Mediaboss Marketing

Breadcrumb Trail Links

Rural-urban divide threatens to polarize politics in Canada

Author of the article:

Publishing date:

The rise of political polarization in the United States ought to be a salutary lesson for Canadians. We must be more vigilant of such conditions taking root in our own country.

Theres evidence in fact that they already are in the form of a growing urban-rural divide. This potential fault line will require greater attention and care from Canadas political class.

Although polling shows that urban and rural Canadians actually share many common views on matters of economics, culture and society, there are key differences on a handful of issues including the state of the economy, climate change, immigration and diversity, values and tradition and trust in government.

These differences are notable for a couple of reasons. The first is that they reflect competing views and perspectives on major societal tensions between optimism and anxiety, dynamism and stagnation and openness and closedness. These are a set of issues that arent necessarily conducive to a positive-sum politics.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

The second reason is related: these urban-rural differences are manifesting themselves in polarized voting patterns. The Liberal party is increasingly a city party and the Conservative party is mostly a country party and there isnt much overlap between the two. One just needs to look at the electoral map to see the growing divergence between what has been described as the politics of demography versus the politics of geography.

Take the 2019 federal election, for instance. The median population density for the 157 Liberal ridings was more than 38 times higher than that of the 121 Conservative ridings. If one ranks the 338 federal ridings by population density, the Conservative party was shutout of the 50 densest ridings and the Liberal party similarly underperformed in those with fewer than 100 residents per square kilometer.

These political outcomes may indeed be inherent to the set of issues that increasingly divides urban and rural Canadians. One is either for or against carbon taxes or for or against higher levels of immigration or for or against more traditional sensibilities. There isnt much scope for political parties to be responsive to one group of voters on these fundamental questions and still able to build support among those living in other parts of the country.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

The net effect is to produce a set of political incentives that tilts against broad electoral coalitions that cut across urban-rural lines and instead entrenches a partisanship of place that can be difficult to break out of.

The question, of course, is: what can we do about it?

A big part of the answer lies with political parties relaxing the strict ideological and communications parameters that theyve come to place on local representatives. Requiring each candidate to fully conform to a comprehensive set of national policy positions irrespective of whether theyre minor partisan priorities or have political salience at the regional or local level exacerbates these place-based trends. It precludes our politicians from bringing expression to the unique experiences, perspectives and values of local constituents.

The upshot: theres increasingly less ideological diversity within Canadas political parties than in various other advanced democracies. The intra-party Brexit tensions among Conservatives and Labourites, for instance, is basically unfathomable in the Canadian context.

Our political parties need to open themselves up. They should loosen rigid discipline and generally avoid strict litmus tests for prospective candidates.

This doesnt mean they ought to stand for nothing. Of course, political parties should expect candidates to affirm their core principles and policies. But otherwise there should be scope to deviate on individual issues in the name of better local representation.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

This would ostensibly involve the Liberal party opening up their nominations to more conservative-leaning candidates in rural ridings and the Conservative party permitting more progressive-leaning candidates to stand for election in urban ridings. This may seem like a radical idea to hard-core ideologues, but it should be viewed as a win-win for the rest of us: it would not just improve the parties prospects of winning local races, but it would also ultimately make our political system more responsive and representative.

Moving in this direction will require changes to how we do politics. Political parties must devolve more power to local riding associations. Party leaders will need to permit Members of Parliament to break from party orthodoxy in a broader mix of policy and political disputes. The news media will need to resist the temptation to treat every instance of political or policy entrepreneurship as a major controversy that shows evidence of weak leadership or caucus upheaval. Everyone has a role to play in fortifying our politics from rising polarization.

Recent evidence from the United States demonstrates how important such efforts are. We must commit ourselves to preventing these growing urban-rural fault lines from fracturing our politics and society. This imperative transcends ideology or partisanship. Its ultimately a project of ongoing unity and social cohesion.

National Post

Sign up to receive the daily top stories from the National Post, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.

A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it please check your junk folder.

The next issue of Posted Newsletter will soon be in your inbox.

We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. We have enabled email notificationsyou will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings.

