Review of Arrival City

I recently purchased a copy of Arrival City by Doug Saunders. I’d heard a bit about the book, and was hoping that it would provide some great additional information for me on cities and the importance of them as engines of growth and prosperity.

The book largely delivers, with a collection of interesting stories about the transition from rural to urban life. The arrival city is a bit of a slippery concept, but I think still provides a useful analytical way of thinking about the specific places mentioned in the book. Arrival cities, according to the book, represent those often marginal areas of large cities, where rural migrants are able to get to the first rung on the urban ladder.

The book argues that it is this first crucial step that is often overlooked when we think of what is really transforming the world into a truly urban place. The transition between village and rural life is the focus of the book, and it really highlighted for me the challenge of becoming an urbanite. In fact many of the stories he covers are about the failures of this transition both in the West and the developing world.

The book covers a good deal of territory both geographically, and metaphorically. It includes stops in Turkey, Brazil, Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, Iran among others.
As a journalist, Saunders is able to weave the personal stories into a compelling narrative, and these individual personal stories are the best part of the book..

Saunders is able to link these personal stories together and highlight the importance of local and urban issues for the national context. Indeed this is the most interesting part of the book, where he is able to link the improving improvements and changes to a given favela to the largest context of President Lula and Brazil’s recent success. He does the same in linking the success of the Gecekndu in Turkey to the rise of its President Recep Ergodan These good examples, are unfortunately is lacking in some of the other sections.

One thing I found fascinating, was the importance of providing a path to citizenship, as a way of bringing immigrants into the formal economy. This is one thing Canada does better than any else, as a large majority of immigrants to Canada are able obtain citizenship in three years. This much faster than other countries. It also was interesting to note that this "path to citizenship" has also been provided in the U.S. through amnesties, which seems to come up often in their debate about immigration. Hopefully for their own sake they will get around to sometime soon.

The book does a good job of combining Saunders obvious skill as a journalist with obvious scholarship and research into the topic. The book is a good read, and even attempts at times to deal with the larger national political issues. It's a refreshing take to see national politics as fundamentally urban, which one imagines it is in some of these countries. I wish there was a bit more here on structural issues, on the macro context, but generally speaking it's covered off.

CBC 75th Anniversary

A few weeks ago, I went on a free tour of the CBC studio here in Ottawa. They offered the tour as part of their 75th anniversary celebrations, as part of Culture Days.

It prompted me to write a letter to my MP in support of the CBC, something that appears to be important, given the attacks by SUN TV what the increasingly call the "state broadcaster"(see discussion here ). They seem to be using the fact that the CBC is now subject to the Access to Information Act, to harass the broadcaster and also to attempt to get information they can use to either embarrass them or tow gain a commercial advantage.

Here's an excerpt from the letter:

An offhand comment made by someone at the CBC studios, which I visited during Culture Days here in Ottawa this past weekend, prompted this letter. She remarked that "public broadcasting is about the public, and about you". This comment reflects something I strongly believe about the important role of the CBC. In my case, as the son of two immigrant parents, I understand how important the CBC was in enabling them to become Canadian citizens in the fullest sense of the word. I know this is the same for others, who have also remarked how listening to CBC radio enabled their immigrant parents to understand their adopted country.

The importance of the CBC to the development of the Canadian fabric is of course not limited to immigrants. In my case, listening to the CBC has enabled me to identify with Canada as a whole. This particularly the case with radio. Radio has an incredible immediacy and ability to engage listeners in conversations.

All countries can be defined as an act of faith or imagination. This especially true in Canada given its huge geography, the diversity of its landscapes, symbols and local identities. I have learned so much about the North of this country, the various parts of Atlantic Canada including Newfoundland (places I have only been in my imagination), through listening to CBC radio. It has provided a window into other conversations about Canada that include these places.

Despite the Toronto centric view of things, I believe in particular that CBC radio offers Canadians great programming that challenges and inspires. This programming is typified by the wonderful annual Massey lectures, is not provided by any other broadcaster in Canada. The kind of programming provided by the CBC will never be provided solely by the market.

The CBC is an important cultural institution that deserves taxpayer support. I urge you to protect it, and ensure that any decisions made within the context of deficit reduction respect the importance of the institution and are in keeping with the maintenance of its important role.

Evidence in public policy and decision making

This week has seen a series of articles that touch on evidence in public policy. Unsurprisingly several are about the crime bills being debated in Parliament.

I however thought the most interesting development this week was actually found in the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) decision on Insite. Insite is the safe injection site in Vancouver, which is exempted from the federal controlled drug substances act. While an extremely narrow defeat for the Conservative government, it was nonetheless a unanimous 9-0 decision.

The background is that Insite had requested and received an exemption when it opened up. It had received several extensions until 2008 when the then Health Minister Tony Clement denied the exemption. The ongoing court case(s) allowed the site to continue until it was finally resolved

What intrigued me and relates back to the evidence in public policy, was that the SCC decision rested largely on evidence around Insite. The most intriguing element of the decision for me is in the following paragraph 137 of the decision

The goals of the CDSA, as I have stated, are the maintenance and promotion of public health and safety. The Minister’s decision to refuse theexemption bears no relation to these objectives; therefore they cannot justify the infringement of the complainants’ s. 7 rights. However one views the matter, the
Minister’s decision was arbitrary and unsustainable.

