Justin Trudeau is probably the first politician I can think of who knows this stuff already. 

Also, I’ll bet you are reading this on a Smart Phone. 

“Ms. Kocar said her first attempts at market research began with trips to Starbucks stores and nail salons, where she would find [social media] users and ask them what they did and did not like about the app. She got lots of information, but wanted more. Hence, the focus group. 

Teenagers being teenagers, the room was full of angst and contradictions. They love Instagram, the photo-sharing app, but are terrified their posts will be ignored or mocked. They feel less pressure on Snapchat, the disappearing-message service, but say Snapchat can be annoying because disappearing messages make it hard to follow a continuing conversation. They do not like advertisements but also do not like to pay for things.

At one point a questioner asked the group when they were least likely to be online. “When I’m in the shower,” a girl responded. Nobody laughed, because it was barely an exaggeration. About three-quarters of United States teenagers have access to a mobile phone, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. Most go online daily and about a quarter of them use the Internet “almost constantly.”

Comments (8)

Good Lord. 

Look, pal, we are all sorry you had to take time out from rolling around naked in piles of money to type up a too-long, too-self-involved, too-boring blog post about YOUR ALL-CAPS LATEST BOOK TITLE. But we are confident your agent will now know how to make full and frequent use of the resulting pathos to squeeze out yet more kajillions out of the wallets of your increasingly-desperate publishers/producers for yet another instalment in the crypto-racist Schwarzeneggar-meets-Lord-of-the-Rings paean to rape. 

So carry on as you were. You were planning to anyway.

Comments (4)

Sloane pins Roxy when rawhide-related New Year’s resolutions get too hard to keep. 

 

Comments (0)

Here’s the reformed Hot Nasties playing ‘I Am A Confused Teenager’ this Summer in Maine.  Pierre and me first played that song 35 years ago in Calgary.

Figured it’d be a good way to send off 2015.  May your 2016 be similarly youthful, but not so confused.

Comments (2)

As 2015 winds to a close, I am grateful for a lot of stuff. To wit:

• Got to marry my best friend in Kennebunkport.  (Added bonus: she is a genius super model who loves punk rock.)
• Had all six of our kids – and all our family and friends, save and except those fighting an election campaign – there with us.  (Added bonus: no fistfights broke out, and no one was arrested, to my knowledge.)
• Moved into new house with aforementioned genius punk rock-loving super model. (Added bonus: she hasn’t kicked me out yet.)
• Worked on (and am working on) a ton of projects – rewrite of the new book, new Sirius XM radio show with my bud Charles Adler, new syndicated column with Troy Media, rejig of a new and improved www.warrenkinsella.com.  (Added bonus: a cool new TV project is coming, too.)
• SFH got to open for the Palma Violets at a sold-out Toronto show.  The Hot Nasties reunited. (Added bonus: no arrests of any band members, to my knowledge.)
• Business at Daisy Group was good and getting even gooder – recession notwithstanding. (Added bonus: my colleagues, who made it all happen.)
• And other stuff. (Added bonus: I’m going to stop saying “added bonus,” now, and get to that poll you were promised in the headline.)

So, here’s the poll.  I’m putting it up because I find a lot of these media year-end poll/list thingies fun to read, but possibly not so representative of what real folks think.  So, herewith and hereupon, here’s a Highly Scientific™ Poll about what you think was the biggest event(s) of the year.  Vote now, vote often – and happy 2016!

[polldaddy poll=9252556]

Comments (6)

I was on a CTV panel when the Speech from the Throne was read out.  This part wasn’t a surprise, but I was surprised the Liberals were doubling down on it:

“The Government will . . . take action to ensure that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system.”

There are ten reasons I can think of, off the top of my head no less, why they are wrong to ram this through, as they seem intent on doing. Here they are.

1. The government has no specific mandate for any specific change. They need to go and get one. Four sentences on page eight of a glossy campaign document that was likely read by only a few hundred Canadians isn’t sufficient.

2. A change – whether to ranked ballots, or proportional representation, mandatory voting, online voting, or whatever – like this is very big. Any government who wishes to make a change to the way our democracy actually functions needs to be acting (and seen to be acting) in a way that is quintessentially democratic. Refusing to listen to critics isn’t being democratic.

