Please use the...er, comments section

Earlier this week, you were very nearly treated to a full-blown rant on the banality and utter pointlessness of most of what makes up the 24-hour news cycle. Following Obama's visits to Ireland and the UK, where TV viewers especially were subjected to endless hours of journalists talking about BBQ menus, 'The Beast', Michelle Obama's clothes and the preparations at Downing Street before Obama's arrival there, I was just about ready to explode with a 'IF THERE'S NOTHING TO REPORT THEN GET OFF THE TV!' But, alas, I didn't have time to finish the post, and the next day Ratko Mladic was arrested and it seemed like a bit of an odd time to be complaining about the 24-hour news cycle when I was glued to the TV hoping for any new scrap of information on Mladic's extradition.

So instead, I'm having a ponder about something that rarely fails to get my blood boiling: the comment section of news websites. Their purpose, I suppose, is to foster debate, to allow for opinions on the story where the journalist has (hopefully) provided objective facts. Kind of a 'letter to the editor' section for each individual story. But where the letters section of a newspaper is usually a selection of at least somewhat thought out, intelligent, legible thoughts, the comments section on a story, as you'll know if you've ever ventured into those depths, tends to be a collection of the most venomous, ridiculous, moralising and just plain crazy 'thoughts', usually dispatched with no consideration for comprehension, let alone spelling and grammar.

I am a frequent comment reader and occasional comment poster. I comment usually only when my disbelief at the stupidity of either the article itself or the existing comments has reached a specific point, namely where I wish I could shake the writers and scream sense into their faces. I end up feeling like I'm on a crusade to just push a bit of common sense on people, even though everyone knows that the people who frequently comment on these boards are rarely the type to ever change their opinions in the slightest, regardless of the facts. I'm told it would be better for my sanity if I simply stopped reading them.

But I can't. I'm addicted, in a way. When the Globe and Mail's Judith Timson wrote an article on the SlutWalk phenomenon a couple of weeks ago, hundreds of comments followed (503, at last count). I was curious - I didn't really have a reaction to the piece, so I wanted to see what other people thought. Big mistake. The main focus of the discussion in the comments seemed to be about whether dressing 'like a slut' was the same as, say, leaving your car unlocked with valuables in plain view, or going to a bar wearing all of your most expensive clothes and jewelery, flashing wads of cash around, getting wasted, and leaving with people you don't know. As in, those actions are of course liable to get you robbed, and frankly you'd be to blame for acting so stupidly, and, as a consequence, of course dressing like a slut is likely to get you raped, and you're to blame for dressing so stupidly.

Now, I could write a whole post just about the misconceptions around that. I think my frustration with the comments section is that I think I have a chance to engage with this. This is false; posting is just like shouting as loud as you can into an empty cave, and seemingly has no effect on the people who have already formed opinions based on misconceptions and have no intention of hearing the facts. You can scream 'til you're blue in the face about studies that show that clothing isn't a risk factor for rape, that rape is in most cases a crime of power and not sex, based on exploiting weakness and vulnerability and not about being turned on, that while a short skirt might attract some unwanted attention, leers and whistles, it won't turn those oglers into rapists, that men are not just rapists waiting to be triggered by a low cut top, that a victim is never under any circumstances to blame for being raped...but none of these things matter. There will still be a hundred posts after yours perpetuating the same myths that only pretty girls in tight dresses get raped, and frankly they probably had it coming.

The Globe and Mail also seems to have changed its policy recently regarding stories on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has long been the case that these stories are closed to comments because they more than most tend to devolve into racial and anti-semitic abuse. But I noticed last week following Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu's speeches that the comments were open and the, er, debate in full swing. And the racial and anti-semitic abuse, the old myths and hopeless stereotypes were all there.