Now I am not a lawyer, and therefore am not qualified to give a definitive opinion on the matter, but it would seem to me based on a layperson's reading, that essentially the decision was arbitrary in that it was not based on evidence. Essentially the court said that the decision was not based on any available evidence. Strike a win for the requirement for evidence based public policy.

I'm not a fan of the SCC being so involved in such determinations, but in this case where a government decision is based on no evidence whatsoever, where all available evidence points to the fact that lives are saved and is seen by all around it as a success. In a situation where, the city, the policy, the surrounding community including an immigrant business association (in fact as Paul Wells notes, what normally would qualify as the Conservative coalition), it would seem to me that one should at least have some evidence for making a decision.

Dan Gardner's recent column with the title A crime debate without facts or arguments highlights the challenges faced by those who believe in evidence based policy on emotional issues such as crime. Deeply felt ideology or emotion can make marshalling the evidence and convincing people difficult, but I would argue it is exactly on these issues that it is most important.
He writes:

Not long after they took power in 2006, I heard a minister say in an interview that mandatory minimum sentences reduce crime by deterring criminals. So I called the minister's office and asked for the evidence that supported the minister's claim.

The minister's office sent a list of five criminological studies. I was impressed. An assertion backed with evidence: That's the way serious people deal with policy.

But then I found and read the studies.

It turned out that most were old, badly done, and, even if correct, actually only supported the deterrence hypothesis in certain very limited circumstances. More remarkably, the newest and best study actually concluded that mandatory minimums do not work.

The challenge is exacerbated when those proposing the policy have little interest in the outcome, or the impact of their proposed approach. Another example here, where Ian Brodie notes that

Despite economic evidence to the contrary, in my view the GST cut worked,” Brodie said in Montreal at the annual conference of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. “It worked in the sense that by the end of the ’05-’06 campaign, voters identified the Conservative party as the party of lower taxes. It worked in the sense that it helped us to win.

In other words the evidence doesn't matter. Electoral results matter more than anything else. Now some will argue that this is always the case, and they have a point. That doesn't make it right, and that certainly doesn't make it any easier to deal with serious challenges. One can only get away with ignoring evidence for so long. The problems are real, the issues are real and they have costs.
One has to believe that in the end the evidence matters, and that it will have real impacts. Though it would appear these days that many who don't believe in science, who don't believe in evidence are in the ascendancy, at the end of the day the evidence does matter. How else can one have a society based on the rule of law. The Supreme Court bases its decisions on evidence, and it must be that way, and it why having an independent judiciary is an important component of democracy.
What an interesting decision they made yesterday, and I'll be curious to see what impact it has on decision making going forward.

For additional reading

On Insite:
Dan Gardner or Paul wells here or here


On crime:
Jeffrey Simpson or Alex Himelfarb

On multiculturalism

I read this article this week reflecting on the supposed failure of multiculturalism and I was shocked at how shoddy the piece was. Given that it was an opinion piece in the National Post, perhaps I shouldn’t be that surprised.

It came at an interesting time, as it echoes comments made by Gordon Brown a few years ago and referenced by Alberto Manguel in his wonderful 2007 Massey Lectures which I’ve been re-listening to this week. I liked his discussion of the issue, which discusses a similar pronouncement as the above article. Even including the use of the past tense in describing multiculturalism.

Manguel said:

[Gordon] Brown proposed unity at the cost of multiplicity, identifying a national 'Us' as a means not to identify with 'Them' - whoever the other might be. The point Brown missed is that it is not the 'separateness' that is detrimental to unity, but the labelling of the 'separate' others as inimical..."

This is exactly right, and his labelling of the new immigrants where Joans writes: "No: The new type was a conqueror whose quest was to alter Canada to suit him and his tribe."
Thereby labelling all the new immigrants as problematic, no matter where they come from, no matter who they are, no matter what they bring to the country.

He also goes beyond this in response to a question about identity. For some reason it struck a chord with me as I listened this week in a way it had not before. His passion for Canada is obvious in the answer, but it also strikes me as something amazing about Canada. Canada allows one to have an open identity. Canadians aren’t forced to choose their identity in the way they might be in many other countries. Or more accurately to have an identity imposed on them. Often it is the labelling that causes problems and challenges, especially when done from the outside.

We have found a way to live together in a world without labelling each other by race or creed. I’m always astonished at the degree to which this makes some people uncomfortable, particularly conservatives. Perhaps it comes from a desire to see things in black and white which I also have a tendency to see among conservatives.

I see this reflected in the way that Barack Obama is forced to choose to identify as black, despite his bi-racial heritage. It becomes obvious in reading his book Dreams of my father that the question is largely settled for him though perhaps he struggles with it at times. What is so interesting is to compare his experience with that of growing up biracial in Canada as highlighted in Black berry sweet juice,. Which chronicles the experience of Insert name here, and to my mind highlights the difference here in Canada, and the fact that one does not have an identity or a label imposed on them.

