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My mother, a school board member in her tiny Maine town, had a bumper sticker that read, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” You might equally, if less pithily, say, “If you think the census is expensive, try not knowing what’s happening to your country’s population.”

Gathering statistical information about a country’s demographics has been a hallmark of civilized countries for centuries. The requirement for a  decennial census is embedded in the US Constitution. Nothing better illustrates the no-nothing arrogance of neoconservatives, US and Canadian, than their contempt for evidence that might betray flaws in their ideology.

H/T: Nathan Yau

It is a dirty little secret of the environmental movement that federal environmental assessments are a massive scam. They take far too long. They cost far too much. They do not focus on important issues.

Everyone in the system knows this, but no one complains, because almost everyone benefits. Engineering companies get tens of millions of dollars to carry out the studies; environmental groups get hundreds of thousands in baksheesh for their participation; the Environment Canada and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency get  a level of featherbedding that would make John L. Lewis blush. The process does little to protect the environment that a much simpler, more focused approach could not do better and more efficiently.

Bulletin II: Gov’t Jobs Leaving HRM

I wrote a Halifax friend and asked if that shouldn’t read:

Gov’t Jobs Move to Rural NS

My friend shot back with:

Gov’t Pandering To Rural NS

I think my friend was joking,* but you don’t have to scratch the skin of a Haligonian very deeply to discover the view that everything—everything—belongs in the provincial capital, with the possible exception of the Peggy’s Cove lighthouse and the Shambhala monastery at Red River.

This will have to serve as a placemarker, because I have no time to research the topic today, but I believe any fair-minded comparison would show that our federal and provincial governments concentrate jobs in their respective capitals to an unusual, even extreme, degree.

Such a comparison will show that a much smaller proportion of US Government jobs are located in the District of Columbia than are Canadian Government jobs located in Ottawa and Hull. One reason New Brunswick has three thriving population centres is that 50 years ago, Louis Robichaud made a conscious decision to spread provincial jobs around the province.

Contrary to popular peninsular belief, there is no natural law that says all things should flow to Halifax. More when I can get to it.

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* Actually, I think he was serious, but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.

The penny should have been killed decades ago. Taxpayers lose money on every one we mint. Consumers and storekeepers lose 492 million hours every year handling the all but worthless chips. (Yes, I made that number up, but it can’t be far off.)

But… the government should have gone further and ditched the nickel, too.

Donham’s Law of Coinage states that when a government adds a coin on top, it should remove one on the bottom. We added the loonie in 1987, and we should have got rid of the penny then. We added the toonie in 1996, and that would have been a perfect time to get rid of the nickel.

Today’s nickel will buy what a penny would have bought in 1973. Today’s dime will buy what a penny would have bought in 1949. I was only four at the time, but as far as I know, we got along just fine with the metallic currency in circulation then. Get rid of the nickel.

He sounds like a guy who can take on Harper successfully. To do that, he’d be wise to avoid peevish boycotts in future (and that’s advice from someone who’d love to see him succeed).

But I’m not without a few qualms, including Mulcair’s reputation for carrying grudges, and his occasional bone-headed statements on foreign policy, including his knee-jerk support for right-wing Israeli policies that pose a danger to Israel and the world.

My qualms are not eased by Mulcair’s silly, and thus far unexplained, spat with CBC Radio’s English service. Mulcair boycotted English CBC Radio throughout the campaign and in the days since. He refuses to explain the boycott, or even own up to it, but his rejection of interview requests is too consistent to be happenstance. If anyone else knows what stuck in his craw, I haven’t heard the explanation.

Perhaps Mulcair has been impressed at how successfully Harper buffaloed the national press corps by treating it with contempt. On CBC Radio’s Sunday Edition, Francine Pelletier lamented the gallery’s failure even to protest Harper’s continuing refusal to hold news conferences.

I don’t like having a prime minister who bullies the press. I don’t like press gallery reporters who respond like whipped spaniels. And I won’t take warmly to an NDP leader who is tempted to follow the same recipe.

