Preparing for the Phoney War

Most jurisdictions in Canada, including New Brunswick, have moved to fixed-date elections. While pre-determined election dates have been the norm for municipalities for many decades, this is a relatively new approach at the provincial and federal level. In fact, the September 22nd provincial election will only be the second time that a fixed date has been used for New Brunswick elections.

While there is general agreement about the benefits of fixed-date elections, the impact on voter behaviour and the political process remains largely unknown. In particular, political parties and decision-makers are largely ignorant of the profound change that set election dates are having on the way they operate.

One of the main reasons advanced for fixed-election dates is that, previously, governments could call an election at their discretion.

Although the benefits of this power is largely overstated, this meant that a party in power could call a vote at a time that was advantageous or postpone a vote if the political omens were unfavourable.

A set election date, we are told, would prevent this abuse of power and provide a clear timeframe for the electorate, which might address concerns over voter turnout.

One clear benefit of set election dates is that it allows the supervising organization, Elections New Brunswick, with plenty of lead time to organize for a province-wide vote. While set election dates are a benefit to Elections NB, it is a mixed blessing for everyone else.

The biggest loser is the governing party, which loses the ability to set the election date at its discretion. The bad news for the party in power does not stop there.

Prior to the call of any election, there is always the period of time when the various parties aggressively jostle for position and where the political rhetoric starts to mount. Although the writ has not dropped, initial messages and tactics are tested and candidates are recruited and profiled.

Under a floating date system, this “phoney war” period was generally limited to the several weeks prior to the election call.

The political parties, including the one in power, needed this time to mobilize their volunteer organizations, finalize election strategies, and prepare for the all-out effort that would cover the six or seven weeks of the election campaign.

However, a set date election dramatically increases the length of the “phoney war” period.

Instead of having an organization that can be called into being on a few weeks notice, the various parties now need to spend months building and maintaining their respective organizations.

Rather than an intense, but brief, period where political volunteers and candidates are pressed into action, this extended period of political activity is far more demanding and requires much more from the volunteers that constitute the backbone of riding-level campaigns.

Sustaining the morale and level of effort over this extended period is 
far more demanding on the governing party, which has more ground to defend, than on the opposition parties.

This extended “phoney war” also undermines many of the other 
advantages that governing parties used to enjoy before fixed date elections.

There is greater public scrutiny of their activities and, months before the election is even called, their activities and initiatives are viewed through the lens of electoral impact.

When a new program or funding announcement is made through the course of a mandate, it is typically treated as government policy. The government politician receives the bulk of media coverage and that is usually the end of it.

However, during the “phoney war”, this announcement is treated in the same way as an election promise, with all that it implies, and all the opposition parties are solicited by the media for their views. The clean “media hit” of before has now become a partisan free-for-all.

Further, given that the electorate knows that an election is impending, any announcement make 
during the “phoney war” period is seen as a partisan exercise rather than the result of good policy or daily governing.

With the electorate already applying an “election discount” to government party initiatives, the increased coverage of opposition views further diminishes the impact of pre-election announcements.

Voters find this extended political season both fatiguing and frustrating. Rather than increasing public interest in the election, voters become alienated when partisan jockeying is seen to overtake the conduct of public business.

Taking the 2010 Provincial Election as a guide, New Brunswick enters the “phoney war” period in the first weeks of May.

At the present time, the Alward Government enjoys all the benefits of incumbency. In a few short weeks, however, they will find that the overall political environment has changed significantly.

- 30 -

This article was originally published in the March 17, 2014 edition of the Telegraph-Journal.

Excessive fees a rebuke to legislative power

When times are tight in government, all sources of revenue come under greater scrutiny. Just as governments have an incentive to cut spending, they have a greater incentive to increase revenue. Increasing taxes is always an option but can be politically unwise. Joseph Necker, who served France’s monarchy prior to the French Revolution, observed that being finance minister was like plucking a goose for its down in that “you want the most amount of feathers with the least amount of hissing.”

In Canada, taxes can only be collected if there is an annual vote of “supply” in their respective legislatures. This is a public vote and, as history reflects, governments can fall if they fail to carry the day on this measure.

But there is another source of revenue that is becoming more important for the government of New Brunswick – a source that is less open to scrutiny and can be changed by cabinet without the approval, or even the awareness, of the legislature. I refer, of course, to the fees that need to be paid for a variety of licences, permits and other administrative items that are part of our daily lives.

While these fees are originally based in a law passed by the legislative body, they can be raised (or lowered) by an order-in-council, a resolution of cabinet. We are informed of these changes, either in a budget speech or press release, but there is no legislative vote to approve these changes.

Since the origins of the British parliamentary system, it has remained a constitutional norm for the executive to seek and obtain annual approval for the budgetary policy of the government. This now leads us to present-day New Brunswick. Much has been made of the recent fee hikes that are occurring across the board. Hunting licences, fishing licences, building permits, licence plates – almost every fee currently charged by the provincial government has been increased by multiples of the rate of inflation.

With a $500 million deficit, the New Brunswick government needs all the money it can get. By increasing fees and other administrative charges, which does not need debate or a vote in the legislature, they are able to get that money. Perhaps this is a way of “getting more feathers with less hissing.”