My question is this: is the comments section a good thing? Does it allow for an exchange of opinions, a forum to offer differing points of view, a chance to educate people, and an opportunity to respond to the article? Or is it simply impossible to have a reasoned debate in a forum with no real moderation (aside from removing posts flagged as offensive or spam - I mean there's no direction to the debate)? Posters have long criticised the Globe for banning comments on Israeli-Palestinian stories. But now that comments are allowed, is there really any point? Can you have a meaningful discussion about the conflict when every post questioning Israeli policy is immediately deemed anti-semitic and terrorist-supporting, regardless of content, and every post criticising Palestinian leadership or tactics is deemed apartheid-supporting, racist or, the zenith of Internet criticism, akin to Nazism?

I'd genuinely like to hear ideas on this one. Do you read comment sections, and why? For the entertainment of finding posts exposing the most ludicrous opinions based on nothingness? In hopes of finding or contributing to genuine intelligent debate? Do they really have a purpose beyond letting people vent their pre-conceived opinions? Should I really just stop reading them altogether?

PS

Update: thanks to Tim Montgomerie for a nice collage of this morning's measured, not-at-all sensational headlines

On Ken Clarke

This is the second time in the last four days I've felt the need to write about the way rape is treated in the media, but now my responses to two different issues seem so polarised that I'm not sure I'll be able to discuss both without tripping over myself somewhere. And so I'll discuss today's Ken Clarke fiasco and leave my thoughts on the SlutWalk phenomenon for another time.

I don't even know where to begin with today's distortion of Justice Secretary Ken Clarke's interview on BBC 5 live. The audio is here and the transcript here; I beg you to listen/read (preferably listen, so you can hear tone as well) before you read the rest of this or form an opinion on the subject. Immediately after the interview aired, the reports began to come in: that Clarke doesn't think date rape is rape, that Clarke thinks some rape is trivial, that some rapes are not rape at all, that Clarke doesn't believe 'rape is rape'...and then began the flood on Twitter, with people who had clearly not heard the interview or even read a proper news report about it informing their followers that Clarke thinks rape isn't rape if you know the attacker, if you're wearing a short skirt, etc etc etc.

First of all: yes, absolutely, Clarke made some horrible choices in terms of the language he used, and didn't take any opportunity to correct himself. He repeatedly referred to 'serious' rapes, which is what has led a slew of people to accuse him of believing that some rapes are 'trivial' (ie the opposite of serious), or that rape in general is not a serious crime.

But in listening to the interview, it is crystal clear that Clarke is trying to distinguish between what he later calls a 'classic' rape scenario - one person violently pinning down another person and having sex with them against their will (the 5 live discussion is framed exclusively in terms of women victims, though of course men can be and are also victims of rape) - and other crimes that can be classified as rape but aren't in that same way. Actually, Clarke is specifically trying to distinguish between that 'classic' rape and statutory rape, or his example of consensual sex between an 18 year old and a 15 year old. It turns out that, actually, that crime would be a sexual offence with a minor and not classified as rape and so not included in the average sentence Clarke is trying to refute, but that doesn't change the fact that, at the time, Clarke's 'serious' was not a demarcation of some rapes as worthy of our attention and concern and others not, but an attempt to distinguish between the sentences given to violent, repeat offenders and those given in cases of statutory rape. I think Clarke made clear on the show, and then again in later interviews, that he views all cases of rape - sex against someone's will, regardless of the circumstances - as serious crimes.

He alluded to some 'confusion' around date rape when he was a practising lawyer, but unfortunately was never asked to clarify, and nor did he volunteer to. He did say that all date rape cases are different and that some cases of date rape are that 'serious' classic scenario - which is to say, violent, forceful. I would guess that the confusion he speaks of lies in cases where perhaps two people have been out together, are both drunk, and have sex, and where in sober retrospect neither party is sure if consent was given at the time, or whether a person can be capable of giving consent after a certain point of inebriation. I am emphatically not saying that a woman who has been drinking is in any way at all to blame for rape, or was 'asking for it'; a person has a right to say no to sex at any point up to and during the act, and the other person has an obligation to stop. But I think it's disingenious to pretend that society thinks that a man in the 'confusing' date rape scenario above is the same and needs to be treated the same as a predatory rapist (whether a stranger in a park or a colleague in the office) who intentionally commits a pre-meditated and violent rape.

