Pie Palace

I had the misfortune of listening to Ontario Today… umm… today. I say misfortune because (a) I’m home sick, and (b) because they were covering the school funding issue in the Ontario election.

The segment was an hour-long phone in show. Of the 10ish callers, all but two supported the Green Party position: the province should not pay for religious schools. During the call in show, the Ontario Greens were mentioned only a few time in an off-handed manner, even though a vast majority of the callers agreed with the Green position. Their guest was worse, pushing her own view: that all religious schools must be funded.

In a moment of potent middle-crass rage I wrote a strongly worded letter to Ontario Today producers:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I was disappointed with your phone-in segment about the proposed changes in Ontario’s funding of religious schools. The coverage all but ignored the Green Party’s stance: that the provincial government should not fund religious schools.

During the opener, when clips from each party were played, the Green Party leader Frank de Jong was not included. Although most callers stated that they wanted to remove provincial funding from religious education, Ms. Celli did not mention that this was the Green Party position. I believe that she did mention the Conservatives by name when asking one of the callers about their position. When your guest repeatedly stated that removing funding for the Catholic system was not possible, she was not challenged.

Ms. Celli did mention the Green Party occasionally, but the Greens were not given the same prominence as the other major parties. Part of your role as media is to report news fairly. By giving the Green Party short shrift, you are making it harder for Ontario’s voters to make an informed decision on October 10.

Jim Harris and I go way back. When I was but a wee ankle biter, I had no idea who he was. Similarly, he had absolutely no idea who I was. Our relationship amiably continued in this manner for a number of decades, until I finally met him. It turns out he’s a pretty good guy. As former leader of the Green Party of Canada he has a weird ex-officio status where I read the spam emails he pumps out. Since he’s part of the Vote for MMP campaign, I continuously find out how great MMP is. As if I need to be reminded.

The Vote for MMP campaign has a $10.10 campaign. They’re asking people to donate $10.10 (or some multiple of $10.10) for the Yes campaign. This isn’t your usual corporate-backed campaign with big blobs of money being donated by a few rich individuals. They’re asking for an tiny little bit of money from each citizen of Ontario. So open your wallet! Give ‘em $10 and a dime. Your kids will thank you.

Those of you who visit the PiePalace website may have noticed the Vote For MMP bling in the right hand column. I’m voting for Mixed Member Proportional representation because:

1. I want to see smaller parties in Ontario’s legislature. In the last provincial election, the Greens got 2.8% of the vote (that’s 126,651 votes) but no seats¹. Meanwhile, the Liberals got 46% of the vote with 2,090,001 votes. On average each Liberal seat cost 29,028 votes. Even though the Greens got more than four times that, we didn’t get a single seat.
   
2. I want to be able to vote separately for local representative and the party of my choice. So far I’ve been happy with my Green Party candidates, but it’s possible that another party would field a candidate that I prefer. In that situation, I don’t want to have to hold my nose and vote for a candidate I don’t like.
   
3. I’m tired of seeing false majorities. During the last election, the Liberals received only 46% of the vote, yet took 70% of the seats. I would much rather see a coalition government that included a number of parties.

There’s an interesting swirl of activity going on around the MMP campaign. The Yes side seems to be relatively well organized: their website looks pretty snazzy, and it has a pretty well written explanation of why MMP is good. Meanwhile, the No side seems to be relying on fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

1. All numbers from Wikipedia. The Elections Ontario website wasn’t serving historic data when I wrote this post. (back)

This may be old news, but the folks supporting mixed member proportional representation in Ontario have themselves a website. Bully for them, I say! Here’s hoping they get themselves a win.

The folks at Fair Vote Canada are holding a MeetUp on Tuesday, June 19, at the Royal Oak on the Canal. Here’s the text of their mailing:

This is your chance to gather with like-minded electoral reformers to relax while chatting about the state of our democracy. It’s also an opportunity to learn a little, swap ideas, and maybe even get mobilized for the ongoing Referendum Campaign – the largest in Ontario history. Even if you’re not familiar with the Fair Vote movement or electoral reform, come out anyways (and bring a friend). The atmosphere is always casual and everyone has a great time!

We’re usually on the main floor – take a left after coming in. But depending on number of attendees, we may move upstairs to accommodate more people. Be sure to look for us both upstairs and downstairs.

The theme for this meeting is organizing the “Vote YES to MMP” Campaign for the Oct 10th referendum on electoral reform. Local and province-wide strategy will be discussed, and plans for reaching over 1 million local voters will be struck.

The Pub Night is at the friendly Canal Royal Oak Pub at Colonel By & the Queensway (221 Echo Drive. Website: http://www.royaloakpubs.com/canal.html ).

The meetup group used to have about 9 members, now it has 69. Here’s hoping that’s a sign of things to come.

I like democracy. I like having the right to vote for a party I believe in. But my vote doesn’t usually count for much. I’ve been voting Green since the late ’90s ¹. Since then, the only tangible result of my vote has been about $4 awarded to the federal Green Party in federal funding.