George Jonas’s article is ridiculous, from the way the opening section highlights the complaints of a Korean immigrant asking “where all the nice white people went”, to his suggestions that multiculturalism was a secret plot to get rid of the influence of the church, to his linking of Trudeau’s policies to today’s Islamic terrorism.

First of all, multiculturalism removed barriers on immigration that restricted it by race. In response people from around the world chose to immigrate to Canada. One thing that has to be remembered is that immigration is a choice made by people. All immigrants to Canada chose to come here. No-one forced them, and certainly Canada did not go around rounding up people from all over the world and force them to live here, as is suggested by the tone of the article.

Second it is amazing to imagine that the country does not change according to its ethnic make-up. This is the lie Manguel so rightly points out in his lecture. To imagine that there ever was such a thing as an unhyphenated Canadian belies the point that the definition of who is Canadian changes over time. On the prairies the influx of Ukrainians in the early part of the 20th century was greeted with much suspicion, and yet despite the last names, many of their descendants would not be distinguishable from your ordinary average Canadian.

The black and white nature of this analysis is highlighted by Manguel, where he says:

"For Brown or [Nicholas] Sarkozy, assimilation or exclusion are the only methods to ensure the sruvival of a society's identity. A social policy of open identity in a society that accepts the evolution is in their eyes too dangerous because that society might then be transformed out of all recognition"

This highlights the problem I see in a lot of conservative analysis. It posits simple black and white problems and pretends that it covers everything. Those that oppose such empty ridiculous notions, or suggest a more nuanced approach are labelled as elitists, or worse traitors.

This isn't to say that there are real challenges. The new immigrants are doing worse that the previous generation of immigrants, taking longer to get up to the Canadian average in terms of wages, despite being more educated. A big problem relates to credentials, and the problem of getting "Canadian" experience.

Canada will continue to exist, depsite what George Jonas says, but perhaps he won't recognize it. I'm sure glad Canada has changed since the 1950s, even if it scares many conservatives.

Election(s) time

Well it seems like there are potentially a lot of changes coming on the Provincial scene here in Canada, with I think 6 or 7 elections this fall, and the choosing of a new premier in Alberta, usually more consequential than their elections. The interesting thing is that there are likely a few big changes on the horizon, potentially in Ontario and in Manitoba in particular both of which might go Conservative.

That would feed into the emerging narrative in some circles in which there is an emerging governing coalition in Canada in which the West and Ontario have now become Conservative. This means that it is now possible to govern federally without winning many seats in Quebec.

Although it appeared for a long time that the Progressive Conservatives (yes they still exist provincially in Ontario) were heading towards a victory, the polls have been tightening for a while now and the latest numbers show the Liberals ahead. That would be a big blow to the idea that Ontario has been trending conservative, but we’ll have to await the results to see what happens. It appears to be turning into a close race. I

Recent comments by the Tories about “Foreign workers”, may end up being the wedge issue that allows the Liberals to govern. These comments are despicable and ridiculous. They come after the Liberals announced some funding to employers to hire new immigrants in their fields of study helping them to get their credentials recognized. I was surprised that Hudak even when given the chance, refused to back away from his “foreign workers” line. Playing up the xenophobia in my books is despicable. Foreign workers are different from immigrants, and he should know better.

I think it will be interesting to see how long it takes those commentators like John Ibbitson who write
things like this “What matters most is that Canada appears to have grown out of the era of earth-shaking federal-provincial conflicts. The will to struggle has faded, replaced by the will to accommodate.” See here here. It doesn’t take much to stir the federal provincial pot, and even Ibbitson acknowledges that the 2014 Health Accord negotiations may be somewhat acrimonious.

Federal provincial relations seem good these days because the federal government is withdrawing from many areas of provincial jurisdiction (many in areas of social policy), while concentrating on areas of Federal jurisdiction. We’ll see what kind of things happen though if the National Securities regulator supreme court reference goes the federal government’s way how calm the relations will be, as the federal government moves to occupy an area that arguably should always have been federal, but had been occupied by provinces.

One final challenge I think facing Canada will be in a few years when the federal government emerges from the current economic malaise and finds itself in a more powerful position vis a vis the provinces, especially as Ontario and Quebec face significant challenges on the fiscal and economic front. I think that it will be hard for any government to ignore their challenges, particularly if the federal government is relatively stronger in a few years time.

I think we are in a bit of lull period, where everything seems quiet on the federal-provincial front but one never knows or can predict how things will turn out. If as Ibbitson suggests a Conservative government emerges in Ontario, thing will likely be more difficult, as traditionally the worst relations between Toronto and Ottawa have been when parties of the same stripe are in power.

The decline of an important institution?

I was listening to a podcast from Australia this week in which they debated the question " Both Major Parties are Failing the Australian People".

It was an interesting debate, and many of the themes were the same as those being expressed in Canada.

Themes such as:
• Concern about diminishing numbers of members
• Increasingly controlled by leaders and by small numbers of people
• Concern about the role of parties in engaging people in discussion about issues and bringing people together

Here in Canada, an organization called Samarra released its own report about Canadian political parties called It's my Party: Parliamentary Dysfunction Reconsidered The report is part of a series based on "exit interviews" with Parliamentarians.