See original here:
Sean Speer: Conservatives and Liberals are too ideological and it is hurting democracy - National Post

Texas Sen. Ted Cruzs Cancun fiasco proves once again that todays journalists are not lazy theyre crooked.

Dont get me wrong, the liberal media had every right to pounce and seize and weaponize on the tone-deaf move by Cruz. After all, the Harvard Law grad and his sad rolling suitcase handed the mainstream media a massive dunk. But Cruzs micro-trip to Mexico set off the kind of journalistic curiosity we havent seen since the bombshell droppedthat Trump likes ketchup on his steak.

After reading headlines about Dr. Jills scrunchies and President Bidens Mario Kart escapades, you might have assumed that these left-wing activists had lost their edge. Wrong. These blue check marks are as sharp and inquisitive as ever as long as theyre reporting on a Republican.

Michael Hardy, from New York Magazine, even went to the senators home and came up with a hard-hitting story titled, Ted Cruz Flees Texas for Cancun, Ditches Family Poodle.

If you read that headline and inferred that Cruzs dog was abandoned well, good. That is exactly what Hardy was going for. Unfortunately, a few paragraphs into the column, he is forced to break the disappointing news to his readers: No, the pooch known as Snowflake Cruz was not left alone to fend for himself.

As I approached to knock, a man stepped out of the Suburban parked in Cruzs driveway. Is this Senator Cruzs house? I asked. He said it was, that Cruz wasnt home, and identified himself as a security guard. When asked who was taking care of the dog, the guard volunteered that he was. Reassured of the dogs well-being, I returned to my car.

Wow, we need more heroes like Hardy. He doesnt just hate Cruz, he loves dogs. Can you say Profiles in Courage? Now if only these activists could transfer some of their passion from the Bichon Frise beat over to the White House press briefings.

From the looks of the timing in regard to both Hunter Biden and Andrew Cuomo, the media runs a solid four to 10 weeks behind on a Democrats scandal. Any damaging news that is first published in conservative outlets has to go through a good vetting (spiking) period before it lands on the desks of Jake Tapper or Rachel Maddow.

Even when these salacious stories eventually make their way to the mainstream media, dont expect them to go all in.

For instance, on Thursday night ABCs World News Tonight spent almost four minutes on Cruzs optics fail. They only talked about Andrew Cuomos nursing home scandal and subsequent investigation for 55 seconds.

If you think that coverage is bad when it comes to early-to-bed Joe, the press is working overtime. The media doesnt just turn a blind eye to Bidens mistakes, they actively cover them up.

During a CNN Town Hall, when Biden said that the vaccine was not available when he came into office, The Washington Post resident fact-checker Glenn Kessler immediately started spinning.

Rather than simply call out Biden for the blatant lie, Kessler tweeted, It was a verbal stumble, a typical Biden gaffe, as he had already mentioned 50 million doses being available when he took office. Ex-Trump officials should especially cool the outrage meter, as it just looks silly.

Outrage advice from the same guy who compared Trumps 2016 transition team to Game of Thrones. How rich.

By the way, the members of the Ministry of Truth will now refer to Joe Bidens lies as verbal stumbles or gaffes.

But these left-wing outlets exhibit the most bizarre behavior after they commit, as the late and great Rush Limbaugh once coined it, a random act of journalism.

For example, Axios tweeted a video of Vice President Kamala Harris telling Michael Allen that the Biden administration was starting from scratch in regards to vaccine distribution. But whoever runs the Axios Twitter account must have forgotten the publications loyalties and romantic ties to Team Biden, because beneath the video they added, At a press conference last month, Fauci said we certainly are not starting from scratch on vaccine distribution.

The next day, after the tweet managed to garner some less-than-perfect press for Harris, Axios deleted the post.

They later reposted the same interaction, this time without including the context of Faucis rebuttal.

It is amazing the lengths these reporters will go to protect their dear leaders.

The media can dig deep into a scandal when the offender is a conservative like Ted Cruz. But when the truth looks rough for liberals, these Woodward wannabes stop digging and start burying.