3. The likely changes seem to be weighted in favour of the incumbent Liberal government. That’s wrong. It renders the whole thing illegitimate from the start, and possibly illegal.

4. It’s being rushed. A wholesale and undefined revision of voting laws by 2017? Is any group of people clamouring for that much change, that fast? Is it possible to revise approximately 150 years of voting rules in about 15 months? Maybe – but if you have a solution to a problem, you need to persuade the people (who are the bosses, after all) that they have a problem that is worth solving.

5. Several provinces, including Ontario during an election in which I was involved, have sought a mandate to change election rules. Every one of them went down to defeat. The federal government needs to pay heed to that – but they’re not.

6. It’ll be challenged in court, and possibly hung up for years. In particular, it’ll be noted under section three of the Charter – the document, note well, that was birthed by the current Prime Minister’s father – no government is permitted to override “the right to vote.” What does that mean? Well, our highest court in Figueroa [1 SCR 912, 2003 SCC 37] decreed: “In a democracy, sovereign power resides in the people as a whole and each citizen must have a genuine opportunity to take part in the governance of the country through participation in the selection of elected representatives.” The Supremes are likely to be sympathetic to an argument that a ill-defined, rammed-through gutting of election laws doesn’t give the people “a genuine opportunity to take part.”

7. It is politically unwise. When Stephen Harper tried to rush through changes to election financing laws, ones that he too had made passing reference to in a just-held election campaign, Liberals were rightly incensed – and they very nearly defeated Harper for trying to rig the rules in his own favour. The changes being suggested by Trudeau’s government are far more fundamental – they go to the very heart of our democracy itself. That’s more important than financing of political parties.

8. Proportional representation, in countries which practice it, leads to instability. Majorities become rare, and continual election cycles become the norm. Simultaneously, fringe groups – neo-Nazis and the like – start to win seats, and acquire legitimacy as a result.

9. Ranked ballots – which the Liberals likely favour, because it favours them – is also problematic. Does a ranked system truly reflect a voter’s voting preferences? (Probably not.) Doesn’t it result in more voting errors? (It does.) Does lower turnout happen? (Usually.) Doesn’t it produce lots of run-offs, which paradoxically leads back to the very system that the government is seeking to change in the first place? (Um, yes. Yes it does.)

10. It’s our democracy, not a particular political party’s. It isn’t a perfect electoral system, but it has been at the centre of collective efforts to produce a near-perfect nation. Mess with it at your own risk, Mr. Trudeau.

Comments (120)

As (the incredibly proud) father to a citizen of the Carcross-Tagish First Nation, and as someone who has tried to navigate the relevant Ottawa bureaucracy (Conservative and Liberal), I encourage you to read this.

There’s no First Nations free lunch. And there’s no government that hasn’t treated First Nations peoples like they’re citizens of the Third World. 

Comments (4)

Typing up lists of the year’s political winners and losers is usually a pretty straightforward proposition: simply declare the winners of elections are godlike geniuses, and dismiss the losers as complete dummies. Per that hoary old political axiom, victory has a thousand fathers, and defeat is an orphan.

And, true to form, plenty of pundits and prognosticators have indeed bravely determined that (a) Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party are heroes and (b) Stephen Harper, Tom Mulcair and their political parties are zeroes.

Trudeau and Team Grit won a stunning victory in October, yes. And Messrs. Harper and Mulcair indubitably lost what they had – a strong majority government and Official Opposition, respectively. But there’s more to political 2015 than that. And regurgitating the Blindingly Obvious is, well, being Blindingly Obvious. (And boring.)

Herewith, then, a list of 2015’s somewhat-less-obvious political winners and losers, with the reasons why.

