Finally!

We're Off, Like a Herd of Turtles

Published on May 23, 2004 By IanGillespie In Politics

Ian Welsh, the moderate conservative blogger at Tilting at Windmills and BlogsCanada eGroup, offers these thoughts as the election begins:

"I’ve only seen Jack Layton once. It was budget time in Toronto and I thought I’d go watch city council in session. I arrived late in the day, after work, to one of those interminable sessions where citizens give depositions to the city government...."

"Most of the people obviously cared a great deal. One man had an entire box of documents with him supporting his (true) claim that tenants pay much more tax proportionally than homeowners, another was begging that the city council continue funding the museum he had spent the last 10 years of his life working on."

"Amidst all this – amidst the five minutes that was all these citizens would get, most of the councilors were chatting with each other, clearly reading something else, listening to their aides or wandering in and out of the session. Often, in the midst of the testimony a group of them would laugh. Probably they weren’t laughing at the person who was giving the deposition, but it certainly seemed as if they were."

"There were a few councilors who stood out in this mess, but the one I remember best was Jack Layton...."

"I didn’t and don’t agree with Jack Layton on a number of things. But he impressed me a great deal that day as someone who knew that he was there to listen to citizens as much as to rule them. It’s tempting to cynically say that he was just going through the motions, but his riding was completely safe and it’s more than most of his fellow councilors could manage."

"I’ve always remembered that first impression and it’s stuck with me since then. I think Jack needs to work on his platform a bit more and that his political strategy is a bit weak. But I remember that session and I know that Jack’s a man to watch – and a pol whom it would be foolish to rule out till the last vote is counted."

For several years my father covered Toronto as a national reporter for the CBC. He didn't spend a lot of time on "city" issues. I mean two subways crashing into each other, that's a story, but waterfront development doesn't exactly lead the national news.

The one big exception was Jack Layton. On national issues, like homelessness and the environment, Layton always had a story to put the story in prespective (or, at least, his side of it anyway).

Maybe Welsh has just let us know how Layton got them all. (By actually listening to people?! My God!)

In 2000, while I was home for Christmas, my father and I were talking politics -- as we pretty much always do. Somewhere between discussing how long it would take Martin to overthrow Chrétien, or if the right would ever unite, he mentioned Jack Layton. While my father isn't a New Democrat (or anything else for that matter), he thought Layton could very well be the next leader of the NDP.

When I said this to Layton at the NDP leadership debates in Newfoundland more than two years later, he said that he hadn't even contemplated a run for the leadership that early.

He hadn't, but clearly others had.

Some simply delight in pigeonholing Jack Layton as 'ambitous'. They're not wrong, but, as trite as the question may seem, can't a great leader also be a decent man?

Jack Layton isn't perfect -- and it certainly remains to be seen whether he'll be great. But it's been to long a time since any Canadian political party has even had reason to hope.

Today I watched Jack Layton launch his first national campaign. It sure wasn't perfect; to a trained eye it was downright sloppy in places.

But don't tell me for a second that it wasn't passionate and honest, don't tell me for a second that it wasn't real.

And don't tell me that we don't even have reason to hope.

Comments

David St Hubbins

on May 23, 2004

Ian,

Nice post. Thanks to your links on the left (heheheh) I found blogscanada and I've taken my blogging action there. I won't be voting NDP this election but I can't help but like Jumpin' Jack Layton and I sincerely hope they do well. If Layton does indeed end up as kingmaker after the votes are counted, what issues do you think he would advance in return for NDP support in a minority government? I'm really hoping electoral reform is at the top of the list, ie proportional representation. My old polisci prof many years ago described our british parliamentary / constitutional monarchy system as 'victorian age plumbing in a 21st century condo' and I agree.