Read more:
Curley: Ted Cruz vs. Andrew Cuomo coverage says it all about liberal media - Boston Herald

Shortly after tabling legislation to repeal a number of mandatory minimum sentences and toallow for more conditional sentences for offenders who don'tpose a threat to the public Justice Minister David Lametti declared that the Liberal government was "turning the page on a failed Conservative criminal justice policy."

Turning a page on Conservative-era justice policy is no insignificant step, even if it took the Liberals five and a half years to take it. Still, there are other pages that remain unturned.

For the nine years they were in office, Stephen Harper's Conservatives were keen to appear "tough" on crime perhaps more keen than any federal government in recent history.At the centre of that push was the creation and enhancement of mandatory minimum sentencing provisions.

In 2004, before the Harper government came to office, 24 federal offences were subject to mandatory minimum sentences. By 2015, the number of offences that carried mandatory minimums had tripled to 72.

Lametti's office saysthe newbill will reduce that number by 20 offences, largely related to drugs and firearms.

The emotional appeal of getting tough on crime is obvious and mandatory minimum penaltiesmight reassure those Canadians who believe the justice system is too lenient.

But as the Harper government expanded the use of mandatory minimums, experts in justice policy protested that such sentencing guidelines had not been shown to actually deter crime. The Conservatives carried on undaunted.

While mandatory minimums are not likely to actually reduce crime, theyare likely to result in disproportionate punishments and send people to prison who could safely and more productively be dealt with through other means. Mandatory minimums also havebeen blamed for over-burdening the court system by reducing the ability to negotiate plea deals.

Long before Thursday, the courts already hadstarted to tear pages out of the Harper government's legislative legacy. The Supreme Court struck down two mandatory minimum sentences for gun-related offences in 2015 and then one mandatory minimum related to a drug offense in 2016. Lower courts in different provinces also haveruled against a number of other sentencing edicts.

"Yes, they're turning the page," saidLisa Kerr, a law professor at Queen's University who has written about the Harper government's justice policies. "Did they have to turn the page at this point? Really, they did. The courts really made this legislative reform necessary."

While thecourts were raising objections, the Trudeau governmentseemed interested in pursuing a comprehensive rewrite of the justice regimethe Harper Conservatives left behind at least briefly.The mandate letter issued to Jody-Wilson Raybould, Trudeau's first justice minister, asked her to "conduct a review of the changes in our criminal justice system and sentencing reforms over the past decade."

In 2017, Wilson-Raybould said that a "revisiting" of mandatory minimums would be "coming in the very near future." But that didn't happen.

Though the exact details are difficult to pin down, it seems that Wilson-Raybould and the rest of the government could not agree on how exactly to proceed. A report on the government's consultations, issued several months after Wilson-Raybould was replaced by Lametti, acknowledged a consensus that further sentence reforming was necessary. But the mandate letter issued to Lametti in December 2019referred onlyto increasing the use of drug treatment courts.

But then, last summer, the scourge of systemic racism came to the fore politically driven by the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. As part of the Trudeau government's response, Lametti was charged with taking "action to address systemic inequities in the criminal justice system."

On that note, after announcing a turning of the page on Thursday, Lametti spokeat length about how mandatory minimum sentences contribute to a system that disproportionatelypunishes Black Canadians and Indigenous peoples.The minister also thanked Liberal MP Greg Fergus, chair of the parliamentary black caucus.

Maybe the Trudeau government eventuallywould have gotten back to dealing with justice reform without the Black Lives Matter movement pushing it. But the movement and the truths it held up to the light seem to havegiven the Liberals an opening to do so now.

"Overall, these reforms would make our system of sentencing law and policy much more coherent and humane," Kerr said.

The political risks are likely very real, though. If you're not obviously getting "tough" on crime, you're susceptible to the charge of being "soft" on crime.As Kerr notes, thepolitical challenge of explaining a differentapproachmight account for why the Liberals took this long to get here.

A justice department survey in 2017 suggested that Canadians want judges to have the discretion to consider the facts of a particular case. But public attention tends to focus on cases where the punishment does not seem to match the seriousness of the crime. And any government that removes a mandatory minimum sentence presumably has to worry about being blamed for any unintended consequences that result down the road.