Even though roughly 500,000 Canadians voted Green in the last election, we didn’t win any seats. Why? Because our votes were spread evenly across the country, instead of clumped into a few ridings in one of this country’s many regions. If there was a mass migration of Greens into ridings in Ontario, we’d be able to take roughly 12 seats²

So I’m happy that Ontario has put together a Citizens’ Assembly to look into ways of improving our provincial electoral system. The result was presented (with little media attention) in mid-May. The system has the following features:

1. Ontario will have 129 seats in the provincial legislature.
   
2. 90 seats will be “local” (ie, associated with a given riding).
   
3. 39 seats will be “list” (ie, parties submit an ordered list of people to represent them).
   
4. List members will be awarded in a manner that tops up the number of their local seats. If a party gets 40% of the popular vote, but only 30% of the local seats then they will be given an extra 10% more seats from the list seats.
   
5. Voters will be presented with a ballot that has two parts: a local vote, and a party vote.

I’m not entirely happy with the proposal. The whole idea of “topping up” strikes me as overly complex. The percentage of list seats is quite low (it’s only 30% of the total) – I would rather see it at something closer to 50%.

Having said that, the proposal is better than our current system. It lowers the barrier to entry felt by smaller parties, while preserving local representation. As such, I’ll be doing what I can to support it.

It looks like the Yes Campaign is being run by the folks at Fairvote Canada. I’ve sent of my email asking to get involved. I encourage you to do the same.

1. After a brief flirtation with spoiling my ballot, and an even shorter flirtation with the NDP (back)
2. This is an extremely conservative estimate. The assumption behind it is that a riding in Ontario has 75,000 registered voters. If 40,000 people decide to vote Green in each riding, then we could spread the 500,000 Green votes across 12 ridings. Of course, most candidates win with a minority of the votes (40%ish, say), so we could probably squeeze another few Green seats out of those 500,000 votes. But keep in mind that most seats have fewer than 75,000 voters registered in them. In PEI, the average is closer to 27,000. (back)

24%

That’s right. You heard me.

24%

The Green Party received 24% of the votes in London North Centre last night. That’s 9,864 votes. We came in second behind the winning Liberal. CBC described the response by saying “Elizabeth May failed to become the first Green Party member of Parliament” – but they have it wrong. This isn’t a loss, it’s an accomplishment. This is our best showing yet, and (hopefully) a sign of things to come.

Part of me insists that by-elections are weird things, and that this doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Which, in a lot of ways is true. Even if the next federal election is in March, a lot can happen between now and then. But it shows two things: that Elizabeth May can do very, very well in a riding; and that Canadians are ready to give the Greens a chance.

Hat tip: Thanks Ottawa Greens for letting me know about this before I even hit the news sites this morning.

Apparently the Ontario government has been doing a reasonable job at reducing medical wait times. Statistics about wait times are available at www.ontariowaittimes.com.

I’d always thought of geothermal as an option for more volcanically active parts of the world. It turns out that it’s a viable possibility in Ontario as well. Gladwell’s post is about his father’s experience installing a geothermal heating system (at a cost of $25,000), for an ongoing saving of $1,800+ annually.

Today the press was awash with news that the Ontario government will be reviewing how municipal services are financed and delivered. The review is slated to take 18 months, will probably deal with municipal delivery of health, housing, and social services. The long timeline means that it will end after the upcoming municipal and provincial elections.

The review is a good idea. The timing of the upcoming provincial election means that even a shorter review wouldn’t have a chance to be implemented anyway, so there isn’t much of a difference. The Tory budget cuts of the 1990s downloaded many responsibilities onto municipalities, since then, there does not seem to have been a great deal of research (by the government) on ways to improve the situation.

My only disappointment is that the review will not cover taxation issues. Currently, in Ottawa, the city pays for about 30% of the services in question. Since the city pays for it, and the city is financed by property taxes, that’s the same as saying that 30% of the cost of provincial services comes out of property taxes. According to the provincial Conservatives, no other province uses property taxes to fund services that should be delivered by the province (and whose fault is that, Mr. Tory?).

Sadly, the Green Party of Ontario hasn’t gotten a press release out on the subject. I don’t know what it will say, but I hope it would be something on the lines of:

1. Property taxes are a bad way to finance any kind of service. They should be replaced with income tax, and (possibly) a special tax on the sale of property.
   
2. Municipalities should be able to levy their own taxes, either on income or sales.
   
3. For services that incur a cost for every municipal resident, such as water treatment, and sewage treatment, users should pay based on use. For service costs that are based on the location of a residence (such as road maintenance, water delivery, or sewar maintenance), residences should be charged based on the amount of infrastructure necessary to get their cars/water/crap from point A to point B.
   
4. To help pay for the cost of public transit, residents of houses that are poorly served by public transit should have to pay more for road maintenance.

In my mind, the taxes/fees that people pay should be based on their use, and based on the needs of others. If we directly tie the use of some finite resource to the cost of using it, people are more likely to be careful about its use. There are many services (such as social housing and community health) that are fundamentally helpful to society – as such, they should be paid for out of income taxes, and other mechanisms that are based on someone’s ability to pay.

The sitting opposition parties did their usual dance of rage. The Conservative critic (local MPP Lisa MacLeod) complained that the duration of the study was too long, and that examining the problem is a stand-in for raising the transfer payments to municipalities. The NDP critic complained that considering possible solutions is evidence that the current government doesn’t have a solution of its own. Great job. Way to offer alternative an vision.