon tax

Elections are rarely fought over big issues; even more rarely are they won that way. Though the public dutifully tell the pollsters that this or that big issue, as defined by the media, is important to them, they are usually lying -- telling the pollster what they think they should say -- and even where they are not, will as often as not decide their vote on some other basis.... 

Big issues, after all, have typically been around for a while. That’s how they get to be big. But the reason they’re still around is that no one’s figured out how to solve whatever problem it was that made them an issue in the first place. And the longer they remain unsolved, the more skeptical the public becomes of any proffered remedy, certainly of the kind -- easy, painless, cost-free -- that political parties tend to suggest. If there were an easy answer, the voters reason, someone would have implemented it already.

The other thing about big issues is that everyone knows they’re big issues, well in advance of voting day. So the parties have plenty of time to come up with a position that minimizes any risk of running afoul with the voters. And since the voters are generally skeptical of change (see above), that means hugging as close to the status quo, and each other, as they can manage. 

There are exceptions to this rule, however, when the parties retreat to opposite corners on a big, important issue and come out fighting. The free trade election of 1988 is the classic example. This is what makes the Liberals’ apparent willingness to endorse a carbon tax so intriguing. The most radical shift in tax policy in a generation, it holds the potential, as few issues do, to be not just a big issue, but a decisive one. 

Even the Tories could not be so flexible, surely, as to suddenly embrace what they have so fervently denounced until now. And even the Liberals could not be so craven, surely, as to back away from a policy to which all of their rhetoric points, and which is so critical to their credibility as environental advocates. The greater likelihood is that both parties will see it in their strategic interests to double down on the proposal: the Tories, because they think they can paint it as a tax grab, the Liberals, because they have to do something to get the focus off their leader. The result: this could be the most policy-driven election since 1988.

That’s if the press can be induced to get off their duffs and examine it as policy, rather than indulging in the usual idle speculation on how it will play politically. So far, most of the commentary has been confined to guffawing at Stéphane Dion for his naivety in suggesting it. “Mr. Dion’s idea,” the National Post declared authoritatively, “will be suicidal at the polls.” This is why Dion will never be prime minister, the paper’s comment editor, Jonathan Kay, agreed, while the Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente saw it as evidence of his “unerring instinct for his own jugular.” To be fair, that’s what many anonymous Liberals are saying, taking advantage of the witness protection program the Globe appears to be operating on its front page.

Leave aside evidence that the policy in fact enjoys considerable popular support -- 61% in a recent poll -- or the apparent political success the British Columbia government has enjoyed with a similar plan. You’d never know it from the above commentary, but the Liberal proposal involves, not just a broadening of the current 10 cents a litre fuel tax to embrace other sources of carbon emissions, but offsetting -- and potentially spectacular -- cuts in income taxes. Either would be good policy on its own, but together they make not only good policy, but I venture to say, good politics. The same cynics would have said free trade was political suicide -- many did. But it just may be that the public are not such dolts as made out, and that treated like adults, they may respond in kind.

Certainly the idea can be defended on its merits. If you attach any significance at all to the global warming thesis, then the best and cheapest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to put a price on them -- whether by means of the cap-and-trade system already in the works for large emitters, or the carbon tax the Grits would apply to the 50% or so of emissions that remain. Exhortation has no effect. Regulation is too costly. Subsidies are if anything counter-productive. The only way you really bring about long-term changes in behaviour is by embedding the cost of environmental damage into the prices of things. That’s what prices do every day, in a market economy: send signals about costs, allowing consumers to make informed choices.

Is it so hard to imagine that the public could be persuaded of the wisdom of a relatively simple idea: that we should tax less the things we want more of -- work, savings, investment  -- and tax more the things we want less of, like greenhouse gases? Granted, we have yet to hear the specifics of the Liberal plan, and I’m readying myself to be disappointed: instead of using the revenues from a carbon tax to slash the top marginal rate of income tax, which is where most investment decisions are made, they may choose to blow it all on raising the personal tax exemption and other populist fare. But in the broad strokes, the policy has much to recommend it, and given sufficient time to examine it, the public may well come to agree.

More »

Let the parties work it out for themselves

I’ve tried to get excited about this “in-and-out” business, really I have. But I am hampered by two things. One, nothing about the Conservatives’ shuffling of funds back and forth between the national and local campaigns in the last election appears to have been against the law. And two, the law in question is an ass....