At the same time, reformers will protestthat the Liberals have not gone nearly far enough; eliminating 20 mandatory minimums still leaves 52 on the books. Further court rulings may compel the government to repeal other sentences.

Sen.Kim Pate, who is sponsoring legislation that would give judges the discretion to disregard any mandatory minimum provision, said in a statement on Thursday that the government had "stopped short of taking the kinds of bold steps we need right now."

Beyond the imposition of mandatory minimums, the Harper government also made other controversial changes the Liberals have yet to reverse.The Conservatives made those who have been convicted of a crime wait longer and pay more to apply for a pardon. It abolished the "faint hope" clause for those serving life sentences.

Kerr suggests the Liberals could also revisit the Conservative decision to eliminate "accelerated parole," which allowed non-violent, first-time offenders to get out of prison earlier.

There are likely few, if any, votes to be won by tackling such issues. But atotal reversal of Conservative crime policy would require taking a few more political risks.

Read this article:
Why the Liberals took the long road to sentencing reform - CBC.ca

The Canadian Press

Two days before the storm began, Houstons chief elected official warned her constituents to prepare as they would for a major hurricane. Many took heed: Texans who could stocked up on food and water, while nonprofits and government agencies set out to help those who couldnt. But few foresaw the fiasco that was to come. They could not be prepared. As temperatures plunged and snow and ice whipped the state, much of Texas power grid collapsed, followed by its water systems. Tens of millions huddled in frigid homes that slowly grew colder or fled for safety. And a prideful state, long suspicious of regulation and outside help, was left to seek aid from other states and humanitarian groups as many of its 29 million people grasped for survival. Images of desperate Texans circulated worldwide. To some, they evoked comparisons to a less wealthy or self-regarding place. To others, they laid bare problems that have long festered. A week after she warned her countys nearly 5 million residents about the impending storm, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo was sleeping on an air mattress at the countys emergency operations centre. Her home had been without power for three nights. Its worth asking the question: Who set up this system and who perpetuated it knowing that the right regulation was not in place? Hidalgo said. ___ Around 2 a.m. Monday, the full measure of the crisis Texas faced began to be apparent. Cold and ice had set in the day before, leading to spreading power outages across the state. But standing in the emergency operations centre early Monday, Hidalgo and others learned that their local energy provider, CenterPoint Energy, would not be able to roll outages between homes as they had been told earlier. Instead of short intervals of heat, enough to keep their homes safe, residents would have to go without for days on end. Power outages spiraled through the day Monday, ultimately cutting off more than 4 million people. Grocery stores shut down and hotel rates skyrocketed. People who fled to the homes of relatives or neighbours had to consider the risks of contracting or spreading coronavirus. Ashley Archer and her husband decided to take in his best friend at their suburban Dallas home. She is pregnant and has been trying to protect herself from the virus for nearly a year. The friend is like family, she said. We werent going to let him freeze at his place. Things got worse Tuesday. Thousands of people sought refuge from their freezing homes in warming shelters. Others sat in their cars; dozens were hospitalized for carbon monoxide poisoning. A woman and her daughter died after running their car inside a garage. At her Dallas condominium, 51-year-old Stephanie Murdoch layered in blankets, two pairs of pants, two sweaters, three pairs of socks, a hat, and gloves. Her anger grew at the power companies and their apparent lack of preparation. Weve got another blast of snow coming in this evening ... and still no clear answers as to why the grids arent working better, she said. By Wednesday, some started to get their power back, but a new shortage emerged -- drinkable water. Frozen pipes