And actually, I don't really want to get into that whole debate, though this blog fairly sums up my thoughts on it (and much more concisely, I might add). My main outrage today was not with people who were unwilling to see that rape is an incredibly complex and nuanced issue and not nearly as black and white as being able to say all rape is exactly the same. My main outrage was with the media and politicians, led by Labour leader Ed Miliband, who were determined to score political points and create a controversy by purposely ignoring the context and meaning of Clarke's words and reducing the interview to a couple of patently false soundbites, which were then repeated and further distorted through other media and Twitter.

Miliband demanded in PMQs that Clarke be sacked by the end of the day for his views on rape. This might have been justifiable if, say, Clarke had actually denied that rape was a serious crime, or actually said that date rape isn't rape, or actually said that some rape isn't really all that serious. But he didn't, and Miliband knew that. I hate to have to agree with David Cameron on anything, but when he accused Miliband of jumping on a bandwagon, he was absolutely correct.

The Telegraph followed with the headline 'Kenneth Clark questions whether date rape is really "rape"'. Er, no, he didn't. A blog on the New Statesman website said that 'a significant amount of people agree with [Clarke]' that there is a 'scale of rape', trotting out as proof a survey showing that 30% of people think that a woman is partially or totally responsible for rape if she is drunk. Except, since Clarke didn't say anything about drunk women asking for it, it was a lie to say that 30% of people agreed with him. Independent columnist Johann Hari, who I normally adore, posted a link to an old article on the prejudices that allow rapists to go free, saying the 'horrible views that Ken Clarke subconsciously revealed about rape are dismayingly common in Britain'. Except none of the views in the article are ones Clarke discussed.

I have no problem with journalists taking a current event and using it as a platform to foster discussion on important topics - and, as I had planned to write about in relation to the SlutWalks, common attitudes toward rape are absolutely something that need to be brought out into the open. But so many journalists and political activists today took the opportunity to purposely ignore Clarke's fundamental point, which was, ironically, that the BBC 5 live presenter Victoria Derbyshire was reducing a political policy covering all crime into a tabloid headline about Clarke reducing rapists' sentences to 15 months. Clarke was trying to clarify facts about the average sentencing (which, granted, he did not do very well at all), and to stop the discussion from becoming hysterical over figures that he believed weren't true.

Any discussions about the pitiful figures for rape reporting and conviction rates, about the way the police and justice systems treat rape victims, about funding for rape crisis centres, about public attitudes toward rape and the idea of victim-blaming and myths about false reporting - all of these and more would have been very valid questions to ask of Clarke and ourselves. There are enough real problems in the way society and the legal system treat rape - there was no need to create a fake hysteria around something that Clarke just clearly does not believe, and I was immensely disappointed in the media today for insisting on perpetuating sensationalist trash.

The Future of Libyan Foreign Relations

Cross-posted from my work blog, which I'll post the link to some other time - we're just getting up and running right now, sort of a work in progress.

**************************************

On May 12, the day that David Cameron invited Libya’s rebel leaders to set up a formal office in London, National Transitional Council Chairman Mustafa Abdul Jalil made a number of statements at a press conference at the FCO which, reading between the lines, could suggest that some of Libya’s trade agreements with Russia may be at risk in the future if the NTC’s forces manage to take power.

Russia has long seen Gaddafi as a key ally in the Arab world. In 2008, then-President Vladimir Putin visited Tripoli and announced that $4.5bn in Libyan debt would be cancelled in exchange for major contracts for Russian energy and construction firms, including an exploration and extraction deal for the state-owned Gazprom and the construction of a $13bn pipeline through Algeria and Niger. The debt deal also included a multi-billion dollar contract for Russian Railways, and, in January last year, Putin announced a $1.8bn arms deal, which reportedly included a fighter aircraft and tanks.

Though Russia abstained from the March 17 UN Security Council vote authorising the enforcement of the no-fly zone in Libya, Prime Minister Putin was later quoted comparing the resolution to a ‘medieval call to crusade’. Moscow has since criticised NATO forces for overstepping their mandate and called for negotiations between the rebels and Muammar Gaddafi, in contrast to the view espoused by most western politicians that there is no room for Gaddafi in the future Libyan state.

