When regulation fails New Brunswick

For many people, the idea of government regulation is inherently bad, conjuring up images of useless red tape, bumptious bureaucrats and endless paper shuffling. But when regulations fail, the answer seems to be that we need more regulations.

But deregulation has its own problems. The recent global economic meltdown finds its source in the deregulation of American markets, which allowed the creation of sub-prime mortgages and other sketchy “financial instruments.” Deregulation, combined with poor government oversight, resulted in the collapse of a major Wall Street bank, which triggered the collapse of other over-extended financial institutions around the globe.

If Canada has escaped the worst of this meltdown, it is because the chartered banks and investment dealers in our country are well regulated and government oversight is strict. This would be an example of “smart regulation”, a set of rules that are affordable, effective and enforced.

The most difficult challenge for the Government of New Brunswick is enforcing the rules that it has set for itself through regulation. There are many areas of regulation is not being enforced by Government, either due to a lack of resources or a lack of political will. This is not only causing Government to lose millions in potential revenue, this lax attitude towards regulation has already cost New Brunswickers tens of millions of dollars and has the potential to cost millions more.

There are three outstanding New Brunswick examples where the failure of Government to enforce its own regulation has failed New Brunswickers.

The first example has to do with the oversight of private pension plans. When the St. Anne Nackawic Pulp Company unexpectedly declared bankruptcy in 2004, the pension plan set up for employees at the mill was seriously under-funded. This caused great distress for many employees and retirees who were counting on a fully funded pension plan for their retirement.

Although many factors contributed to the under-funding of the plan, the Provincial Government failed in its responsibility to provide the necessary regulatory oversight to this pension plan, mostly due to leaving staff positions unfilled. Further, it failed to act in accordance with its own regulations when the pension plan was found in an under-funded situation in the years prior to the closure of the plant.

The second example is with regard to La Caisse Populaire du Shippigan (LCPS). In this infamous example, the LCPS did everything in its power to prevent the oversight and good regulation of this community financial institution. The Auditor-General’s investigation into this matter shows how the LCPS defied the scrutiny of its immediate regulators and how the Provincial Government neglected its responsibility to act promptly when the alarm was finally raised. As the Auditor-General stated in his report: “In hindsight, there were many opportunities where, had rigorous regulatory intervention occurred, the eventual losses incurred at LCPS could have been avoided or at least minimized.”

To salvage the LCPS, and to provide stability to the provincial credit union system, provincial taxpayers had to provide $55 million in funding – a stiff price to pay for a poorly resourced provincial regulator. Clearly, the Government of the day failed us all when it failed to insist on the accountability it had set out in regulation.

The third example of regulatory neglect is happening as you are reading this article, the failure of the Provincial Government to uphold its responsibilities in regulating the poultry market in New Brunswick. In this instance, the Provincial Government is trying to wash its hands of its responsibility to ensure that the poultry market is managed to the benefit of producers, processors and consumers.

This dispute has already cost jobs in the Madawaska area and a failure to intervene has implications for the poultry sector across Canada. However, rather than fulfilling its regulatory responsibilities, the word from the Government is that this is just a dispute between two private sector companies.

Unfortunately, this was the same kind of answer given when the St. Anne Nackawic pension plan was discovered to be in an under-funded position or when LCPS was evading the oversight of its regulators. “It’s not our responsibility,” claims the Government. However, when the law states that the Province is responsible to regulate a sector, whether it is pensions, credit unions or agriculture, you cannot absolve yourself of these duties so simply.

New Brunswickers are deserving of regulations that are affordable, effective and enforced. We all end up paying the price when the Provincial Government neglects its responsibilities.

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Originally published in the Telegraph Jornal May 13, 2011

An Imperfect Mirror: How the media and public opinion research industry fail the Canadian electorate.

At the start of the 2008 Federal Election, I was having coffee with a friend who also works in the public opinion research industry. We started talking about what our various colleagues would be doing over the course of the campaign. Given that only a few companies would be doing party work, the rest would be looking to pair up with media outlets. A quick review revealed little change from 2006 – CPAC, the Parliamentary Channel, would continue their relationship with Nik Nanos. CBC would partner with Environics and the Toronto Star would continue with Ekos.