burst across the state. And the water that did come out of taps was often undrinkable due to dangerously low water pressure levels. At one point, an estimated 13 million people were under a boil-water order, nearly half of Texas population. More than 35 people in Texas have been confirmed dead. That number was expected to rise as roads cleared and relatives and first responders could check on missing loved ones. Mark Henry, Galveston Countys judge, asked the state early in the week to send a refrigerated truck requested by the local medical examiner, who expected an influx of bodies. If they had been honest with us from the beginning, we would have ordered evacuations. But they didnt tell us that, he said. ___ The disaster can be traced to mistakes by Texas leadership and faults created by decades of opposition to more regulations and preparation. Basically, the state is an island in the U.S. electrical system. There is one large grid covering the Eastern half of the country, another for the West, with Texas wedged between them. There is a long and colorful history to how this came to be, but the simplest explanation is that Texas utilities wanted to be free of federal regulation. They accomplished that, going back to the middle of the last century, by avoiding sending power across state lines. The Texas grid isnt walled off, but there are only a few, small interconnection points with the Eastern U.S. grid and Mexico. In the past, utility executives have argued that the Texas grid would be less reliable and more vulnerable to blackouts if it were fully connected to the rest of the country which would make it easier for other states to tap Texas during their own shortages. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, was created in 1970; it became a more powerful broker over electricity flows after deregulation in this century. In the wake of the storm, it has taken most of the blame from Texas politicians and the public. Despite efforts by some Republicans to blame clean energy, the failures occurred in every part of the sector. While wind turbines and solar panels froze, a major nuclear plant lost half of its generation, and there were massive failures in coal, oil, and natural gas. Demand surged, meanwhile, as people accustomed to mild Texas winters turned on their heat. In 2011, millions of Texans lost power during the Super Bowl, which was played in a Dallas suburb. Two agencies, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, conducted a study on how Texas could winterize its energy infrastructure. At the highest end, winterizing 50,000 gas wells would cost an estimated $1.75 billion, the study found. Of the 2011 storm, the report said generators and natural gas producers said they had winterization procedures in place. However, the poor performance of many of these generating units and wells suggests that these procedures were either inadequate or were not adequately followed. But there was no broad move to winterize equipment. Since then, bills requiring energy producers to hold more power in reserve or ordering a study of how to better prepare for winter failed in the Republican-controlled Texas House. Texas lawmakers deregulated the energy market in 2002. Supporters say this lowered energy prices statewide, but critics say it gave producers leeway to avoid improvements that might have prevented events like this weeks catastrophe. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has promised multiple investigations of this storm and made ERCOT an emergency item for the legislature, which is currently in its biennial session. I think there is going to have to be a serious inquiry into why it was, what were the factors that led the grid not to be able to meet the energy needs of Texas, said Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. Cruz spoke Thursday evening in the yard of his home in Houstons wealthiest neighbourhood, River Oaks. He had cut short a trip to Cancun, Mexico, after images circulated of him waiting at a Houston airport for his flight to the resort town. At weeks end, as the cold weather began to loosen its grip, the power grid came back online for most Texans. But burst pipes had flooded thousands of homes. Earlier in the week, Abbott had asked plumbers from other states to come to Texas and help. But fixing pipes is one thing. Fixing a whole state is another. Nomaan Merchant, The Associated Press