What struck me as I heard some of the coverage of the release of the report, was how toxic the relationship between the Members of Parliament(MPs) and their party had become. The report itself states that "the consistent observation from the MPs that the greatest frustrations they faced during their political careers came from within their own political party."

As in Australia, there were comments about the small number of behind the scenes officials running the party, and tension around the amount of control being exercised by the political party.

Both these views from Australia and especially from the insiders in Canada, seem to suggest that political parties as an institution are no longer performing as well as they used to. Their ability to engage the general public and serve as an aggregator of interests, seems to be diminished, in part due to declining membership, particularly among young people.

This raises some interesting questions about how to engage citizens in the political process. If young people in particular are abandoning political parties, how do we engage them in the formal political process. They seem to be moving towards membership in advocacy organization outside the formal process, joining NGOs, starting NGOs and advocating their beliefs this way.

This shift towards being involved in ways that are outside the political process poses two problems, one it leaves a smaller tent, more filled with true believers and ideologues within the traditional party, while also leaving those involved outside, as frustrated by the lack of movement on their issues.

I have wondered what a political party would be like if it could include all those who criticize from the outside, were actually involved in building the parties from within. Part of the cynicism that seems to be increasingly to be a part of our political culture relates to the fact that there are so many outsiders taking shots and attacking political parties.

In the end political parties are an entrenched part of our political system, and we need them. They need to modernize to be sure, but they also need people within them to push them in that direction. Perhaps now is the time given the NDP and Liberals are under interim leaders to think more about ways to properly engage people outside the current parties and figure out a way to bring in new and future leaders.

The hiss factor

This post is slightly dated as it is about the Budget, which obviously did not pass given that we are in election season, however I think it is still something worth writing about.

Preston Manning wrote an interesting article in the Globe and Mail a few weeks ago, with the interesting title "The hiss factor and the art of taxation". In the article he suggests that those focusing on only the economics, miss the fact that the politics are important.

It follows a few articles from economists complaining about the huge number of politically motivated tax credits, and the lack of substantive economic policy changes in the Budget.

The issue goes beyond the ever expanding list of tax credits, (see a take on the ever growing list of credits here ), and points to the challenge of bringing the public with you on complicated issues.

I actually think that there are two possible paths, one is the cynical one, of which the explanation for the GST cut by the Conservatives is a good example. This was a situation in which politics, was the only concern when the government cut the GST by two percentage points. Many now point to this move as creating a structural deficit and undermining the governments long term revenues, despite the impact of the "Great Recession".

The second approach would be to explain clearly the choices faces Canadians. It's a difficult path, in part because the general public doesn't always recognize the trade-offs involved in some of these decisions. One can only hope that new ways of presenting the information could help. The Finance department's site "Where does your tax dollar go" should be rolled out and highlighted to more people, so that people can understand basic facts about where government money goes.

In the end the only real answer is to do both, find something that makes sense economically, and politically. It's hard in practice, as often they pull in opposite directions, and in many cases splitting the difference isn't possible.

The importance of analysis in public policy

There was an important article by Mel Cappe, former Clerk of the Privy Council about the importance of analysis in public policy. it also goes with the article I referred to Wednesday about Cass Sunstein (Link here), which talks about how Sunstein imagines the possibility of really making a difference in people lives through the design of "choice architecture".

I thought this line from Mel Cappe's piece was good and important:


The importance of ideas and analysis has never been greater. How should we present complex issues for elected officials, mere mortals all, to come to grips with? Simplification can be trivializing, and it misses the subtlety in both challenges and solutions. The answer lies in building evidence and expertise into the process.


It's not always easy to understand what kind of expertise is needed in public policy, or within government. In most cases you don't need a PhD in an area to understand the basic mechanics and problems at hand and even come up with solutions. On the other hand, I'm not convinced that politicians should be overriding a nuclear safety commission, (at least on a regular basis) without at least some good analysis.


He also points to the big challenge underlying the current situation in the public service:

Even with robust supply, however, there is inadequate demand. Ministers should be demandeurs of public-service expertise, requesting analysis and evidence, options and alternatives. But who needs evidence and expertise when you have ideology?

There are serious questions however about the role of the public service in providing advice, given the multitude of sources available to everyone. What is the role of in-house experts when you can find a ton of information a simple google search away? This is easier in some areas to justify than in others. I believe that there needs to be some serious thinking about how the public service policy function is exercised, and a rethink of its role.

This points to two separate questions. One is how the policy function is carried out, how it is organized. You could call this the plumbing and mechanics. The second is more about the role. You could call this the what, or the substance. I think the rising nature of horizontal challenges, and also problems which ignore disciplinary boundaries point to the need for better collaboration, where teams of people with different expertise can come together and really think a problem through. This is needed to break down silos. Even if such exercises were merely to identify issues and challenges rather than implement solutions they would be welcome and useful.

It's interesting to read David Brooks, because he's obviously someone who is quite intelligent, but it is frustrating to see him denigrate people who have expertise. While he might argue that he's disparaging the "certainty" that bureaucrats or technocrats have in their analysis, it often comes across as bashing expertise. This is the external challenge, people are increasingly skeptical of expertise, and lord knows there are a litany of failures in forecasting, and in dealing with problems. The alternative can't be ignorance or ideology, which won't help explain real problems so that we can do better.

