Note to New Brunswick voter: governments don't create jobs

At least not productive jobs.

Liberals and Progressive Conservatives are debating job creation in New Brunswick’s election. Neither party seems to understand that it is not the role of government to create jobs, nor is the government any good at creating real jobs.

Often a government will increase employment by creating subsidies to an industry or hiring extra staff in some crown corporation. These are not real jobs. Sure someone gets paid and that individual benefits, but the economic gain is zero. To pay for that job the government has to take money from other people to produce something that nobody wants.

Such a job does not create anything of any real worth. If it did it wouldn’t need a subsidy to begin with.

It is only the private sector that can create true wealth and it is only the private sector that can create real jobs. All that any government can do to help job creation is get out of the way.

So the New Brunswick Liberals can come up with a strategy to create 20 000 jobs by 2013, and the Progressive Conservatives can come up with their own plan with their own deadline. It doesn’t really matter. Unless they plan to reduce regulation and decrease taxation, any plan that they can come up with won’t actually help the economy.

Canadian Medical Association is wrong on MMA ban

The Canadian Medical Association has come out against Ontario’s recent move to allow Mixed Martial Arts. They claim that the sport is too dangerous, but they are suffering from a prejudice against the sport based on faulty assumptions. According to the Globe and Mail:

“It’s savage and brutal. The aim is to disable and maim your opponent. … We should not tolerate this so-called sport in a civilized society,” Victor Dirnfeld, an internal medicine specialist from Richmond, B.C., told the general council of the CMA in Niagara Falls, Ont. on Wednesday.

Savage and brutal? I confess that it can often look that way if you watch it for the first time, but if you keep watching there isn’t really that much brutality. There is rarely any blood spilt, and if there is the fight is called to an end. The opponents are almost always respectful of each other and the game is far more about tactics and strategy than anything else.

Disable and maim? The rules of the Ultimate Fighter are specifically made so that it is unlikely someone would be disabled or maimed. I challenge the CMA to look up the number of people that have been disabled in an Ultimate Fighter match then look up the number of competitive divers that have broken their backs. MMA is not about violence it is about controlled violence. It is certainly not about maiming or disabling.

The truth of the matter is that the opinion of the CMA doesn’t matter, or at least it shouldn’t matter. They may not like the sport but many other people do. And more importantly anyone who enters the Octagon knows the risk that he is taking. Much like any sport, as long as the rules were followed a person who is injured in a MMA match is responsible for putting himself at risk.

It is not the job of the MMA or the government to tell those men what choices they can make.

Broken Window Fallacy

Harper the Tyrant (ii)

Elisabeth May claims that the Conservatives are dangerous to democracy. Unfortunately I wasn’t there for her speech and the only MSM report I could find about the speech is this Sun article. From this article it appears that she thinks that Canada’s democracy is under threat because elected officials are directing policy against the advice of unelected officials.

Somehow I don’t think Ms. May understands what democracy means.

She could argue that the independence of some officials has come under threat. But that is hardly a democratic value. This is just another absurd hyperbole of an attack against the government that serves to do nothing but undermine the credibility of the attacker. It is reminiscent of comments by a Liberal MP earlier in the summer calling Stephen Harper a tyrant.

At the same time there are plenty of valid complaints that can be made against the Conservatives. This piece by Andrew Coyne accusing them of being anti-intellectual is a good example. So why do so many opponents of the government feel compelled to make such silly remarks?

Mr. Harper is not a tyrant and he is not a threat to democracy. He may be a bad Prime Minister though, so let’s talk about that instead.

Canada in minority government for many elections to come

The Bloc Québécois makes it nearly impossible for a national federal party to form a majority government. With a lock on around 50 seats neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals are likely to win enough ridings to gain complete control of Parliament. So Canada is stuck with minority governments and the resulting constant threat of elections and instability.

There are only two ways for a majority government to become possible again.