Care to make a prediction on how the election is gonna shake down? Here's what I wrote May 1st in my blog:

Citizen Mok: So how do you think this is going to shake out?
Citizen Onad: Right now I say 145 seats for the Liberals.
Citizen Mok: That's a minority government.
Citizen Onad: Right, I say East Coast goes 22 Liberals, 6 Conservatives, 4 NDP.
Citizen Mok: i don't see the East Coast getting too cozy with Harper just yet.
Citizen Onad: Me either. Ontario goes something like 83 Liberals, 17 Conservatives, 4 NDP. I'm not sure of the redistribution numbers.
Citizen Mok: That would be considered a breakthrough for the Conservatives.
Citizen Onad: It would be a good start. The NDP pick up a couple seats due to voters turned off by the Liberals, and reasonably effective leadership from Layton.
Citizen Mok: I think that there is only so much support the Liberals can lose in Ontario for the foreseeable future, their support is deep.
Citizen Onad: Right. Quebec goes 55 BQ and 20 Liberals, a drop of 17 for the government.
Citizen Mok: Bloc support was dwinding around last election, but it seems pretty high to me right now.
Citizen Onad: Yep. West and North goes 20 Liberals, 58 Conservatives, 6 NDP.
Citizen Mok: So 81 seats for the Conservatives, or about half of what they need to form a majority.
Citizen Onad: Right. Looks like they've got a lot of work to do.

IanGillespie

on May 23, 2004

Layton has already made it clear that a referendum on proportional representation will be pre-condition in any minority coalition. This promise goes all the way back to the start of the leadership campaign, and I'm pretty sure it's one Layton will keep. The next three areas of focus would probably Romanow, Kyoto and cities, but I don't know about the order of priority.

I think openess in government will probably come up too, if for no other reason than to make a coalition with the Liberals more palatable to New Democrats.

On election predictions it looks to me like 145 Liberal, 81 Conservative, 55 Bloc and 27 NDP, with redistributed ridings.

This may seem high for the NDP, but with 12 and 15 percent in the last two provincial Ontario elections the NDP won 9 and 7 seats respectively. We're now at 22% fedrally. Provincial vs. federal support often varies, but I can't imagine that the distribution of that support would vary so greatly.

Add this to the two existing seats in Windsor, Layton and Chow's seats in Toronto, Ed Broadbent and Monia Mazigh in Ottawa and other good seats in Northern Ontario, Hamilton and Toronto... well there's a lot of potential there.

In BC there's a chance for a comeback as well. Presumably Harper will be leaning futher East than previous Reform-Alliance leaders and the dissatisfaction with the Glen Clark government has been replaced by dissatisfaction with Gordon Campbell government.

All in all, I'm pretty hopeful.

Ian Welsh

on May 24, 2004

It's not impossible for the NDP to do much better than those numbers.

However, to get back to the original post - one of my friends (Stirling Newberry) likes to say that policy makers are like physicians. They should listen very careful to paients (citizens) when they describe the symptoms. But they have to make their own diagnosis and decide on the cure and in doing so they should pay less attention to citizens. Of course, he's American, but there's a lot of truth to it. Jack's got the first part down - the question is the second. (I've got up an analysis of the NDP's health care platform. So far, of the three it's probably the best - becasue they've got the balls or intellectual integrity or whatever to change patent law.)

IanGillespie

on May 24, 2004

Certainly the way forward in reducing healthcare costs involves an acknowledgement of New Growth Economics regarding patents, research funding and single-payer/bulk buying.

As economist Paul Romer said knowledge is not private good, and markets are illequipped to allocate it efficiently. In others words, once the research is done we can provide prescription drugs to as many people as we want with virtually no marginal cost. But for drug companies to pay for research they have to charge some kind of price. No matter how low (or high) that price may be, it will always price some consumers out of the market.

To use an example, assume that pharmaceutical companies aim make a profit of 10% per year on their initial investment in research. If one such company spends $400 million researching a drug, they'll need to bring in $40 million in revenue each year (plus the nominal cost of producing the physical pills) to reach their goal. The company determines that there are six million people who could benefit from their drug, but to make a profit of $40 million they have charge a price. They many find, for example, that they have to sell the pill to for $100 a year, to the four million consumers willing to pay such a price. And so the drug company does exactly that.

However under a universal pharmacare program the government, buying on our behalf, could simply pay the pharmaceutical company $40 million a year and provide the drug to all six million people who need it. There would be almost no additional cost.

Today many drug companies also have near monopolies on certain drugs, as they're protected by patents. This is a somewhat necessary evil: to encourage research the government must garauntee companies the right to profit from that research.

But under a universal pharmacare program governments would be able to simply pay companies the cost of research plus a reasonable profit. Because the government would only pay for drugs actaully prescribed by doctors, so the pharma companies would still have just as strong an incentive to produce useful products. This balance of market negotiating power -- monoply producer against monopsony consumer -- would save further on costs by reducing excessive profit in drug industry.

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