When asked about Russia, Jalil commented that Russia has made it clear that it supports Gaddafi, and that while the NTC respects Moscow’s decision and would continue to honour legal agreements between Russia and Libya ‘when’ they are victorious, Russia’s continued support for Gaddafi and failure to establish any relationship with the NTC could have an impact on relations in the future.

The real keyword here, though, is ‘legal’. Earlier in the press conference, Jalil made sure to distinguish between ‘legal’ agreements and treaties, which he said Libya would honour with all states, and those that were clearly made as a result of ‘obvious financial corruption’. With Russia and Libya ranked 2.1 and 2.2 respectively on last year’s Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (on a scale of 0 to 10, 0 being the worst and anything under 3 being considered highly corrupt), it’s not a massive stretch to imagine that, in the event of an NTC victory in Libya, some of those oil investments and lucrative arms deals with Russia may be more thoroughly examined and found wanting.

Meanwhile, Jalil refused to be drawn on either the possible partition of Libya or the NTC’s views on relations with Israel. In fact, he initially refused to answer questions on either from BBC Arabic’s correspondent, calling them ‘provocative’. Eventually, he relented to say that Libya was indivisible, that the state the NTC sees itself representing is and always will be unified.

As for Israel, Jalil said simply that it would be ‘another matter to consider when victory is achieved.’ I’m not sure what, if anything, can be drawn from this latter response. To be honest, the NTC has enough to deal with right now without embroiling itself in a debate on Israel and angering either its Western or Arab allies in the process. Though Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE are the only Arab governments to have officially recognised the NTC, the revolution is highly popular on the Arab street and the NTC has been somewhat recognised by the Arab League. This position isn’t worth risking over a hypothetical discussion on Israel, and nor can UK and US support be jeopardised by coming out against Israel.

It’s worth considering that, while it’s unlikely that the NTC’s position on Israel will be a central issue any time soon – at the very least not until they are actually in control of the country – its policy may be shaped by other factors liable to come to the fore in the meantime. Before any new Libyan government comes to power or has a chance to formulate foreign policy, it will have time to observe the decisions (and subsequent consequences) of its Egyptian counterparts in the Supreme Military Council. Egypt’s relationship with Israel is, of course, more complicated, but the NATO involvement in Libya may mean that the West has more influence over the NTC than it does the SMC, or at least that the NTC might care what the West thinks a bit more. With the recent reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian Territories and the Quartet’s September 2 deadline for a two-state solution looming, it’s also possible that, by the time the NTC has a chance to worry about its Israel policy, the situation on the ground will have changed.

On a final note – after all of the debate over the purpose of UK foreign policy and the motives behind taking action in Libya and not in other states where it may be equally warranted (Syria, Bahrain), it struck a slightly odd chord to see Jalil at pains to thank the UK government for taking a ‘moral stand’ based on humanity and not self-interest or future considerations. I attended a discussion on Libya at the Frontline Club back in March, in the early days of the Libyan revolution but before the UN Security Council had approved military intervention, where former UK Ambassador to Libya Richard Dalton advocated for a British foreign policy that is first and foremost self-interested; British policy toward Libya should be (and, Dalton argued, is) based primarily on what is in the long-term best interests of the UK.

The idea that none of the countries involved in Libya went in without considering the potential consequences for political relations, trade and migration is naive and, if true, would indicate a dearth of intelligence in the respective foreign offices. Not even the FCO would argue that British foreign policy is based solely on morality or humanity. In a July 2010 speech, the first of four setting out the UK’s new approach to foreign policy, Foreign Secretary William Hague spoke of policies that extend British ‘global reach and influence’ and use ‘diplomacy to secure our prosperity’. He also focused on the need to protect UK security in an increasingly globalised world. The fact that Jalil’s gratitude for Britain’s ‘moral stand’ followed directly after his discussion of illegal immigration into Libya and on into southern Europe suggests his statement is borne out of something more than naivety. So I can only guess at Jalil’s reasons for making a statement that is just so clearly untrue; was it just a soundbite that his UK hosts can use to defend intervention against critics who say they have no business interfering in Libya, to prove that NATO forces are wanted and respected by the Libyan rebels? Or perhaps an attempt at cosying up further to the UK government, which, despite authorising a UK office for the NTC has not yet officially recognised them as more than ‘legitimate interlocutors’?