This faith that government has a role to play and also that analysis is important appears in some ways to be what differentiates those who believe the in the "liberal" or welfare state from conservatives and libertarians. I'm not sure I would frame it quit the same way, but this article points to the difference between the liberal state and the watchman state.

In my estimation even a limited state, would be better prepared in the areas it did intervene if it had good analysis and a good sense of what it is trying to achieve.

The Big short

So I'm not expert in finance and the business of Wall Street. I already knew that, but it wasn't until I had almost finished the complicated and convoluted story that Michael Lewis covers in the Big short that I finally got the title. This is not to say that it isn't a great book, it really is. it's simply to say that the world of finance has its own language, pace of events and opaqueness.

In fact this opaqueness ifs a main part of the story in The Big Short. I won't ruin it for those who haven't read it, but the essential story is about a group of characters , who discover the rot at the heart of the subprime mortgage crisis in the U.S. and decide to short the market. End result, they were right, even though nobody believed them. Everyone else was wrong. But the one point that comes out strongly in the afterword, is that essentially both sides of the bet got rich. No one who was truly responsible for destroying large chunks of the real economy through their fancy manipulation has been held accountable.

For anyone who believes that it was the borrowers who were the problem, I suggest you read this book, and think again. It's hard to even come up with words to describe how crazy the whole thing is, and the lack of due diligence done on the part of the banks. One of the characters at the centre of Lewis' story calls the subprime market the doomsday machine.

What's the saying? ," if I owe you thousands of dollars, good for you, but if I owe you millions, watch out". Something along those lines. I honestly don't know how people could imagine that lending over 700K to someone who makes $12,000 a year is good for anyone. I find it unbelievable that people could overlook the fact that even if they can pay the "teaser" rate for two years, that the real crisis will hit when interest rates reset. This insight is in part what allowed these traders to bet against the market, basically to bet that all hell would break loose and they were right.

What Lewis is so good at achieving is the unbelievable nature of what happens to all parties. Even those betting against the market, can't believe that it is being allowed to happen, that no-one else sees the disaster coming, and that so many people are on the wrong side of the bet.

I was listening to a podcast of Planet Money which jokes about having 4th graders read contracts, to see how much they understand. What was amazing was that someone had taken the effort to redesign a privacy notice into simple language that even these kids could understand. It was amazing how much they were able to understand when it was presented clearly. I'm a big fan of the new rules on credit cards we have here in Canada which force companies to post how long it would take to pay off the bill if you only paid the minimum. One recent bill said 17 years!

I read the book Nudge by Cass Sunstein (recent profile in the NYtimes here and Richard Thaler during graduate school and I did find some elements of it really interesting. What I like about this approach is that it is very practical. The approach examines a problem and says, are there ways in which we can encourage people to behave in a way that's in their interest. There is a section that talks about how to make people understand the complicated contracts that are part of modern day life, such as cell phones. Providing examples to people of how things will affect them, make a lot of sense. Building this into regulation is actually a way of encouraging market forces and ensuring they work better.

The credit card example demonstrates the power of information as a policy instrument, which is often overlooked, but in the right situation can be a powerful and relatively cheap way of achieving real results. I think this is one thing that the open data people have right. Information can be powerful.

NB: I'm going to attempt to post twice a week as of today, *fingers crossed*

A follow-up on the role of universities

I thought I'd follow-up on a previous post on university before moving on to other topics.

There have been a few recent articles about the value of education. Paul Krugman wrote an article claiming that there is increasing danger of outsourcing even jobs requiring education if they can be easily done by computer or for cheaper overseas. A recent podcast on Onpoint , also started to question the wisdom of "College for all". Here one of the commenters suggested that in fact the difference between the stable jobs and those that face bleaker prospects, was the degree to which the job was "offshorable".

It's something I've thought about as well in terms of the push within the culture towards getting higher and higher levels of university education.

The data on this is interesting, as the "gap" that Canada faces is in getting people to pursue Phds, and also in business education. There is some data that compares business managers in Canada to those in the U.S and shows that they are less educated in general and much less likely to have an MBA. This is the empirical basis for the Canadian government's decision to focus expanded funding on business education in a recent budget.

The other interesting thing revealed in the data is that the Quebec system of Cegeps makes data comparison difficult. Cegeps count as post secondary education which they may or may not be, but pump Canada's statistics , and making it difficult to evaluate the claim that Canada has the highest level of post-secondary education in the world.

There is a deeper issue around university education. It comes down to the role of the University and there are competing understanding of it. To some extent people view it as an elitist activity, and this is driving concerns about bringing that kind of education to the masses. You won't hear many explicitly make this argument but it is hidden underneath concerns about quality and about the dumbing down of the university.

An additional concern is whether the role of the University is to train people for jobs or whether it is to educate and create citizens. These are completely opposing views and proponents offer very different perspectives. On the training side, they push the current model of supporting extensive (and expensive) business schools, engineering schools and focusing on research. On the other side, you have those who want to focus on the humanities, basic science research and a focus on teaching. It isn't clear how to reconcile these two models. Perhaps there is no need to reconcile them, but perhaps change the balance.