Link:
Liberals move to add weeks to EI, COVID-19 benefits for workers and parents - Yahoo Canada Finance

They want to talk about some fake political scientist leading farmer protests? Okay, so we will start debating the ideas of this unqualified non-intellectual. We will criticize him, debunk him, expose him and more generally make this individual the centerpiece of national attention.

Then, they want to talk about some climate activist. So we oblige. They talk about how she is a wonderful person who wants to fill the world with rainbows and unicorns (and smoke from crop stubble burning). They will write revolutionary poetry about her spending a couple of days in custody. We will take that on and expose the hypocrisy of climate groups, sinister meetings with possible Khalistanis, speculate and debate her motivations and so on

They want to talk about high fuel prices? So, we will talk about that. If the prices of onions were soaring right now, we would talk about that too But they are not, so we will talk about fuel. When the price of fuel goes down and the price of onions goes up, we will talk about onions.

The following taunt probably applies to me as much as anyone else on the online right. Are we opponents of the liberals or their court jesters?

They choose the topics, they set the agenda. We desperately debate and try to debunk them. They have nothing but contempt for our ideas, our words and our very existence. On the other hand, we try to engage with them, persuade them and generally make them feel like they are the most important people in the world.

The question is: Why are the news cycles all being set by the liberals?

Do you remember the Bihar state elections? Those may seem like a long time ago, but it has barely been three months. Why? Because immediately after the election results were declared, liberals switched the news cycle to the so called farmers protest. Remember how excited journalists could hardly stay on their feet when the exit polls from Bihar came out. Remember the electric atmosphere in TV studios that night? And remember them swooning over the crowds at Tejashwis rallies?

Do you think Bihar would have been forgotten in 24 hours or less if liberals had got the result they wanted? But we let it happen. We stopped talking about Bihar because they stopped talking about Bihar! Imagine that.

The same applies right now to the economy. How are we letting the biggest story in India slip through the cracks? Anyone care about the economy? Why arent we talking about the economy?

By all accounts, India has pulled off an absolutely stunning turnaround after the body blow from Covid. The GDP growth may turn out positive in the Oct-Dec quarter itself, bringing India out of technical recession. Most forecasters agree that India will show the highest GDP growth among all major economies in 2021. Everything is on a high, be it auto sales or electricity consumption. The GST collection in Jan 2021 rose 8% over Jan 2020 to an all time high of Rs 1.2 lakh crore. Even in the pandemic year, India saw 13% growth in FDI. Only one other major country showed positive FDI growth in 2020 and it was China, which was far behind at just 4%.

No wonder the Sensex is zooming. Forex reserves have reached unprecedented levels. Note that even during the pandemic, while other BRIC currencies like Brazilian Real and Russian Rubles collapsed by 25-33%, the Indian Rupee held firm, falling no more than 3-4%.

This is remarkable. It is a stinging slap in the faces of all those screaming headlines by both economists (and all weather experts) from last year. When the government spoke about a V-shaped recovery last year, they were roundly mocked. Well, the V-shaped recovery is right here.

But why arent we talking about this? How did the economy go out of the headlines? Or more precisely, why did we let them take it out of the headlines?

Remember when Indias GDP dropped by a 23.9% in the April-June quarter last year? Anyone with any sense could see that this was the fallout of a once in century pandemic. But liberals didnt buy the explanation. They blamed the government for pushing India into a recession. They couldnt stop talking about the economy back then. And they went on news shows and ridiculed people for talking about anything else.

Okay, so why are we talking about some 21 year old now instead of talking about our great economic recovery. If liberals insist she was not a threat to anyone, they should ignore her, no? And talk about the economy like they wanted to back in August or September.

But this post is not about the liberals. This is about the online right indulging whatever the left wants to talk about.

Remember their point about worst performing economy? That has vanished too. The -24% figure was just for one quarter in the whole year. The final number for 2020 will be around -7%. For comparison, countries such as the UK have seen a 10% contraction in 2020. So the worst performer tag was just an illusion. A momentary thing because India adopted the strictest lockdown in the world. By all accounts, it worked. The pandemic stalled.

All nightmare projections about collapse of Indias healthcare system were proved wrong. During the lockdown, hundreds of millions of people received food aid through a digitized system with minimal leaks. Once the lockdown was lifted, there was V-shaped recovery in the economy. And all of this was achieved with minimal stimulus, which saved our fiscal math.

The smart people second guessed us at each stage. More so, they heckled us at each stage. They made no secret of their contempt for everything India did during the pandemic. They reveled in their belief about how wrong we were.

When the green shoots began to emerge in October, they screamed pent up demand. For a while. Then, one by one, they felt silent. Never in history have so many smart people been wrong about such a big thing on such a global scale.

So why arent we rubbing the egg on their faces? Why arent we heckling them till they emerge from under their desks, mumbling excuses for their claimed status as international experts? If any of their doomsday predictions had come true, do you think they would have let us be?

So how about we dont wait for them this time. How about we start drawing the line on mainstream media, social media and all available forums and demand that people talk about the economy? How about we demand that these liberal experts (qualified economists and otherwise) explain their past remarks or publicly eat crow? Lets not allow this moment to pass. They would not let it go. So why should we?

Original post:
Self criticism for the online right: Why are we giving liberals a free pass on the economy right now? - OpIndia