However, there are limits to the way that government can use fees as a source of revenue. First, a fee that is collected in relation to a service must, in principle, be used to defray the cost of providing the service and not used for any other purpose. The money collected from a hunting license must be used to recover the cost of enforcing wildlife regulations. The money from a building permit must be used to finance building inspections or other directly related activity, and so on.

It is when the money obtained from administrative fees exceeds the cost of providing the related service that government gets itself into trouble. The Supreme Court of Canada in their 1998 decision regarding the Eurig Estate found that any fee that exceeded the cost of providing the service was not a fee at all, but a direct tax. As such, this tax would only be valid if passed by the legislature and could not be assessed by cabinet acting on its own.

One consequence of this judicial decision was that the government of New Brunswick was successfully sued for “unconstitutionally collected taxes” in 2007. Since then, officials within the New Brunswick government apply the “Eurig Test” to fees to ensure that the amount collected does not exceed the cost of related service. However, this is just an administrative step whose authority derives from the desire to comply with a judicial decision.

With the recent debate in the New Brunswick legislature about how money raised by service-specific fees has been used for different purposes and the increased use of fees as part of government revenues, if only as a means of cost recovery, we need to go a step further to ensure that fees are not abused as a revenue source.

A bill should be passed by the New Brunswick Legislature to enshrine the principles highlighted by the Eurig case into law. The principle is simple – no fee should exceed the cost of providing the related service. Further, if the total amount raised by these fees exceeds the amount spent providing the service, then the fee should be automatically reduced and the excess rebated to the fee payer.

Not only would this respect the principle of parliamentary approval regarding revenue and expenditure, it would prevent the abuses that naturally derive from too much executive control of government.

- 30 -

This article was originally published in the March 11, 2014 edition of the Telegraph-Journal.

New Brunswick needs more political will

The response to the recent provincial budget, like the federal budget, has been underwhelming. Both documents are long on hope but short on details, and the general consensus is that damnation by faint praise --“It could have been worse.”

The main difference between these budgets is that there is a light at the end of the federal fiscal tunnel, while the hope for a balanced provincial budget remains dim.

No one needs to tell New Brunswickers that we are facing difficult times. Unemployment levels remain persistently high and we are not seeing the economic or job growth that is occurring in other provinces. Our public infrastructure continues to deteriorate, which further hampers economic vitality. Our social infrastructure, whether it is the need for skills upgrading, combating stubborn illiteracy levels or the plan to aggressively combat poverty, continues to suffer from neglect.

Instead of purposeful action with clear goals and resources, the provincial budget again offered the uninspired incrementalism that has become the default position of our political class. It is no wonder that many New Brunswickers have a certain nostalgia for the days of Louis J. Robichaud and Frank McKenna. While many of the measures they implemented were controversial, and remain so today, they were animated by a belief that New Brunswickers deserved leadership in pursuit of a stronger economy and a more inclusive society.

Not only did these leaders have confidence in themselves and their vision for New Brunswick, they had confidence in the people they worked with and in the people they served. They possessed that quality that seems to elude our leaders today – political will.

Several months ago, a number of leading policy thinkers were brought together to discuss the future of the province. Many topics were discussed and many ideas were offered. Over the course of this discussion, these individuals came to the conclusion that the lack of political will, and not the level of federal transfers, lagging business investment or other economic factors, was the main barrier that is holding New Brunswick back. Without effective and purposeful leadership, they concluded, no good solution or idea will ever come to fruition.

Instead of political will, we have a surplus of political ”won’t.”

We have political leadership that won’t confront the difficult reality of our situation, and certainly won’t engage New Brunswickers in the necessary conversation about the opportunities that are there to be seized. Rather than looking to the advantages, fiscal, social and economic, that could be obtained by modernizing our government and public services, our leadership won’t even acknowledge that our problems have solutions.

Our leadership won’t take a hard look in the mirror to see that they have an obligation to offer something beyond divisive populism or scapegoating. And they won’t acknowledge that they need to offer more than crafted phrases and feel-good sentiments to voters who hunger for something more substantive in the upcoming election.

If we needed more proof about the prevalence of political won’t, we need not look very far. It seems that we are all more preoccupied by the things we won’t do then by the things we say we will do. This approach is inherently negative and, by refusing to set out a positive agenda, we are all cheated in this process.

Just as we need to revive our sense of purpose as a province, we need to recover our sense of confidence. We need to talk about the things that we will do as a province, not dwell on the things we won’t, or shouldn’t, do.

As citizens, we need to tell our leaders that we need them to change their approach to public business. We want to know what they will do, not what they won’t. Will you balance the budget? Will you preserve, if not improve, the quality of service to citizens? Will you give us the leadership to deal with illiteracy? Will you get the economy growing again?

If we don’t, we will continue to hear from our leadership that they won’t rise to this occasion. That they won’t deal with the misallocation of government resources; that they won’t change from the half-hearted incrementalism that is the sum of our current budgetary policy.

As previous leaders have shown, there is a certain magic in boldness. If we convinced ourselves that we could achieve better and acted on this belief, wouldn’t our mutual goals be easier to achieve? Instead of political won’t, we need political will. As the saying goes,” When there is a will, there is a way.”

- 30 -

 

This article was originally published in the February 26, 2014 edition of the Telegraph-Journal.