I think the answer is to reinforce technical training outside the university while maintaining the role of universities in more of the humanities / basic science areas. This would allow technical colleges to be more entrepreneurial and attract private funds and work with industry while avoiding some of the dangers that corporate influence could have in a more academic setting. The CEGEP model which exists in Quebec is one possibility, as is the move in British Columbia towards polytechnic institutes.

A response to Andrew Potter

This is a response to this article by Andrew Potter, which suggests that Parliament is failing and the Liberal party in particular is not doing its job as the Official Opposition.

He wrote:

What this means is that the job of an MP is itself pretty frigging simple. The House of Commons has two main jobs: Make a government, and hold it to account. It does this Siskel & Ebert style, by giving thumbs up (offering support) or thumbs down (withdrawing confidence). Literally everything else a non-government MP does is either an embellishment of this function (e.g. sitting on committees) or a distraction from it (the much-vaunted “constituency work”). The key benefit of this simplicity is that it makes the lines of accountability crystal clear. The government does stuff, the rest of the House holds it to account. At election time, voters can decide how they feel about it.

My main criticism is that it’s not as easy as he suggests to clearly understand the role of MPs in our system. A recent report by the organization Samarra report was entitled: Welcome to Parliament: A Job With No Description suggests as much. It is based on research done through MP exit interviews and as the title suggests it points out the difficulty in defining the role of MPs, given their various responsibilities to constituents, their party, their leader, etc..Andrew Potter's suggestion that he knows what the role of an MP is, raises my eyebrows given that MPS themselves don't seem to agree fully.

(NB:I haven't yet read the report myself, but I heard a talk about it on The Agenda)
Now perhaps it is easier to define the role of the opposition, but I see just as much conflict in their role, given their responsibility of "opposing" but also presenting an alternative to the government and also holding them accountable.

His main complaint in some ways seems to be that they didn't follow his advice, a few weeks back which suggested that the Liberals should withdraw confidence continually until Bev Oda resigned or they forced an election.

Partly I think this response is based in the weakness of the Liberal party right now, and I think the biggest problem the Liberals face is not having a strong sense of grassroots support. Their traditional role as the “natural governing party’ enabled them to circumvent the need for grassroots support because they exercised the traditional patronage appointments and the trappings of power, but since Trudeau destroyed the Liberal brand in Western Canada, and their traditional areas of support are under attack by Conservatives (particularly the ethnic constituencies). This coupled with their slow response to changes in the financing of political parties has removed their fundraising advantage.

However a talk this week got me thinking about the other aspect to this, is that Potter's argument highlights the interesting, but difficult nature of a Westminster Parliament. I went to a talk this week entitled " which was bout the changing nature of the Westminster Parliamentary system. It was a reminder of some of the academic discussions which are going on about our system, and the "three moving parts", Parliament, the Public Service and the political executive (or what we commonly call "the government", i.e the PM and cabinet)

The talk highlighted one of the difficulties of a system built on convention, which is that it only works as long as there are shared conceptions and understandings, and as these break down, the system doesn't work as well.

This notion of share understanding is key to where I think Potter's argument falls down. If everyone agreed on the rules that he asserts, it would be easy. However in Canada we are in a period of flux, where these traditional conventions are breaking down. If the Conservatives invoke cabinet solidarity and defend actions that in the past might not have been defended, it changes the shared understandings and conventions.

While the talk presented some interesting thoughts on the common challenges faced by Westminster systems across the world, notably, Canada, the U.K. Australia and New Zealand and how each of the system is adapting to these challenges.

It was pointed out that Canada seems to be the country that lurches more from change to change, rather than slowly adapting, as the U.K. and Australia and to a certain extent New Zealand does as well though they radically changed their electoral system in the early 1990s and adopted at MMP proportional representation system.

In this context it was interesting to see that in response to the changes brought about by increased political fragmentation (interesting this is the first time that there is a minority government across all four countries) and the breaking down of conventions, New Zealand has actually written out a book codifying in one place an understanding of the Westminster system. I believe Australia has also done so, while the U.K. is also embarked on a similar project, which fascinatingly enough is being done by their Clerk.

Perhaps this is what we need to establish the ground rules, which would help the opposition better understand their role, and perhaps also the role of MPs.

What is the role of the University?