On 'Super-injunctions'

So I've been trying to figure out which side of the super-injunction debate I'm on. If I had to choose, I'd have to say I'm against them, but I have a lot of reservations about the whole thing, although, to be honest, my issues are mostly with the invasive, celebrity-gossip-obsessed nature of today's media and not really with the injunctions themselves.

Do I think the public has a 'right' to know about celebrities' private lives? Not really, no. I'm not going to fight a freedom of the press/freedom of speech campaign based on my right to know who is cheating on their wife with whom. Those kinds of reports are flavour of the month gossip that people will forget about as soon as the next one comes along, but have lasting impacts on the lives of those involved (will she dump him or won't she? More gossip fodder!), including in many cases children, and it's just not something that I'm comfortable demanding some inviolable right to know.

And for the most part, that's the kind of stories these super-injunctions have allegedly been blocking, according to the recent Twitter 'exposure', if it's to be believed. And if that's all they ever were, I probably wouldn't have a massive problem with them; I know celebrities are in the public eye because they chose to be in some way or another, but I don't think that gives the other six billion of us the right to know every single detail about their private lives. But if the super-injunctions are allowed to continue, it's inevitable that at some point someone (a politician, most likely) will attempt to muzzle something that is in the public interest. And the public interest might include things like extra-marital affairs and naughty pictures if there are allegations that, say, taxpayer money was used to pay for hotel rooms or if a politician were being blackmailed. There is no clear line with these injunctions where we can say these things are definitely okay to keep out of the press in the name of privacy, and these things are not. There will always be a grey area and, as a result, I lean towards not setting a precedent of extremely strict privacy laws that are designed to keep anything and everything secret.

I'm curious to see what impact, if any, today's Max Mosley decision will have on these kinds of stories. Presumably super-injunctions have been brought in cases where celebrities have been informed beforehand in one way or another that their secrets are about to be plastered across the front page of the dailies. But if media now know that they definitely have no obligation to inform people before publishing details of their private lives, how many of them will skip seeking comment or confirmation at the source and just go straight ahead with publishing allegations to avoid the chance of the celebrity seeking a super-injunction? I do worry that the prevalence of injunctions may lead to a more irresponsible press, especially among tabloids who are desperate to get a juicy story out ahead of anyone else.

What I do wish is that there was less 'need' for these injunctions in the first place. The public craving for any scraps of information or photos about actors, models, top athletes and their partners is sickening. The culture of gossip and outright invasiveness that pervades the tabloids, websites and even the broadsheets allows otherwise unremarkable people to become Z-list celebrities because of an affair with an actor and Z-list celebrities a few more moments of fame for the same reason. That these people can sell their stories for so much money is indicative of the fact that the papers know these stories sell - big time. And as long as that's the case, reporters are going to continue to dig for the juicy tell-alls and years-old topless photos with little regard for the privacy of those involved. Unfortunately it's the case that privacy rights are ill-defined and weighed not against the public interest, but against how much money is to be made.

In the end, though, the super-injunctions just seem like a waste of time and resources given the fact that their top-secret contents seem to be fairly common knowledge online. If you want to know which footballer allegedly had an affair with which reality TV star, Google and Twitter can tell you, if one of your friends hasn't already. And even if these allegations haven't been published on the front page of the Sun and the Daily Mail, once everyone thinks they know them, the damage to the reputations of those involved is done, unless someone else comes forward and confesses it was actually them who had the affair. Whether the publication of these details online or in foreign media is right or wrong according to privacy ethics is a bit beside the point; until someone can somehow impose and enforce a worldwide privacy law, banning the UK media from publishing something that is already common knowledge is a bit absurd. And it may be this fact, above all ethical questions, that ends up being the game-changer.