Rae issued the following statement:

I want to offer my warm congratulations to Thomas Mulcair on winning the leadership contest in the New Democratic Party.  I know Mr. Mulcair well and look forward to working with him to ensure Parliament acts on behalf of all Canadians.

I also want to congratulate the NDP for a successful leadership convention, particularly in opening up the selection process to Canadians across the country.

I also want to salute Mme Nycole Turmel for the integrity she showed as Interim Leader of the NDP. Her grace was apparent as she courageously carried out her duties admirably in the wake of the tragic passing of Jack Layton.

Cullen was far and away the strongest performer at the leadership debate Halifax, a fact lost on the national press corps but not on the audience. He has raised eyebrows by proposing joint nominating meetings with the Liberals in Conservative-held ridings. That’s anathema to Libera- hating, old-line Dippers, but it’s the kind of creative thinking needed to undo the Harper majority before it does even more permanent damage to Canada.

It’s clear that as leader, Mulcair would, like Cullen, move the party toward the center. He has a reputation for being smart and tough politically, qualities that will be needed to beat Harper. He’s also said to be a bit of a prick one-on-one. It’s hard to say whether his willingness to set aside old NDP hobby horses, or his lack of personal likability, is the biggest factor in the enmity he inspires among old NDP warhorses.

If Mulcair is defeated by a gang-up in which the second- and third-place candidates throw their support to Cullen, the backlash in Quebec will hamper, perhaps fatally, the party’s ability to hold its newfound beachhead there. Like Andrew Cohen and others, I regard that knee-jerk reaction as a foolish artifact of the most irritating trait in Quebec’s political mindset. But it is also a reality of Canadian politics, and a real risk.

So I will support Cullen on the first ballot, and I hope a strong showing by him will show that the overwhelming majority of New Democrats think defeating Harper is more important than clinging to 1970 lefty nostrums. I reserve the right to switch to Mulcair as Saturday wears on.

In a few weeks, I’ll join the federal Liberals, if they’ll have me, with a view to supporting whichever of its leadership candidates encourages cooperation among moderates and progressives in the shared goal of defeating Harper.

And for the record, I reserve the right to consider voting Progressive Conservative in the next Nova Scotia election, as I have sometimes done is the past, since that party, unlike it’s federal counterpart, retains a moderate element.

Beware of blue Bolsheviks!

This argument would be more persuasive if the Dexter Government had shown any sign of being either permanent or socialist. Dexter won office less than three years ago,  and he did so by turning quietly away from the strident leftist approach of previous NDP leaders, and toward centrist policies where Nova Scotia voters have traditionally found their comfort zone. The phrase, “for today’s families,” doesn’t exactly call to mind Rosa Luxemburg.

The NDP’s historic breakthrough reflects two longterm political trends.

• As Western Canada and — to a lesser extent — Ontario turned sharply right over the last 20 years, Nova Scotia remained true to what might be called Red Tory values: We remain economically moderate and socially liberal. The widening gulf makes us look uncharacteristically leftish by comparison, but it’s the Uppity Canadian leopards who’ve changed their stripes, not us.
• Over the same period, party divisions within Nova Scotia have coalesced into three clear zones: Liberal Cape Breton; Tory rural mainland; and NDP Metro. Dexter won the last election on the strength of inroads not in Cape Breton, where he picked up no additional seats, but in the rural mainland, where loyal Tories winced at the Rodney Interregnum.

If Dexter were recklessly pursuing ideology over the province’s best interests, an opposition coalition might be in order. I believe the Harper government’s US Republican-style extremism should cause Liberals, New Democrats, and disaffected Stanfield Progressive Conservatives to explore avenues of co-operation.

But to argue that anything Dexter has done is so far outside the mainstream, or so redolent of permanent hegemony, as to inspire a Tory-Liberal Union is, forgive me Rob, just silly.