To recap: It is not illegal to transfer funds from the national party to a riding association. It is not illegal to transfer funds from a riding association to the party. It is not illegal for the ridings to pool their funds to purchase advertising and other campaign services, and it is not illegal if they buy these from the party. Not illegal, and not unusual: all are routine practices in other parties’ campaigns. What seems to have Elections Canada’s knickers in a twist is that the Tories did all of these things at the same time, in the course of which responsibility for the spending of these funds is somehow said to have passed from the ridings to the party. So what the Conservatives claimed as local expenses were “really” national.

How the agency arrived at this metaphysics is as unclear as why any of it matters. The Tories gained no particular advantage from the exchange, since it is the combined effort, local and national, that makes up a campaign: whatever extra spending they were permitted to engage in at the national level came out of unused local budgets. But even calling them “national” or “local” makes little sense, since local campaigns by and large are extensions of the national campaign -- the same themes and motifs appear, only with the addition of a candidate’s name here and there. 

What we are left with are arbitrary distinctions, selectively enforced, according to invisible criteria. That’s not a criticism of Elections Canada. It’s the law that’s the problem. It makes no more sense to set separate spending limits for national and local campaigns than it would as between TV commercials and lawn signs. These are matters best left to the parties to work out for themselves.

But then, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to set overall spending limits, either. The premise is that there should be a level playing field between the parties. But should fairness between parties be the guiding principle? The constitution speaks of the equality of every individual, not the equality of parties. And what are parties but associations of individuals? Surely it is fairness between individuals that should concern us: the equal ability of each individual citizen to make his voice heard at election time. That, after all, is why we give each of them one vote.

To constrain every party within the same spending limit, whether it has 10 members or 10 million, is in fact to put the individuals of which these parties are composed on a distinctly un-level footing: in our admittedly extreme example, each member of the larger party is permitted precisely one-millionth the “voice” of those in the smaller. Does that imply we should have no limits of any kind? Not a bit. But the place to impose such limits is not on the parties, but on individuals; not on spending, but on contributions.

Of course, we have contribution limits now. The Chretien reforms banned union and (most) corporate donations at the federal level, and set limits on individual contributions for the first time. These were tightened further under the Conservatives’ Accountability Act. But important loopholes remain. And indeed, even contribution limits, in traditional form, don’t get it quite right.

Set a limit on how much an individual can contribute to a particular candidate or party, after all, and you simply invite the establishment of parallel groups to receive donations, like the “political action committees” familiar from American politics. A similar problem bedevils spending limits: what do you do with so-called “third-party” advocacy groups, who may or may not be affiliated with the political parties? Either you end up with a total free-for-all, or you impose draconian controls on what private groups can spend to advance their cause, at great harm to freedom of speech.

The answer? Go back to the principle we established earlier: fairness between individuals -- the  ability of each to contribute to the national conversation at election time, in this case financially. If every individual had the same income, this would cease to be a concern. The nearest approximation is to set an annual ceiling on the amount individuals can contribute, not just to a particular party or a candidate, but to all of them -- the sum total of all of his political donations in that year. But how he chose to divide these up within this limit, whether between parties, candidates, or third-party groups, would be up to him. 

The beauty of this is that it’s self-limiting: the more you contribute to one party, the less you have left to give to another. Spending limits would likewise be unnecessary. Since only individuals could contribute, and since no individual would have any greater capacity to contribute than any other, the only limit the parties need face would be their ability to raise funds in this manner. And not just the parties: third-party groups would be under the same constraint, so far as they spent money to support or oppose a particular candidate or party. 

At a stroke, parity would have been achieved -- between individuals, and between the different avenues through which each might seek to express his views in the political arena. Yet at minimal cost to free speech, and without requiring Elections Canada to decide how many local candidates can dance on the end of a pin.

More »

TV as if viewers mattered

“Two of Canada's largest television broadcasters set aside their fierce rivalry yesterday ... imploring the federal regulator to put consumers first ...”

“Cable and satellite carriers say consumer choice and market forces should dictate which channels are carried...”

“Rogers Communications Inc. has warned the CRTC that fee-for-carriage would inflate cable bills by as much as $10 a month, provoking a ‘consumer revolt’...”