But I was mystified with the approach announced by the Globe and Mail. Although they say they are Canada’s national newspaper, the editors at the Globe decided that they would not commission any national polling. Instead, they decided to focus on “battleground ridings” where, they claimed, the election would be won or lost.

This would be an innovative way at looking at the election contest, but I was disturbed that all the “battleground ridings” selected for this research were located entirely in the suburban areas of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. “What about Halifax?” I asked. “With Alexa McDonough gone, all three parties are competitive there. What about Winnipeg or Quebec City? There are definitely seats at play there.”

My friend sighed. “When the Globe talks about “battleground ridings”, they aren’t talking about Liberals versus Conservatives, they are talking about the Globe versus the Toronto Star, the Montreal Gazette and the Vancouver Sun.” In other words, the research that the Globe was commissioning was more about winning new subscribers than about who would be winning seats.

I felt embarrassed about my naïveté. But, on reflection, what other answer was I expecting?

For years now, I have been concerned about the relationship between the major media outlets and the public opinion research industry. It is no secret that media outlets and the public opinion research industry enjoy a symbiotic relationship where the media outlets provide coverage (and credibility) to polling firms in exchange for newsworthy research results, usually in the form of voting intentions or leadership perceptions. Hot polling results helps sell newspapers or attract viewers. It helps a newspaper or television network (or consortium of the same) establish a reputation for having the latest information or, better yet, the keenest insight into the unfolding events of the day.

Being on the front page or in a nationally televised interview promotes a public opinion research firm and its principals in a way that paid advertising cannot. Appearing on the national news or in the headline story gives credibility to the pollsters who, just as one hand washes the other, lend their new-found star power to their media partners.

While this relationship helps both the media and the survey companies reach their corporate goals, there are reasons to be concerned about the way this relationship is influencing our political system.

As with most problems that affect our political culture, this situation did not occur overnight. It evolved out of a promising beginning where the large media outlets would invest in public opinion research to obtain a deeper understanding of the electorate, our issues and our motivations. They would use the expertise of prominent firms to set the methodology, ask questions, analyse data and present the results. The media partner would then determine the newsworthiness of the results and the amount of coverage that would be given to reporting the same.

The first sign of trouble came when the editors and producers wanted to have more control over the methodology that would be used by the research firms, such as the timing of interviews or the questions that would be used. At first blush, this seems harmless enough. After all, shouldn’t the client get what they want?

But we are not talking about a simple client/supplier relationship. We are talking about a partnership where a research firm provides polling results (and their good name) to a media outlet to generate content for their audience. This implies that both partners bring their sensibilities to the table and act in accordance with the tenets of their respective professions.

However, what happens when the desires of the media partner conflict with the standards of their research firm? Usually, it means that the media outlet gets a more compliant public opinion research firm. It is not only the former research firm that loses out; the audience loses the benefit of a more rigorous approach to public opinion.

The relationship between the media and the public opinion research industry has also been negatively affected by the level of resources available to undertake quality research. Even without the recent round of media cutbacks, editors and producers are confronted by limited (and shrinking) resources for their newsrooms. While proprietary polling results often provide the exclusive stories and headlines that most political coverage cannot, there is a cost involved. What is less well-known is that this cost is most often borne by the public opinion research firms seeking profile rather than by the media outlets who want the data.

In the media post-mortem after the 2004 Federal Election, a leading figure in the industry admitted that his firm spent “two or three times” the amount of money provided by their media sponsors for the election survey work that they undertook. In other words, the research company subsidized the research that was “sponsored” by their media partners. 

If there is a general business principle in the public opinion research world, it is the maxim that “you get what you pay for.” While no sensible public opinion firm would cheat its own reputation, the reality is that, with minimal budgets and impending deadlines, the temptation to do only a superficial analysis of the results, often in the form of “horse race” numbers on voting intentions or the rise and fall of political personalities, is strong. The commentary of the researcher that often accompanies the reporting of these results is more often based on speculation than on any hard research results. After all, additional research would add cost and complexity, neither of which is desired by either partner in this process.  