The first way has been recently pointed out by Jane Taber. The plan to create new constituencies in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario will change the regional balance of Parliament. Quebec’s population compared to the rest of Canada has been in steady decline, and so it only makes sense that Quebec’s weight in Parliament will also decline. With more seats outside of Quebec, the Conservatives and the Liberals will be able to win enough ridings to form a majority government.

The problem is that the balance is not changing enough to make majority governments that much more likely. If we assume that the BQ can rely on winning 50 seats, this means that in the current seat distribution they will make up about 16% of the House. If the proposed changes come into place the BQ will still make up about 15% of the House. So there will still be a large bloc (if you excuse the pun) of seats that are out of reach for the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party. In the long run Quebec will likely continue to decline in population, but it could take decades for the seat distribution to change enough that majority governments will again become plausible.

The second strategy is to try and win the support of “soft-nationalists” away from the BQ. This is the strategy that the Harper government attempted in the first 2 years of power. They called Quebec a nation within Canada, and funnelled ever more money into Quebec provincial coffers. But when Election Day came Quebec voters did not award the Conservatives. Instead they voted for the BQ again.

So evidently the so called soft-nationalists aren’t in the mood to be wooed. Which makes sense, the BQ are best able to lobby for Quebec in a minority Parliament, so why would they vote for anyone else? What does the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party have to offer that the BQ can’t give the nationalist voter?

Going after the nationalist voter with more Quebec subsidies has proven to be a bottomless pit strategy anyway. There is no amount of funding that will be enough.

So both paths to majority government are, for the moment, out of reach. The reality is that we are now in a time of prolonged minority governments. We should all readjust our thinking accordingly.

No European Tax

Good news from Europe is that the proposal for allowing the EU Commission taxing power has been rejected. Giving the Commission tax powers would have been dangerous at best and disastrous at worse. Governments in the EU can at least claim democratic legitimacy when they raise taxes. If the people do not like taxes being raised, then they could at least theoretically vote for a lower tax party.

But the EU Commission is not directly accountable to the people that pay taxes. The Council of Ministers and the European Parliament are supposed to keep tabs on the commission but compared to other legislative bodies both the Council and Parliament are relatively weak. Europeans should be looking at ways to take power away from the Commission not giving more power.

Family to be fined for hosting the Liberty Summer Seminar

The Liberty Summer Seminar is by far my favourite yearly political social event. It is a place where politicians, journalists, academics and students can gather around with a bottle of Liberty Ale and learn about the philosophy and politics of freedom.

I owe a lot to the LSS, and not just for the good memories. Attending there as an undergraduate student I gained a greater breadth to my education. I heard economic and political theories that were never once mentioned by my own professors. I became engaged in ideas that to this day I find exciting and truthful. Even those that are not libertarian, such as blogger Roy Eappen, have been engaged by the topics and ideas at LSS.

The event takes place on the property of the Jaworski family. They cook amazing meals (considering that they are cooking for 100 people) and help to make the event the fun experience that it is.

After 10 years it seems that the municipal government has decided to take action against such a horror as providing people with food:

Due to an anonymous zoning complaint filed with the local municipality, husband and wife bed-and-breakfast proprietors Marta & Lech Jaworski may be forced to pay as much as $50,000 in fines for permitting their son, Peter, to use his family’s property to host the Liberty Summer Seminar, an annual barbecue in support of liberty.

“Our family escaped Poland for fear of reprisals in 1984 after my mom and dad handed out pro-democracy and pro-freedom literature from under my baby carriage,” said Peter Jaworski. “It’s ironic and upsetting that they may now be facing charges in Canada for allowing me to host an event in support of those very same principles.”

$50 000 fine can bankrupt them. It is an absurd punishment for doing nothing that should be punished. The municipality of Orono should be ashamed of itself for threatening the livelihoods of these innocent people.

You can read the full story here and please make a donation for their defence.