“Shaw blasted the regulator for ‘continuing on a path of protectionism’ at the expense of consumers...”

“Independent broadcasters are urging the federal regulator to step up enforcement of existing rules governing cable and satellite companies ... to protect the programming interests of consumers...”

You get the picture. Preening and droning, droning and preening through three long weeks of hearings, a procession of suits -- cable, broadcast, plus a few from what are wittily referred to as the specialty channels -- took turns impressing upon the CRTC how they are all about consumers. Well of course. If there’s one group we know has a particular crush on consumers, it’s the cable industry. Unless it’s the broadcasters. Or, for that matter, the CRTC....

Even by the standards of the Canadian television industry, it was stomach-turning stuff. The routine never varies. Advertise your concern for the consumer interest. Boast of your unslakable thirst for competition. Mock your opponents as freeloaders and protectionists, sheltering from competition in the lee of the state. Then demand some regulatory preference of your own.

So the broadcasters, those “fierce rivals” who were “imploring” the regulator to “put consumers first,” were in fact there to ensure that nothing was done to open existing Canadian channels to competition from abroad, or even from each other. No change in “must-carry” rules, requiring the cable companies to distribute, and consumers to pay for, channels that nobody watches. No change in “genre protection,” granting each of the specialty channels its own absurd little monopoly -- one food channel, one dog channel, one Hitler channel -- for fear that somebody, somewhere might go out of business. No change in “simultaneous substitution,” a peculiar bit of legalized piracy alllowing Canadian broadcasters to bump an American signal off the air, substitute their own transmission of the same show in its place, and sell ads based on the combined audience -- a direct subsidy, in other words, for the display of American programming on Canadian networks.

And the cable and satellite carriers? The ones who were leading a “consumer revolt” against the broadcasters’ proposal to charge them for channels they now receive for free? That particular fit of consumerism lasted until about the next breath, when they vowed to pass on any fees that were imposed ... to consumers. For that matter, I don’t notice the cable companies leading the charge to dismantle foreign ownership restrictions, or to permit foreign-based satellites to offer their signals to Canadians (legally, that is -- thousands of Canadians are already doing so on the sly). The last time anyone tried -- remember the DirecTv “deathstar” fiasco? -- the industry practically demanded the government shoot it out of the sky. 

As you listen to this unending barrage of nonsense -- and the hearings were just the start: the CRTC has until the summer to come up with a new policy framework for the industry, with the inevitable appeals to cabinet to follow -- bear in mind three things. One, while everyone cites the need to support Canadian content, what they are invariably after is the profits from foreign content. The fees the broadcasters want are supposedly needed to pay for local news broadcasts. They are in fact the the residue from some unpleasant recent bidding wars for foreign programming.

Two, though everyone complains about the burdens imposed upon them by the regulator, nobody actually wants them removed -- since any burden can always be invoked in defense of a regulatory favour. You think broadcasters, rather than suffer under the yoke of Canadian content regulations -- but with all the subsidies that go with them -- would rather be free of both? You think the cable industry would take this deal: no must-carry provisions, in return for no protection from foreign deathstars? Not on your life.

And three, there really are no limits, whether of logic, consistency, or simple shame, on what these people will say to advance their cause. My favourite recent example is the CTV executive, writing in the Toronto Star, who was scandalized that cable and satellite providers should be allowed “to subsidize part of their business” by taking local signals and rebroadcasting them in other parts of the country without compensating local broadcasters. “It's hard to imagine any reasonable business model,” he write, “that would allow someone to confiscate your property with no compensation and resell it for a profit.” Could there be a better description of simultaneous substitution?

But hold on. Suppose we took this gaggle of special pleaders at their word. Suppose we were to design a television policy that really did put the consumer first -- a policy that treated viewers as if they were what television was for. In this world, broadcasters would succeed or fail depending on whether they put on programs that people wanted to watch, not how well they could bamboozle the regulator. Cable and satellite providers would carry only those channels that people were willing to pay for, and would charge only for those people willingly chose. New broadcasters and new carriers could enter the market at any time, whatever their nationality, based solely on their ability to compete for viewers and subscribers. And the cable and broadcast industries, rather than bawling to Auntie CRTC to settle their disputes, would work it out between themselves.

I know. Crazy talk. We return now to regularly scheduled whining. 

More »