The desire to reduce cost has also driven down the number of people interviewed in surveys on public policy or politics. Fifteen years ago, it was common for public opinion research firms to interview 1,200 or 1,500 Canadians for a national survey that would appear in the media. The current standard for media surveys is 1,000 interviews, which is cheaper to administer.  

This is where the “margin of error”, the basic measure of survey data precision, comes into play. While there may not be a significant difference in the overall margin of error between 1,500 or 1,000 interviews (+/-2.6% and +/-3.2%, respectively), the main impact of these decreased national sample sizes are found in the demographic or regional results that are based on a smaller number of interviews.

For example, British Columbia comprises about 13 percent of the total Canadian population. In a national survey with 1,500 respondents, the BC results would be based on 195 interviews and have a margin of error of +/-7.2 percent. With only 1,000 interviews nation-wide, a total of 130 interviews would be conducted in BC, with resulting margin of error of +/- 8.8 percent.

In either case, the high margin of error in BC means that any change in the results from that province need to be eyed carefully. What may be a significant shift in voting intentions to a reporter or an editor may be nothing more than a change within the margin of error, especially if that margin could be as high as eight points. This detail is often lost on the producer or editor, with the result that survey numbers that should be treated with caution are treated as an absolute fact.

This results in an excess of headlines that are based on nothing more than the higher variation created by results drawn from a small numbers of interviews. An urgent news item that shows a particular leader falling behind in Quebec or a headline declaring a surge in support on the Prairies may be nothing more than a statistical phantom.

Further, with the higher margin of error for these regions or sub-groups, these numbers are bound to change with the next wave of interviews and generate a whole new set of headlines (“Leader rebounds in Quebec”, “Political Chinook evaporates support on Prairies”). Talk about a self-perpetuating media bonanza!

Exclusivity means exactly that – exclusion. Once a media organization purchases research results, even at a deeply discounted rate, they are committed to obtaining the most value they can from their results. They promote their own results and ignore all others in the view that only their survey results provide a true picture of the complex dynamics of the electorate. Of course, promoting your results to the exclusion of all others means that the audience only gets a partial picture of what is going on. This may be good marketing but this practice forms an additional barrier to a better understanding of the electorate.

Taken together, the collusion between the media and their public opinion research partners present a fairly distressing concern for Canadians who want to be informed about their political situation. But there is another question about the ability of the media to serve the information needs of the voting public.

According to the Canadian National Election Studies, which has investigated the opinions of voters in every national election since 1965, arriving at a voting decision is a complex process for many voters. Many factors are taken into consideration but, overall, the policies promoted by the parties and perceptions of their ability to deliver on these policies account for about one-half of a voting decision for an individual voter. The remaining one-half of a voting decision is almost evenly split between perceptions of the party leader and the local candidate, with the local candidate a more important factor in rural ridings and leaders more important in multi-seat urban areas.

It is a reality that the media, especially television, has a difficult time covering or explaining the policies promoted or defended by the various parties. There is the difficulty of trying to compress complex policy nuances into a few paragraphs of script or column inches. Even in the so-called “New Media”, the policy differences between the parties rarely receive coverage, let alone the critical coverage needed by the Canadian who wants to cast an informed vote.

Stories that focus on personalities and interpersonal conflict have more sizzle than substantive features that contrast and compare different party platforms. While party leaders account for about one-quarter of a voting decision, media analysis from past elections shows that stories about party leaders and other personalities dominate media coverage. Even in the “Free Trade Election” of 1988, coverage of the merits of the various platforms proposed by the parties took a distant back seat to the coverage of the party leaders.

One television reporter told me of a talk given by a senior network editor to the local news team on how political reporting would change within their organization. This new way would emphasize “politics without process” and “conflict without context” to make the stories sharper and less dependant on the knowledge of the viewer. The focus would be on the here and now, rather than on how these current events reflect the past or how they would affect the future. In other words, completely disconnected from the continuum of existence. This is an apt parable for the way that the media and the public opinion industry are failing us as voters.

Easy Answers for Wicked Problems

Several years ago, researchers and public administrators in the United Kingdom came up with a new term for problems of surpassing difficulty. These “wicked” problems were deemed to be so because the solutions were often worse in the short-term than the problem itself. In addition to costing money or straining the capacity of government, the solutions to these problems would likely be unpopular or controversial. Wicked indeed.