I was listening to a podcast from Australia the other day about the role of universities and whether they should be teaching a course on practical ethics, and while the discussion was interesting to me, the most interesting aspect was about the role and function of the university.
First, I find it really interesting to listen to these Australian podcasts which I do only intermittently, because they show that many of the same issues are being faced but seen through a different lens and perspective, which can often be enlightening. They also get a lot of good U.S. speakers so it’s not that different at times from listening to them speak on the CBC or NPR. The two issues that I find most interesting (and the ones where Canada shows up explicitly most often) are the constitutional stuff, particularly when they talk about having a charter of rights as Canada does, and Australia does, and Aboriginal issues, where they discusses issues such as their own apology for the stealing of Aboriginal children.
Back the main topic of universities. Despite being out of university, or perhaps at a point now where I can look back with a touch of perspective, I am interesting in questions about the role of the university. I am interesting particularly in the debate surrounding the difference between training and education. This podcast talked at length about the need for universities to play a role in educating people and shaping values.
It’s an interesting idea and one that I agree with but that some may find controversial. I find it interesting that the side of technical training is winning, especially as someone point out in the lecture, given the amount of technical change expected, how useful is it to have specific skills? Particularly as was brought up, given the fact that current students can expect to have a huge number of different jobs ( he suggested 29), in industries that don’t currently exist over their lifetime. I’ve heard often, but not sure where the data comes from that suggests that the specific technical learning an engineer goes through is obsolete five years after they leave school.
Where then does this leave the university? There is increasing pressure and funding for science research, for business schools, for engineering schools, for professional degrees. There is increasing focus on the need for commercialization, for patents, for research. This means there is less focus on teaching, and on the social sciences and humanities.
I would argue that there is some awareness that there is a need for a broader ‘education’ that goes beyond technical training, and that there must be way to combine elements of both. I have heard the president of U of A talk about how in her native India there is a need to reinforce the social sciences side of education, as there is such prestige attached to engineering and business schools it’s crowding the other stuff out, and that that is what is needed today in India.
One presenter who worked on legal policy, which he said encompasses tricky ethical issues at times, spoke of the fact that lawyers were no good at providing that synthesis, all encompassing perspective, that they focused on the mechanics to the exclusion of other elements, while economists were worse, retreating into their models which did not reflect the reality of the situation. He noticed that it was historians, those who deal with the study of people, who were often good at connecting the issues at the kind of analysis it required. This isn’t to say that we don’t need lawyers or economists (though I’m not a big fan of economists), but that in some situations it’s not technical specialists we need to think things through.
I was shocked and surprised (perhaps it’s my idealism getting in the way) at the level of indifference and frankly incompetence of other students I saw during my M.A. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I found a level of challenge and discussion below my fourth year undergrad courses, or even my third year undergrad. I saw the worst presentation (and several that were close) of my entire university career during those 2 years. Almost everyone was there for the credential alone. The grades were inflated beyond belief.
The university school had been given extra resources in that first year, based on signing up additional graduate students, and my specific program was targeted for an increased number of students. Coupled with the Ontario “Double Cohort” and you had classes bursting at the seams. Graduate level courses of 30 people, lowered standards and inflated grades, those were the hallmarks of my graduate experience. I don’t want to generalize too much, but if this is the case elsewhere than there are big problems.

For those after more info; after writing this I found an interesting article for Stanley Fish in the NYtimes here

Harperland

Following up on the last post, I think the politics of the Harper government are also interesting. I’ve been reading Harperland by Lawrence Martin and it is quite revealing about the temperament of the government.

Honestly though, the thing that keeps coming back into my mind is something John Ralston Saul said a while back, about how people who are motivated are the ones that drive change. You get the impression that Harper and the Conservatives, are bound and determined to do whatever it takes to implement their agenda. The problem is that our institutions are not designed for someone who doesn’t play nice with the rules.

The normal constraints of behaviour are not being followed, and they are undermining all the checks on executive power that do exist. You can see that it comes from a deep seated hatred for the existing arrangements. It is interesting to watch them undermine institutions and attack their legitimacy.
The scary thing , is that they seem to be getting away with it, and it’s going to be interesting to see what happens in the future, both in terms of whether it ends up hurting them, but also whether some of the constraints are permanently damaged. Will a future government be able to go back to the way things used to be? Will this force a more codified regime to be put into place? I think this may be the answer, as having clear rules can prevent abuses. It may provide an opportunity to do some actual thinking about the mechanics of how our parliament works. One might hope that this might be in the interests of the Conservatives who after all did come in on a “transparency” agenda, but they seem to be so short sighted these days that it’s unlikely.

In some ways it would be good for the Conservatives to have a majority, as it would give them some breathing space, hopefully make them less paranoid, and provide the time the Liberals need to rebuild. The danger is the long term damage the conservatives could do to the country. A recent Walrus article to me highlighted some of the increasing gulf between those who viewed Canada the way the Liberals do and those who see it the way the Conservatives do. [link]

In many ways this reflects the “small” Canada that Jeffrey Simpson wrote about in a recent article. For me it’s highlighted in the fact that you have negotiations with the EU, a block of 27 countries, where Canada brings more people to the table, from each and every nook and cranny of the country than the Europeans.

One thing I would actually like to see if there is a majority is a shake-up of the “machinery of government”. Not too popular, and quite disruptive, I think it could be a moment of confidence building between a Conservative government and the public service. They could rebuild government in a way that suits them, and could provide opportunities for the public service to better respond to their agenda. Particularly on the economic competitiveness side it might be worth rethinking the role of some departments, such as Industry Canada and HRSDC. It could be part of a big redesign, but again it creates turmoil.

Who is Accountable? Where does Power lie?

Something else that’s been on my mind recently has been the book, Power Where is it?, By Donald Savoie, and I‘ve been meaning to write on this for a while now, but in light of recent events surrounding the funding of Kairos, it seems like a good occasion to opine on the subject.

