Ron Paul Ad - Three of a Kind

I like the message of this advert. Ron Paul is the only one that consistently opposes the growth of government.

Canadian Federation of Students should not be taken seriously

The government has decided to close the youth job centres and focus on providing the service online. This sounds to me like a great way to save money. It will cut costs in maintenance and staffing while not cutting the service. It is also reflexive of the fact that most young people job search online and that the old model of going to an employment centre is on the decline. Any youth that does want a more personal interaction can still get it by going to a Service Canada outlet. This is really an ideal scenario for cost cutting. The service will now be cheaper while being provided in a way that the main constituency will find more pleasing. So can someone explain to me why the Canadian Federation of Students opposes this?

The CFS had this to say:

But Roxanne Dubois, national chair of the Canadian Federation of Students, said the move is troubling. The youth unemployment rate of 14.5 per cent is nearly twice that of the general population, said Ms. Dubois. At the same time, she said, students are facing high tuition fees and, in many cases, large debts.

“This is not a time to cut back resources to unemployed youth,” Ms. Dubois said. “It is actually a time to invest resources and make sure that, not only are we creating new job opportunities for young Canadians, but we are also providing the services they need to know what those jobs are and to have access to them.”

After reading these two paragraphs I am left with the conclusion that either Ms. Dubois doesn’t understand the issue or she is of the belief that government spending is an inherent good, and I don’t think we should rule out it being both.

She starts out by saying there is a youth employment problem. Fine, but that is not a problem that this program is designed to fix. The focus is far more on seasonal work for students than full time employment. So even if the program was completely cut the effect on youth employment rate would be nil (students are not counted as unemployed). Ms. Dubois clearly doesn’t have a grasp on what is at issue here.

Then she says that the government shouldn’t be “cutting back resources” but she misses the fact that the actual resource from the student’s perspective isn’t going to change much. Keep in mind that this change is at least partially a reaction to the fact that there has been a decline in students going to the actual physical centre. Most students are now using the resource online. So if the same service can be provided cheaper then why would anyone object?

The underlining assumption of Ms. Dubious’ quote is that any cuts no matter what is bad. Should they continue to found programs in an inefficient way just for the sake of…something? This knee jerk reaction completely undermines the credibility of the CFS. They hold it as a golden rule that the more gold you throw at an issue the better. This makes them come across as belligerent children rather serious advocates for their constituents.

The Human Resources and Skills Department of Canada deserves kudos for finding this economy. If the Canadian Federation of Students is going to oppose it they need to actually engage in the issue and give it some real thought. Until they stop giving nonsensical reflexive responses to anything that looks like a cut they simply should not be taken seriously as an organization.

An bizarre column in Toronto Star on the Wildrose Alliance

There is something a little bizarre about this column written by Gillian Stewart about the Wildrose Alliance’s position on the new draconian Alberta drunk driving law. The first paragraph seems to be the opening of the classic nonsense slur that anyone who opposes a law does so for evil reasons. The wording makes it sound like she believes the Wildrose Party wants there to be more drunk drivers:

Getting drunk drivers out of their cars and off the road is usually considered a good thing. But for Alberta’s right-wing Wildrose party, the province’s tough new drinking and driving laws are as loathsome as the Liberals’ gun registry.

That isn’t what the rest of the column is about. There isn’t any contempt for the Wildrose Alliance or their position. If anything Ms. Stewart seems sympathetic to their arguments and even points out the new rules could mean accosting people who have only had one or two drinks. To my surprise this isn’t an exercise of mudslinging but a fair airing of the party’s views.

Then the last few paragraphs the contempt comes streaming out:

The Alberta and B.C. governments may indeed be overstepping their bounds by giving police so much power. Still, I am wondering why Wildrose is so outraged about giving the police so much power when it comes to drinking and driving and yet they hasn’t uttered a word against the Harper government’s Bill C-30.

If C-30 becomes law, police will be granted extraordinary powers to monitor personal communications on the Internet. A lot more people use the Internet than drink and drive.

It is odd that someone would demand that a provincial opposition party take a position on federal legislation. Sometimes in Canadian politics this happens but I don’t understand why we should expect it to happen. Really the federal and provincial levels are different political arenas that cross over only occasionally.

It strikes me that really the first paragraph and this last bit is really just a disclaimer. Ms. Stewart seems to agree with the “right-wing” nasty rednecks, but she wants her loyal Toronto Star readers to be aware that she doesn’t support the party in general. To accomplish this she starts with a vaguely aggressive tone and ends with an accusation of hypocrisy that does not stand up to the slightest of scrutiny.

This is one of the things that annoy me about pundits. They find it difficult to praise anything that is praiseworthy in a group that they consider ideologically opposed. If they do praise they do it in this sort of awkward well-if-they-think-this-they-should-do-this-too kind of way.

This here is the danger of political labels. It allows people to take that label and call everything underneath it as either bad or good depending on what they think of the label. To praise anything under an opposing label is to be treasonous to your own label. For a Toronto Star columnist to say something nice about the Wildrose Alliance, she must tread very carefully.