The most frequent strategy adopted by governments in the face of these wicked problems were coping mechanisms, an attempt to delay the inevitable or to tread water in the hope that a solution that was affordable, non-controversial and easy to implement would miraculously appear. There was little interest in pursuing lasting solutions, especially if these solutions required hard work and sacrifice, so the problems become even more intractable, even more wicked.

New Brunswick is facing its own share of “wicked” problems, some of our own making. Although there are many issue areas that fall into this category, from the ageing of our society to the high levels of illiteracy in our workforce, the provincial deficit and debt are currently in the public spotlight.

As a Province, we are being told that we are on the brink of fiscal doom, if not already falling into the abyss. Rather than stiffening our resolve to deal with the problems at the root of our fiscal imbalance, this attitude of panic is encouraging further recklessness – provoking half-thought-out solutions to poorly understood problems. The end result pushes us further from the prudence and discipline that our current situation requires.

The recent round of public meetings and meetings with stakeholders is a good example of a process that encourages a belief in easy answers or, as a cynic might put it, “deficit elimination without tears.” As Finance Minister Blaine Higgs lamented, there were few requests for reduce government services and many demands to maintain, if not increase, spending. There were plenty of easy answers offered, from reducing the number of MLAs to instituting health care user fees to eliminating bilingual services, which would do little to solve our fiscal situation while fraying our social fabric.

Even the calls to hike the HST or to put tolls on our highways fall into the “easy answer” category. Both items have had a thorough public debate, whether it was the 1999 Provincial Election (highway tolls) or the more recent Select Committee on Taxation, which concluded that increasing the HST would have a disproportionate impact on lower income New Brunswickers.

There is no question that increasing the HST would provide significant additional revenues to the Provincial Government. Even then, it would only reduce the current deficit by a third. The main reason I classify this as an “easy answer” is that many of those who advocate this tax increase consider it as their first and only solution. Instead, hiking the HST should only be considered as our last resort, a solution to be applied only when all other ways to rectify our budgetary deficiency have been exhausted.

As for highway tolls, I would argue that, when this idea is raised, most New Brunswickers believe that the burden of this new revenue would fall disproportionately on commercial traffic. Further, it is assumed there would be little or no impact on the price of goods which are shipped by truck.

Increasing the HST or instituting highway tolls are easy answers to the Provincial Government’s revenue problems. However, they are unlikely to provide any long-term solution and would likely end as a disappointment for those who are urging these “easy answers” on Government.

If we are willing to face the facts about our situation, rather than succumbing to deficit hysteria, there are solutions to this wicked problem. Instead of adding to the tax burden as the action of first resort, the Government must first put its own house in order.

Expenditure control appears to be the main problem for the Government of New Brunswick. For example, rather than being castigated for going $22 million over budget in the past two years, the Regional Development Corporation (RDC) was praised by MLAs when the Corporation appeared before the Legislative Committee this past week. Talk about setting a bad example for other government organizations.

In addition to stronger spending controls, the operations of Government need a complete overhaul. In too many cases, government departments are being asked to cope with inadequate technology or outdated business procedures. The lack of efficient processes allows too much to slip between the cracks, whether it is an uncollected debt or a lost opportunity for revenue. Most of all, these outdated processes are having a negative impact on service, the main way that we assess value for our tax dollars.

Rather than grasping at easy answers, Government needs to understand that difficult problems sometimes require difficult solutions.

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Originally published in the Telegraph-Jopurnal

The Challenges in Governing New Brunswick

Thank you for your invitation to be part of this evening’s conversation.

I think that we have all heard the many challenges in governing our province.  Perhaps that is part of the problem.  We are so familiar with the challenges but are not so familiar with the solutions and even less familiar with the opportunities.

There is much to be praised about New Brunswick if we weren’t so caught up in the blame game.

Frankly, and I say this with all respect, the only way to win the blame game is not to play.

A famous part-time resident of New Brunswick, of Campobello Island to be specific, was Eleanor Roosevelt.  She said, “It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.”

It is a good thing that she was not commenting on public policy in New Brunswick.

The first reaction, possibly from a member of the Government, is that cursing the darkness is something that we have always done.  It is something we do well.  The darkness is there to be cursed, after all.