Some Muddled Thoughts on Voter Apathy

Last one for today and probably until the weekend, I promise.

I have an embarrassing failure to admit. I live with a person who refuses to vote, and not only have I not yet managed to change his mind, but I very sincerely doubt that I ever will. This is embarrassing to me as a proponent of voting, as someone with respect for civic duties, as a general fan of getting to cast a vote (I am eligible in three different countries!), as a supporter of democracy, as someone who prides themselves on being good at arguing and wearing someone down until they finally just agree to shut me up, and as a very stubborn person. In short, it hurts.

Canadian election day having just passed and AV/devolved/local election day being just around the corner, my Facebook and Twitter feeds are currently flush with "GO AND VOTE" or "Did you vote?" or "If you didn't vote you can't complain" or "If you didn't vote you're an idiot" or "I didn't vote and I'm proud of it" or, you know, general voting discussion. First of all, I was actually really proud that my Facebook feed showed more posts about getting out and voting yesterday than it did about Osama bin Laden. But more to the point, these get out and vote posts and their equivalent variations, while well-meaning, almost always fail to properly address why a large segment of the population doesn't vote.

People assume that young people don't vote because they're apathetic and lazy, because they don't know anything about politics and have no interest in learning, and because they haven't been properly educated about their civic duty. So the solution is: bully/guilt them out of apathy online, have politicians pander to them in campaigns, make hip video ads to interest them, and add another helping of guilt on the civic duty front. But these are unbelievably superficial solutions that don't even begin to address the real reasons many young people don't vote.

The general underlying feeling is this: politicians are living in another world. They don't know about the problems that real people face and, what's more, they don't care to know. When they try to pander to young people, it's always a) incredibly obvious and forced, b) ineffective, and c) seemingly more pointed at parents, anyway. Part of it may be a chicken and egg thing - politicians know young people don't vote, so why bother trying to appeal to them, and what danger if you don't? At any rate, people who feel this way tend to feel this way about all politicians -Nick Clegg and Jack Layton are no different than David Cameron and Stephen Harper, really. The ones who say they're different will prove themselves when they get into power, and frankly, Clegg hasn't helped on this front. All politicians are, in their eyes, the same, only interested in sloganeering and mudslinging and not in discussing why it seems that some people get it way easier by being on the dole than people who have to work for a living, and why caps on non-EU skilled workers won't do anything to help the over-crowded employment markets for the working class.

The young people who are coming up in political parties and who are supposed to be out there encouraging their fellow youth to vote don't usually help. Anyone who is trying to make a career in politics tends to make the very early mistake of becoming a party hack who refuses to have any opinion that isn't the party opinion, and to start using their Facebook or Twitter to attack opposition parties. I guess this shows their staunch support for the party and will help them in their quest to move on up. But it endears them to no one. It shows that there is no fundamental shift coming, that politics will not change and will always be politics as usual, with people more interested in advancing their own success than in actually learning what matters to those people who feel completely left out of the process and completely disaffected with politics. These young advocates are moulding themselves to become the next generation of out of touch leaders who still can't bring themselves to discuss real issues.

And what do I say to that? I tried to convince him to vote in the upcoming referendum, thinking I could point to it as a way toward change, the possibility for getting new voices heard. 'Oh, you mean like the Lib Dems would have done better under AV? And for what? Nick Clegg turned out to be the same as the rest of them.'

My 20-year-old brother cast his first ballot yesterday. He told me that he was voting for one party because he didn't hate the leader like he did the other parties, and that he probably wouldn't bother at all except that he felt it was his civic duty (thanks, Ontario, and your mandatory civics classes!). This election, with the NDP's surge, is seen by a lot of people as an opportunity for something new, albeit as opposition. But the NDP has benefited from being a third party that was almost a joke for a long time; their policies have never had to be entirely realistic because they were never going to have to implement them. I'm afraid that if the NDP move toward the centre, as I think they'd pretty much have to do to make some of their policies viable, people will become disillusioned with what this new wave produced, the way they did with the Lib Dems here (though of course the Lib Dems are part of the governing coalition, which makes a massive difference).