Gutsiest political move: Tom Mulcair. The NDP leader – who, if the mutterings of anonymous Dipper strategists hold true, is soon to be the former NDP leader – did something during Election 2015 that you rarely, ever see in our politics: he was a frontrunner who took a very risky stand, one that he knew might cost him his frontrunner status. And it did. Mulcair’s refusal to go along with the Conservatives’ niqab-bashing was quite brave – particularly when you consider that most of his party’s seats were in Quebec, where aversion to the niqab (and the hijab) has always been high. Mulcair’s refusal to go along with thinly-veiled Islamaphobia precipitated a dramatic drop in the polls, and Justin Trudeau thereby became the only viable alternative to Harper. It may be small comfort when it comes time to write his memoirs – but history should record Tom Mulcair’s stance as a gutsy one.

Dumbest political move(s): the Conservative campaign. When political strategists know they are losing, they typically do one of two things. One, they dust off their C.V., and start quietly looking for greener pastures. Or, two, they douse themselves with gasoline and light a match, seeking to go out in a blaze of glory. The Conservative Party – led by Jenni Byrne, Guy Giorno and others – opted for the latter. In early October, when they still had a chance at re-election, the Conservative brain trust bizarrely decided to stop talking about the economy, and shriek endlessly about Muslims instead. So, they announced the creation of something called the “barbaric practices hotline,” which everyone knew was aimed at Muslims. It was “standing up for our values,” said Immigration minister Chris Alexander. It was “disgusting,” said Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, and most of the country agreed with him. A few days later, Byrne et al. made a bad situation worse. They put their leader together with former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, and invited an astounded media to take photographs. Is it ever a good idea to espouse law-and-order themes whilst simultaneously campaigning with a crack-using, drunk-driving xenophobe? Um, no.

Craftiest political move: the Liberal pledge to never “go neg.” Long before he won the Liberal leadership in April 2013, Justin Trudeau solemnly pledged to never “go neg” – in the parlance of political consultants, to unleash a barrage of attack ads and nasty invective against one’s opponents. After he won the Liberal leadership, Trudeau mainly kept his vow – until Summer 2015, that is, when his party had slipped from first place to third. At that point, Trudeau continued to pledge “sunny ways” on the campaign trail – while also pummeling his opponents in advertising and (particularly) leader’s debates. In the latter case, Trudeau gave far better than he got, and left Messrs. Harper and Mulcair gasping for air, and wondering what had gone wrong. Now, Trudeau wasn’t the first politician to promise to never go neg while going neg – in recent Canadian history, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty did so in every one of his winning campaigns – and he won’t be the last. Because it pays dividends. (Oh, and Gerald Butts: the former Cape Bretoner was one of the guys who advised McGuinty to pursue the no neg/go neg strategy in 2003, 2007 and 2011 – and he did so again with Trudeau in 2015. And it worked, didn’t it?)

Most disappointing political move: the crummy candidates, in every party. It wasn’t the fault of social media, either. Social media simply provides a platform for crazy people to say crazy things – and for campaign war rooms, or the media, to thereafter publicize the craziness. (It’s been plenty nutty in past campaigns, believe me.) But the sheer volume of insanity and inanity in Campaign 2015 simply dwarfs everything that has gone before it: Truthers. Hitler comparisons. Racists. Anti-Semites. Threats. Stalkers. And even a guy who peed in a cup when he thought no one was looking. It was appalling, it was disgusting, and it reflected badly on the leaders of every party – because every leader signed the nomination papers of each and every one of those kooky candidates. And we wonder why people don’t vote as much as they used to. Wonder no more, etc.
 
All that notwithstanding, 2016 begins with the country in a better mood. You don’t have to be a card-carrying Liberal to agree that people generally seem to like Justin Trudeau – or, at the very least, they are prepared to give him some time to make a few moves of his own.

Will they eventually turn against him? Of course! They always do, with every leader.

And then, before you know it, we’ll be back in another election campaign – and we’ll have plenty of new examples of political moves that were gutsy, or dumb, or crafty or disappointing.

Comments (20)

Also, are there any new seat sales to the country of Islam? And do any other Canadian country and western singers get entire legal codes named after them?

(And, yes, folks, it’s “real” account, densely populated. I strongly suspect it’s fake, however. But it’s revealing, in the Trump Era, that we can’t be so sure anymore.)

Comments (8)

God bless Yoko Ono, eh?

    

Comments (0)