The next reaction, possibly from the Opposition, is about the location of the candle. Where will this candle be?  Will it stay in one place?  Or will it alternate between a government riding and an opposition riding?

The editors from a local paper want to know why there will only be a single candle? And, once it is lit, how long will it last?  Will there be another candle once the first candle is gone?

 “And who will be supplying the candle?” asks the public sector union.  “Will public money be required?  Or are the Irvings involved with this so-called candle?”

I could go on but I will tell you one thing - Eleanor won’t be cursing just the darkness after hearing this.

This disposition towards negativity is the single biggest challenge in governing New Brunswick.  The habits of criticism have become so ingrained, so much a fabric of how we see government, that we have become ungovernable.

Rather than considering an idea on its merits, we think first of the potential pitfalls. We get so preoccupied with figuring out why things cannot work.  Or, if they do, why they only work for someone else.

In the rush to criticize, we never give ourselves the opportunity to consider the merits of a new idea or approach.

I appreciate the opportunity to have a conversation about the challenges we face in governing New Brunswick.

I work in the world of public opinion and public policy. I study how the attitudes, opinions and values we have shape the decisions we make as citizens, as consumers and as voters.

It used to be said that religion and language were the defining factors within New Brunswick politics.  Two other factors have emerged to take their place.

Norm Betts, a respected professor and former Finance Minister, believes that there is a growing prosperity gap between urban and rural New Brunswick.  More than language or religion, your place of residence is emerging as the main difference in how you think about New Brunswick and how it should be governed.

The prosperity gap is created by the withdrawal of public services from rural areas and their concentration in the larger urban areas.  Just as this change affects the viability of rural communities, this creates an advantage for the individuals, entrepreneurs and businesses in the urban areas.

People who have access to markets, government services and the levers of power think very differently about government than do those who do not.

The second difference is education.  Those with higher levels of education – and this includes tradespeople as well as those with a university degree – think very differently about the Province and how it is governed than those without a post-secondary education.

Education determines economic opportunity.  The more educated you are, the better your life chances.  If you struggle with literacy, your opportunities are becoming fewer and farther between.

Although language is still a factor in how issues are debated, we are already seeing how education is shaping a new “community of interest” between residents of Dieppe and the suburban areas of Fredericton and Saint John. Bilingualism, which aligns closely with education, is becoming increasingly common in this new “New Brunswick.”

There is one New Brunswick, without access to government services or a well-educated population. There is another, which has ready access to services and higher levels of education. You do not have to be a fortune teller, or a pollster, to say which one stands a better chance for success.

There are those who strongly believe that “demography is destiny.”  They point to the changing nature of our population as a sign of concern – as if growing old automatically means that you become a burden to society or that being young means that you are rich with untapped potential waiting to be realized.

Like most generalizations, this is wrong.  If you look at the people disembarking from the cruise ships in Saint John, you realize the economic potential of an active and affluent older generation. A few blocks away, you can see the toll that addiction and poverty is taking on our unfortunate youth.

In many ways, it is our values that shape our world view, not the other way around. The values we hold determine the ways we vote, the activities we engage in and the things we share.

Our values do come into conflict - the struggle between tradition and modernity, for example.  Or the conflict between those with a broad, global conception of New Brunswick and those who are focussed on the valley and the county.  The signs of these conflicting values are everywhere.

Like most polite people, we can get along with our differences if we adopt a “live and let live” policy.  Our most successful political leaders accept these different viewpoints. They build a bridge between them rather than demanding that people choose sides. Rather than focussing on the differences, they find the common ground.

It is difficult, but it is also possible.

There is a difference between speaking truth to power and spreading lies among the powerless.

It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

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Comments given April 12, 2011 at a public event sponsored by UNB.

Another look at electoral reform

There are two common fallacies that need to be avoided when working in public policy. The first is the belief that “it is old, therefore it is better.” The second is the belief that “it is new, therefore it is better.” While tradition and novelty both have their attraction, there is no substitute for a more rigorous approach to issues. This is especially true with regard to the issue of electoral reform.