Newmarket Councillor John Taylor likes expensive housing for his constituents

Newmarket Councillor John Taylor wants to cap the height of buildings in Newmarket to 15 storeys. There isn't a lot of undeveloped land in the town and thanks to the "places to grow" the population is expected to expand significantly. It doesn't take a genius to realize that this will lead to more expensive housing in Newmarket.

His only argument for why this is a good policy: change is scary.

Checking in with Gary Johnson

Reason Magazine gives us a nice update on how libertarian Gary Johnson's presidential run is doing.

Randy Hillier on the Drummond Report

Here's a press release from MPP Randy Hillier on his reaction to the Drummond Report. I bolded the best line:

Drummond Chases Inefficient Pot of Government Gold

(QUEEN’S PARK) Randy Hillier, MPP for Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, expressed significant concern today that the Drummond Commission’s findings failed to identify a path to future prosperity in Ontario. While Drummond’s report made 362 recommendations to find efficiencies and savings within the Ontario bureaucracy, not one will restore Ontario back as Canada’s economic engine nor shed our ‘have not’ status. “There are almost 600,000 unemployed people in this province and yet not one recommendation Don Drummond made will put people back to work in this province,” said Hillier. “Drummond refused to acknowledge the giant elephant in this province, the size and cost of government; instead he made recommendations based on the twisted fantasy that for the first time in history, government bureaucracy will and can become efficient.” Hillier agrees there is significant cause for concern given Ontario’s current financial debacle. Based on the projections in the Drummond Commission report, if Ontario maintains the status quo the debt will rise to over $400 billion by 2017/18. Hillier noted though that even if every one of the recommendations is adopted the provincial debt will still hit $300 billion within that same timeframe. “We needn’t be patting Don Drummond on the back for his recommendations to achieve a balanced budget over the next six years. Even with his advice our debt will grow by another 40 percent and taxpayers are all but guaranteed to see endless new user fees” said Hillier. “He was given a mandate to propose recommendations that would ensure that once the budget was balanced, Ontario’s fiscal environment would be sustainable, and I don’t see that in his report.” “Long term economic stability can not be realized by simply finding efficiencies in an inherently inefficient bureaucracy,” said Hillier. “We must identify and eliminate altogether the parts of government that impede economic growth, that prevent businesses from investing in Ontario and prevent individuals from getting a well-paying private sector job.” “Dalton and Don are telling us that Ontario will remain an economic basket case,” concluded Hillier.

The Drummond Report and health care hypocrisy

Yesterday I wrote about the naivety of Don Drummond in his ideas of what government is capable of doing. Today I write about his hypocrisy in the health file.

The Fraser Institute tells us that 50% of Ontario Government’s revenue is consumed by health care spending. Don Drummond himself says in the report that by 2030 it will take up 80% of government spending. This leaves inadequate funds to afford other government services, trifle things such as a court system or police. Any plan that would credibly lead to long term fiscal health in Ontario must tackle out of control spending in the health care file, and in this Mr. Drummond completely drops the ball.

He states that the goal should be a relatively modest growth in health care spending of %2.5 per year. This would be a reduction from the traditional growth rate of 6.8% a year. He doesn’t, however, give a clear idea of how that reduction would be managed. All that he does is provide a rehash of old ideas, some of which have been kicking around for decades.

It isn’t like it was impossible for him to suggest something that would be truly new for the health care system. Methods of incorporating private funding with a system of universal access are found a plenty in crazy capitalist Europe. I would forgive him this oversight because he was specifically told to stay away from such ideas, but he did have a previous opportunity to talk about it and he refused to.

It simply is not plausible that health spending can be restrained without a major reform in how the system is funded. Moving resources around and hoping that institutional cultures can magically change overnight is not going to cut it. It is inevitable that there will be some increased rationing of services to reduce spending increases and at the same time Mr. Drummond is saying that services could improve.

This may not be hypocrisy. It could be that Mr. Drummond is not aware of the inherent contradictions of his plan. It seems impossible that he not be aware of another contradiction that clearly exists.

This is the first principle that the Drummond Report says should guide reform:

The system should be centred on the patient, not on the institutions and practitioners in the health care system

The rest of his proposals proceed to completely disregard this principle. A truly patient centric system is a system that puts the desires and needs of the patient as the primary concern. Patients want the same thing that all consumers of a good want. They want choice and there is nothing in the Drummond Report that talks about giving patients real power to make decisions. In fact most of his recommendations are about decisions that the “institutions and practitioners” should make for the patient.

He recommends that the government decides: what profession should provide which services, when patients should go to the hospital, which services should be the priorities, where elderly should spend their final years, where patients go for their care, what kind of advice they should get from doctors, and he even hints that the government should be telling patients what they should feed their children. This so called patient centric system is not overly concerned with what the patients actually want.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so harsh on Mr. Drummond. The way that the system is funding makes it impossible for patients to make decisions based on value and cost. The cost for the patient is taken right out of the equation and so why shouldn’t the patient always demand the most costly service they desire? Actually it would be dangerous to allow patients the kind of choice in health care that they are used to receiving in restaurants. It just bothers me that the report pretends that this is a system that can be patient centric.

The only way that patients can be allowed choice and become the true focus of the system is by allowing price to enter into the calculation. Price signals are vital for consumers of any product to make decisions with limited knowledge. In short: the only way to achieve the principle of a patient centric system is to allow private funding of health care.