The title is a good starting point for looking into this and Savoie’s best argued point is that there is a confusion in the public, in the bureaucracy, and in the private sector about where Power lies today.
Part of this is seemingly deliberate in the case of The Minister of International Cooperation and her lack of transparency about who inserted the “not” in the briefing note, but also in the case of the Minister of Industry, and his overturning of CRTC decisions . Who in the end is making these decisions?

Savoie obviously has considerable access within the federal bureaucracy and has a good understanding of both its institutional design and its daily rhythms. Sometimes his points ring tellingly true, but his analysis seems to have a rose coloured glasses look. He points to an idyllic past and everything done today seems to come up short.

He writes for example that " The more diverse the purpose of an organization, the less it cna generate power and impose it externally and gain submission from within." and later, "Networks, however, can never be as effective and decisive as hierarchy..."

For me as someone who is interested in understanding the impact of web 2.0
technologies and the possibilities that collaborative technologies offer, his lack of understanding of the potential promise here is astounding. Obviously the boosters of web 2.0 like Clay Shirky and of their application to government like David Eaves and Nick Charney would begin by throwing out the Wikipedia example, followed by a number of other success stories, of the power of networks. While different, I think Savoie's analysis misses the mark here. There is potentially a lot of insight here available for those looking into potential solutions.

In talking to a group of public servants working on a collaborative project of the side of their desk however the difficult tension between the network model and the hierarchical model is evident. In fact I think that we need some elements of both if we are to move forward successful. Therefore my concern with Savoie’s take on this was not only that it flies in the face of the evidence, but it makes it that much harder to move forward. It truly showed his age and his backward looking lens. Rather than providing potential solutions, he laments the fact that we have moved on from his golden age of the 1960s.

Despite this significant criticism he offers valid points and points to the troubling role of the Clerk of the Privy Council, and what I see as the politicization of the role. I remember reading an account of the huge cuts to the federal public service in the 1990s, and the disappointment felt by some about the lack of anyone around the table willing to defend the public service. I know the stakes may not be as high, but I was disappointed that there did not seem to be any defence of the institution following the Census debacle last summer. I think an email sent to public servants to remind them of our role and the fact that we are valued, would have gone a long way in quelling the grumblings I saw.

The recent shocking revelations that a Deputy Minister could sign a document which would later be altered, points to an incredibly broken system. Who is accountable in such a situation?

CRTC UBB decision

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the UBB decision by the CRTC. Comments by David Eaves on his blog made me rethink my position on the decision and the issues at play. First of all, it made me realize that it’s a complicated issue and that there are a lot of moving parts, which makes me appreciate some of the difficult situation the CRTC is in.

The larger point however is that consumers don’t like user based billing type of pricing. This is n part because it’s more volatile, and expressly because of the link to behaviour. It’s difficult and costly to monitor your use of these types of services.

The problem is that as the confusion around the UBB decision highlights, is often people don’t have any idea how much of a given service they will need. How many GB of internet do you use each month? Only the heavy users who break the caps are likely to even come close to knowing the answer. I have no idea, despite the fact that I pay every month for the service, and I can easily go online and find out the answer. Ideally if we moved to a purely UBB system, I would pay less for internet, as I use probably way less than the average person, while the heavier users will pay more.

However overall this is one thing I agree with economists on, is that this type of transparency is more efficient. It internalizes the costs of your behaviour. To the extent that access to the internet is a scarce resource, the most efficient way of allocating it is to price it. This will allocate it to those get the most value out of it the resource.

The link I made was to water pricing, which is an area I once wrote a paper on, and the argument is the same. To the extent that water is a finite resource (which increasingly it is being realized it is), the best way to allocate rights to it is to price it.

There were two really insightful comments however in the commentary I’ve read:

First, was the fact that in fact public policy should not be discouraging use of the internet, through higher prices. Canada in fact already had high prices. I wouldn’t go so far as some in claiming that the big telcos, Bell, Rogers, Shaw actually want you to use the Internet less, but it was insightful commentary. This point was made by during an episode of TVO (which I highly recommend) on UBB, found here

Second, was a comment here about the attempt by the big companies to impose the cell phone business model onto the Internet. The model everyone hates because it’s so complicated and crazy. In this kind of convoluted world, the companies are able to manipulate people into paying for minutes they will never use, for extras that aren’t necessary and complicates life for consumers while inflating company profits.

It speaks to one big issue, consumers don’t like complexity or volatility, hence why I like many others love having a fixed cap system, or even better unlimited internet. I wonder if there is a lot of research into these types of issues by behavioural economists.

In my classes on sustainable energy policy we talked about utilities and the difficult market structure that exists for these industries. Deregulation in the power and natural gas industries have led to difficulties for both consumers and producers in places like California and the U.K.

Big questions like how to encourage competition in a market with a natural monopoly are not easy, and to my mind it speaks to why having an independent place for these technical discussions can be useful, even if in the end the government or Minister feels they got it wrong.

First Post

Hello everyone, this is a second blog for me (see the original ), and my intention is to take some thinking I've been doing on the state of Canada, and the world and take some time to post some longer posts on public policy issues.

The title I struggled with, but it comes from a song Proud to be CanadianI like by the arrogant worms, which opens with the line "Our fair country Canada", it also comes from the title of John Ralston Saul's book, called A Fair Country

First topic, up next, the CRTC decision on UBB.