Many of the defenders of the current Single Member Plurality system, to give the textbook name to the “First-Past-the-Post” manner by which our MPs are currently selected, point to our inherited electoral tradition as its main defence. Likewise, many proponents of alternate electoral systems, such as a Single Transferable Vote (STV) or Proportional Representation (PR), emphasize the novelty or “more modern” style of these systems as the chief selling point.

Regardless of the system that is championed, it must be acknowledged that the voting decision at the individual level is more complex and nuanced than is commonly thought. The perceptions of the party leaders, local candidates and the policies promoted or critiqued by the parties are taken into account with a variety of other variables, such as media consumption, the influence of neighbours or contact with campaign volunteers, before many voters arrive at a decision.

Rather than deal with this complexity, many try to simplify voter motivations and decisions. Often, this simplification can be misleading, especially when there is a superficial validity that gives these views the appearance of truth.

A good example drawn from the recent election outcome, and one that is often raised by proponents of electoral reform, is the claim that “60 percent of Canadians voted against Stephen Harper” in the recent election. This assumes that the decision to vote for other parties was motivated solely by dislike of the Conservative Leader or his party.

Following this misguided logic, are we then to assume that 70 percent of voters are “against” the New Democrats, that 80 percent of voters are “against” the Liberals and that 96 percent are “against” the Green Party? The underlying theme of this critique is that all of our political parties - and not just the one seated on the Government benches - lack the legitimacy and authority to serve in our Parliament.

Not only does this type of thinking do a disservice to our political parties, it is a perversion of the voting process and our political culture. As anyone who has gone to a ballot box knows, you cast a vote “for” a party or candidate, not “against” one. Therefore, a vote should be interpreted a positive choice rather than a negative one.

A more careful and thoughtful analysis of voting behaviour would dismiss arguments for electoral reform that are driven by superficiality or the desire for a different electoral result.

Some people want to “fix” the electoral process the way that some “fix” horse-races or how others “fix” their pets. They either want an outcome that reflects their own choice or, failing that, neuters the victor. This may satisfy the ardent partisan but it is not a sound basis for electoral reform.

There are many strengths to the “First-Past-the-Post” method of selecting MPs, just as there are many weaknesses in PR and STV systems.

A strength of our current system is that it allows new voices to enter Parliament but encourages political parties to adopt more moderate positions to obtain the broad support of the electorate in order to form government.

Although it took several attempts for Green Party Leader Elizabeth May to win a seat in the House of Commons, she was finally able to do so. Given the Green Party call for PR, it is perhaps an irony that she would have been denied a seat in Parliament under that system, which requires a party to obtain five percent of votes nationally before becoming eligible to be represented in the House. 

As for its moderating influence, the “First-Past-the-Post” system has this effect on all parties. The New Democrats, for example, no longer call for the nationalization of Canadian banks. Neither does the Conservative Party insist on the privatization of CBC Television.

While some may complain that our electoral system drives parties into the “mushy middle”, it is also true that the system encourages parties who take a national rather than a regional perspective. Both the Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois have had their day in the House of Commons but, like the Progressive and Social Credit parties before them, their parties were relatively short-lived and replaced by parties that, in Preston Manning’s phrase, “think big.”

If we were to ask Canadians what their priorities would be for electoral reform, they would express a desire for a system that reduces the influence of money on electoral outcomes and increase the accountability of MPs to their constituents. Further, they would want to reinforce the ability of MPs to represent local concerns and reduce the dominance of central party offices.

All of these goals would be better achieved under our current system than with either a PR or STV system. In fact, moving to either of these systems is more likely to aggravate the problems with diversity of representation, cynicism and voter turnout that currently afflict our political system.

Our electoral system can be improved. Rather than indulging the fallacies of tradition or novelty, we need to understand what Canadians really want out of the electoral process.

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Originally published in The Hill Times, May 23, 2011

Poverty as a Middle Class Issue

There are many points in Canadian history that are the key milestones in defining who we are as a country. Many historians point to the completion of the transcontinental railway, the Battle for Vimy Ridge, or 1921, the year when the majority of Canadians were found to be living in urban, rather than rural, areas of the country, as the key milestones in our evolution.

As with the demographic change noted in 1921, these milestones can be subtle. However, they are no less important than the key dates we commemorate or teach in our schools.

