Pie Palace

I really shouldn’t be surprised:

The Green Party isn’t being included in the debates because three of the four establishment parties don’t want the Greens there. I’m surprised that they cared enough to threaten to pull out.
(Update: Edited for style)

The election has begun. And we’re already being let down by our media and our current Prime Minister. Let’s consider a line of questioning on CTV Newsnet coverage (around the 7:30 mark).

Let’s consider the exchange from two angles:

First, there’s the consistency angle. As much as Harper dislikes the Senate, he happily appointed Conservative insider Michael Fortier to the Senate in 2006, and then appointed the unelected Fortier to his cabinet. If Harper feels so strongly about the Senate, why is he appointing unelected people to the senate?

Second, let’s consider Tom Clark’s response. Instead of calling the Prime Minister to task on his inconsistency, he happily skates over the statement and instead asks Harper about hypotheticals (and later asks Harper to promise that he won’t get personal).

It’s easy to see why voters become cynical. The Prime Minister has ignored the spirit of his 2006 election platform, and isn’t being held to task for it. In a rare interview, a journalist has the opportunity to take him to task, but opts instead to drop the name of his media outlet, and ask an essentially meaningless question. Reporters have a responsibility to their viewers – they shouldn’t let a politician get away with this kind of dishonesty.

This is going to be a long election.
(Update: Fixed spelling mistake in title)

The city is facing a $70 million shortfall. So city councilor Steve Desroches is proposing that the city license out twenty sites for billboards. Those 20 billboards will net the city $200,000 a year. Sure, they’ll be ugly; city staff will waste time (and money) ensuring proper zoning; and a few trees might have to be cut down to provide decent sight lines, but thats TWO HUNDRED BIG ONES!

Here at PiePalace, we believe in economies of scale. So we’re taking Steve’s idea and SUPER SIZING IT! That’s right. With seven thousand billboards, we could make up the entire shortfall! Sure, most of the city will disappear under a wall of McDick’s ads and signs shilling Timmies’ latest treats, but think of the taxes that will be saved!

(Update: Fixed calculation) Photo credit: Billboard Liberation Front, used without permission.

Fixed election dates stop leaders from trying to manipulate the calendar…
Unless we’re defeated or prevented from governing, we want to keep moving forward to make this minority parliament work over the next 3½ years.

Stephen Harper uttered those words less than two years ago. But times have changed. The opposition parties haven’t brought the government down – they’ve cooperatively supported the government on confidence motions. Most importantly, we’re heading into a recession, and voters tend to punish the party in power when a recession hits.

When Steve-O says he is “going to have to make a judgement in the next little while as to whether or not this Parliament can function productively,” he wants you to forget that the opposition parties have tacitly supported his government for the last two years. He’s hoping that you won’t remember that Parliament hasn’t even been sitting for the past few months.

When an election is called later this week, it’s going to be for all the wrong reasons: self-interested politicians making a power grab before the economic shit hits the unemployment fan. We’re going to foot the bill for Steve’s (and Stéphane’s, and Gilles’) power games. At the end of it, we’re going to see a House that looks very similar to our current Parliament (hopefully with a few more Green MPs).

So it’s finally happened. The Green Party has a federal MP. It didn’t happen through the blood, sweat, and tears of an election, but through a sitting MP switching his affiliation. More of a whimper than a bang.

Blair Wilson was elected as a Liberal in the BC riding of West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky Country. He left the Liberal Party under allegations of election spending irregularities (of which he was cleared by Elections Canada), but tried to rejoin as recently as last month.

How does this new, high profile Green effect the Party? His status as a sitting MP removes the most recent excuse for the television stations barring the Green Party leader from the televised national debates. The significance of that can’t be overestimated – it gives us credibility, and the ability to reach a huge audience. Of course, the TV stations could simply raise another barrier, as they’ve done when we met their requirements in the past.

Sadly, Mr. Wilson probably won’t get a chance to represent the Party in the House, since Harper looks to be gunning for an election at the earliest possible date.

Welcome aboard, Brian. We’re happy to have you. Hopefully you’ll have a few more GP pals in the House come this Fall. And do try to get re-elected.

Dear Teenage Boys,

It has come to my attention that girls of your generation are:

• Skateboarding (on longboards no less)
• Dying their hair wonderfully anime-ish colours
• Playing video games (yes Nintendo, I’m looking at you)

Back when I was your age, creatures this perfect existed only in my dreams. I could tell you how nice it is to see young women in video game shops, riding gracefully down city streets, all with such attractive shades of blue/purple/green/red/pink in their hair. But I don’t need to. You already know how good it is to be a child of the third millennium.

Lets hope by the time I have children gender equality will have marched evitably¹ forward, and they’ll find their happiness doing whatever it is they want, regardless of gender role. Unless it’s watching TV. TV will be verboten.

Photo credit: bmh4you.

1. No dear reader, there is nothing inevitable about the march of equality. The cost of equality is constant vigilance. But the reward, dear reader! Think of the reward! (back)

Blake Batson has said on his blog that he wants to “float ideas on how to improve our system that others will be free to vet or claim them as their own.” In that spirit, I’d like to present my first suggestion for our pals in the City of Ottawa: intensification.

Our city was supposed to be squeezed into the Greenbelt. But since this 60s, development has occurred outside the Greenbelt and our city has been surrounded by a fluffy pink tutu of sprawl. Looking at a Statistics Canada map of population density around Ottawa, we see that the population per square kilometre is mostly in the 500-2999 person range. Only in the core does the population rise beyond 5000 ppl/km². Worryingly, looking at the population change map between 2001 and 2006, we see that the population outside the Greenbelt is growing quickly, while the population in the no man’s land between exurbia and downtown is shrinking.

Given the received wisdom that city services (water delivery, sewage disposal, transit) work best in dense urban areas, Ottawa should be looking to the orange areas on that map to lower their cost per taxpayer.

Happily, I’m not the only person suggesting this. The transit experts hired by the city to evaluate our transit plan said the same thing: our suburbs need higher densities to make rail transit a viable option. In a surprising moment of lucidity, the city’s own transportation committee endorsed the idea of improving density along the new light rail route.

Our current transportation plan isn’t very different from what we have today. Hopefully, if City council can keep focused on building a more urban city, we can look at a much better transit scenario in 2031.

Thanks to Blake Batson for the idea of this series.