I don't know how long civic duty will hold people like my brother, who are already fairly disaffected on their first vote, if there is no fundamental shift in the way politics is done to show people that their vote does matter a bit more than just replacing one thing with more of the same. And I don't know how anything other than a fundamental shift could possibly win over people like my boyfriend, who feel so removed from the political system as to be vehemently against participating in it. People need to feel that MPs and party leaders are something other than just professional politicians who are only interested in how much power they can grab and how bad they can make each other look.

Election Results and My Disappointment

My personal opinion on yesterday's election: disaster. I was shocked when I checked the news this morning to find out we now had a Conservative majority, an NDP opposition, a negligible Liberal party, a practically non-existent Bloc Quebecois and a Green MP.

I knew that a Liberal majority (ha!) or even minority wasn't happening. I was hoping for a reduced Conservative minority, and polls showed the NDP were doing well so I expected them to increase their presence. I think I was really hoping for a centre-left coalition, a government that could actually hold on for more than a year and that could be effective. Instead...this.

A lot of undecided voters, or disaffected Liberal voters, or people who didn't like Michael Ignatieff and didn't believe Jack Layton could really be Prime Minister, in the end seemed to think that there just wasn't really any choice besides Harper. Really? Harper? The one whose party has been found in contempt of Parliament, who has muzzled cabinet ministers and MPs, who has limited access for the press? The one who has cut funding to women's organisations and squandered a budget surplus, who claimed to have steered Canada through the recession by taking credit for policies enacted by the previous Liberal governments and then denied there was a recession at all? The one who twice prorogued parliament to avoid disclosing information and losing power? Yes, that one.

This is what has really disappointed me. It's not that the party that I don't support won. It's democracy, that can happen (though, to be fair, just under 40% of the country voted Conservative, which means about 60% did not. If that's not reason enough for an AV or PR system, I don't know what is...). No, it's the fact that, for whatever reason, Canadians decided that transparency, openness, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, respect for parliament and democracy and truthfulness were not really that important. (True, again, for 60% of people these things were important, but about 200,000 more people voted for the CPC in this election, so there's that.)

From the Globe and Mail's April 27 endorsement of Harper: "Mr. Harper could achieve a great deal more if he would relax his grip on Parliament, its independent officers and the flow of information, and instead bring his disciplined approach to bear on the great challenges at hand. That is the great strike against the Conservatives: a disrespect for Parliament, the abuse of prorogation, the repeated attempts (including during this campaign) to stanch debate and free expression. It is a disappointing failing in a leader who previously emerged from a populist movement that fought so valiantly for democratic reforms."

To me, these are not small failings that can be shrugged off. These are some of the most fundamental principles in a modern democracy. We don't say suppression of dissent and debate is okay as long as we have stability. That's what dictatorships do. And no, of course I'm not saying that Canada under Harper is a dictatorship; I'm saying that it's very important not to lose sight of the closed nature of Harper's government just because we didn't suffer as badly in the economic crisis as everyone else.

Now that we have four or five years under a Harper majority, it'll be interesting to see how these issues play out - will he relax his grip now that he doesn't have to fight tooth and nail for his government, or will he tighten it because, frankly, he can?

Election Results and the Slow Death of the LPC

I have many thoughts on yesterday's election, but I'll split them up into a few posts so if you're interested in some and not others, you don't have to be too bored.

*************************

So that's that. Far from the result I was hoping for, Stephen Harper's Conservatives were elected to a majority government yesterday with 167 seats (all figures from Elections Canada). The NDP is now the official opposition with 102 seats, up from 37. The Liberal Party had its worst showing ever, going from 77 to 34 seats, and its leader Michael Ignatieff has resigned after failing to win his own riding. And the Bloc Quebecois was all but eliminated, winning just four seats, none of which belonged to leader Gilles Duceppe. Voter turnout was 61.4%, up from 58.8% in the 2008 poll.