The economic recession of 1989 to 1993 was one of these key milestones. In addition to being a “Made in Canada” recession aimed at cooling an Ontario economy that was deemed to be overheating, this recession was significant because it revealed that most members of the Canadian Middle Class were one paycheque away from living in poverty.

For the first time in our history, the bulwark of our society was found to be vulnerable to fast-moving economic conditions. Although the Great Depression of the 1930s was a deeper and more prolonged economic downturn, it took several years for the most negative impacts to occur. Most families could rely on social networks, savings or other assets to tide them over in the short-term. As these assets were drained, and it became evident that the economy would not rebound, poverty and unemployment spread and the social crisis deepened.

The Great Depression taught a generation of Canadians of the need for personal savings, frugality and self-sufficiency. The hardship and rationing of the Second World War reinforced these lessons and assisted in the creation of a “savings culture” across the country. Even the heady years of post-war economic expansion could not rock the wide-spread belief that individuals and families needed to set aside money for a rainy day.

For many years, social scientists pontificated on this unique attribute of Canadian society. It was used as an example of our inherent conservatism. Some economists commented that the high levels of personal savings hurt our economic growth because it was withholding funds necessary for investment.

By the 1980’s, the belief in personal savings was in serious decline. Between rampant inflation, the easy availability of credit, and the rise of entrepreneurship, Canada had moved from a “savings culture” to a “credit culture.” As long as the monthly payments could be met, Canadians were encouraged to borrow more to sustain the consumer economy.

When the recession hit in 1989, the Canadian manufacturing sector was the hardest hit. Thousands of Canadians earning higher-than-average wages immediately lost their jobs and many thousands more were faced with layoffs and uncertainty. These job losses rippled through our economy. Instead of having personal savings to mitigate the short-term impact, these Canadians were faced with monthly mortgage, car loan and credit card payments.

In contrast to the Great Depression, the impact on these families, and on the country as a whole, was immediate. Further, while the Great Depression had its greatest impact on rural Canadians and the economically vulnerable, this recession had its greatest impact on the urban Middle Class. For the first time in our history, the possibility of a life in poverty became a reality for moderately affluent and previously secure Canadians. 

Although Canada and the global economy continue to experience turmoil, the lessons of this particular recession still remain. Even if it is driven by self-interest, the Canadian Middle-Class has been sensitized to the issue of poverty in our society. In addition to increasing support for voluntary organizations dealing with the economically vulnerable, there is an increased focus on finding solutions to poverty.

Since the Middle Class dominates the electorate, governments have also had to respond to the increased level of concern about poverty issues. Although New Brunswick has pursued the most comprehensive approach in this regard, most Canadian provinces have adopted or are moving to adopt specific poverty reduction strategies.

Although increasing social assistance rates or providing support for food banks can help mitigate the problems of poverty, the search for sustainable, long-term solutions to poverty in our society has become the goal.

The recession of ’89 to ’93 may only be a historical footnote of interest to a few. This event did create a new social consensus to strengthen the social safety net and bring about a greater awareness and sensitivity towards poverty. Twenty years later, we can see the evidence of pro-active and long-lasting measures to address poverty. If this momentum is sustained, and poverty is reduced significantly, this would indeed be an important milestone in Canadian history.

Originally published in the Telegraph Journal October 14, 2011

Paul Thomas on Total Quality Politics

For the Paul Thomas speech, follow this link http://www.optimumonline.ca/pdf/29-1/leadership.pdf

Welcome

Welcome to Total Quality Politics, a blog on the current state of affairs in Canadian and provincial politics.

The name comes from a speech given by Paul Thomas, Professor Emeritus in Political Science at the University of Manitoba to the Institute for Public Administration in Canada (IPAC). In this speech, Dr. Thomas critiques the state of politics and political discourse in Canada. In an age of social media, gotcha journalism, war rooms, microtargetting, and spin over substance, what is the thinking Canadians supposed to do?

The solution is, to adapt a phrase from business schools, to adopt Total Quality Politics. In other words, we can just stop accepting innuendo and gossip as substitutes for analysis and discussion. We can reject character assisnation as the prime pillar of political comunication. We can bring quality back into our advocacy, our organization and our elections.

Stay tuned.