Some people are talking about the left vote being split - that people who didn't want to vote Conservative went far-left instead of centre-left, voting NDP instead of Liberal, which helps to account for the LPC's dismal showing. There's some truth to that - 53.4% of the vote went to the NDP, Liberal and Green parties, and 39.6% to the Conservatives - but look at the seat changes. The NDP only took six of their seats from the CPC (and lost two to them); they took 16 from the LPC (and lost one to them), and, amazingly, they took 45 seats from the Bloc Quebecois. The vast majority of the party's gains were in Quebec, where, in the 2008 election, the party won one seat. That's right, one. And it was their first in 17 years. Most of the Liberal seats in the rest of the country went to the Conservatives, particularly in Ontario and the Maritimes.

So Quebec rejected the separatist BQ, threw out half of their Liberal MPs and a few of the Conservatives who'd managed a seat in the last election, and voted overwhelmingly for the NDP. And this was no question of splitting the vote - the Liberals polled the lowest of all of the major parties in the province (14.2%), while the NDP took 42.9% of the popular vote. The NDP is due credit for running a great campaign and for convincing people to give the 'third party' - who a decade ago barely qualified for official party status - a chance.

But the real issue is the demise of the Liberal Party, the failure of Ignatieff to connect with voters in his own constituency and in the rest of the country. Part of Ignatieff's failure is due to very effective attack ads run by the CPC, which have been running since before official campaigning began. The Conservative Party has done a very, very good job of painting Ignatieff as too intellectual, too American, too elitist, to aristocratic - too out of touch with Canadians to be Prime Minister. And Ignatieff never managed to overcome this image - a lot of people who wouldn't call themselves Conservatives were uneasy about his leadership, or disliked the man. I was shocked yesterday to hear my mom offhandedly mention that my dad wouldn't vote Liberal because he hates Ignatieff; I wasn't aware that my father even knew who Ignatieff, or any other politician, was.

Ignatieff wasn't elected at a Liberal leadership convention; he came in second at the 2006 convention behind Stephane Dion and served as deputy leader, and took over as interim leader in 2008 when Dion stepped down. His leadership was ratified at a party convention six months later. Neither Dion nor Ignatieff inspired voters; the party's seats in Parliament have been in decline since the Sponsorship Scandal and subsequent election in 2004 (that election was under Paul Martin, who didn't have much of a chance after the scandal was made public. I still maintain that Martin, whose work as finance minister under Jean Chretien left Canada with a budget surplus and with bank regulations that helped us weather the financial crisis, which Harper took credit for, could have been a great PM had he had a real chance). The Liberal Party has been in decline for nearly a decade and has tried a series of quick-fix solutions: a too-early leadership convention without enough consideration of candidates, propelling Ignatieff to leadership only two years after he became an MP for the first time, forcing elections without any clear policy vision.

The party has overlooked the fact that has become glaringly evident in this election: nobody trusts them to move this country forward. It's not because of the Sponsorship scandal anymore - if anything this election showed that transparency isn't actually that high up on Canadians' lists of concerns. It's because the party has no vision. In opposition, the LPC gave the average voter the impression that it was really good at opposing Conservative policies, but not great at coming up with alternatives. If you asked people what the LPC stands for, I don't think anybody would have an answer besides whatever is the opposite of what the CPC says. Much as I like Ignatieff and think he'd have made a good PM, generally people don't trust a leader that nobody had heard of five years ago and who has no real record to go on.

A Conservative majority means that there can no longer be threats of early elections, and there will now be four or five years until the next one. As the LPC doesn't even have the official opposition to worry about anymore, they can and should take this time to re-build the party. To take their time picking a leader people will be able to connect with (and to realise that it's still to early for that leader to be Justin Trudeau, who while good-looking and charismatic is still young and inexperienced and will have to prove himself more than anyone else because of his name and needs to be given time to do that). To develop a real policy platform that is proactive rather than reactive, and to bring back the left of centre votes that moved to the right for economics and stability or to the left for leadership, real opposition or lack of anything better.