Renting vs. Owning

A few days ago I posted an article by Steve Lafleur on home ownership. Here is Mr. Lafleur talking about his article on Fox Business:

A penny abolished is a penny earned

A new survey shows that 60% of Canadians support the abolishment of the penny, and for good reason. Getting rid of the penny would be a benefit to the economy. David Watt, the VP for RBC Capital Markets, explains the reason why in this Ottawa Citizen Article:

Production costs for the penny would be saved and, more importantly, it would put more money back into circulation.

Watt explained that many people hoard pennies, keeping them in jars at home or in a box in the basement.

If the government decided to give people cash in exchange for their old pennies, that money might be spent or put in a bank account. Either way, the money is back in the economy, he said.

Sometimes I don’t wait for change if all that I’m going to get back is a penny. If I see a penny on the ground I rarely bother to bend down to pick it up. 1 cent is often not worth the effort of waiting half a second or bending my knees.

There was a time that a penny was worth something. You could buy candy with a penny or leave a penny as a small but respectable tip. Now a penny is useless. Pop machines don’t accept them and there is literally nothing you can buy with a penny. All that a penny is good for is taking up room in your pocket and infantile drinking games. Thanks to inflation the penny has become a thing of annoyance rather than value.

So I am among the 60% who say that we should get rid of the penny.

The intellectual consistency of the Fraser Institute

There are a number of organizations that directly benefit from the census data that is collected by Statistics Canada. Chief among these organizations are the think tanks. Free data makes it cheap and easy for think tanks to gather empirical information to support their conclusions and conduct research. It is partly for this reason that almost every think tank has come out against any reform of the census.

The most important exception is the Fraser Institute. The free market oriented Fraser Institute has supported making the census less intrusive. The Western Standard reported on a letter that the Fraser Institute sent out explaining the reason for this support:

Our rationale for opposing the mandatory long-form census comes down to a core belief that Canadians should not be forced to disclose private and non-essential personal information to the government.

In its current format, the long-form census requires Canadians to complete 40 burdensome pages of intrusive personal questions. Canadians are forced to disclose this information without good cause. The census has simply become a cheap way for academics, economists, and social scientists to get information that should be acquired using market surveys of the kind that are routinely conducted on a voluntary basis.

The Fraser Institute benefits from the census just as every think tank benefits. Yet the Fraser Institute has long been arguing for less government control and individual liberty. The Fraser Institute should be applauded for keeping to their principles even when it runs counter to their own interests.

Government regulation keeps empty school from closing

If you are ever looking for an example of the insanity of government regulation, all you have to do is remember the case of Capel Iwan Primary School:

The last 12 children left in July, but due to legal red tape education officials have said the school must be ready to open in the autumn, even though there will be empty desks.

The Welsh Assembly government has told the local authority it must go through the correct procedures before the school can be shut.

Those included a lengthy statutory consultation period with people in the area, before the issue can be fully discussed by Carmarthenshire council. The whole process could take more than a year to complete.

In the meantime, it would be illegal for the school to shut, even though not a single pupil will be taught.

Carmarthenshire council said it had set aside a budget of £110,000 last year for the school, on the basis that it would officially remain open until at least the end of March 2011.

Do you remember that episode of Yes Minister when the civil servants refused to shut down a hospital that had no patients? Suddenly it’s not as funny.

The real reason why we need a census

Census Visits Providing Shut-Ins Once-A-Decade Chance For Human Interaction

Economic mobility and home subsidies

A friend of mine, Steve Lafleur, argues that subsidies for home ownership are not good public policy. In today’s economy many young people require mobility in their profession. It is becoming more and more common for people to live in multiple cities throughout their lives. So home ownership can often act as a anchor holding down someone’s progress, since so much of an individual’s economic resources goes into a house.

Here is a section of the article:

Home ownership has been considered an integral part of the American Dream for as long as anyone can remember. Now it has come under scrutiny, notably in a June Wall Street Journal piece by Richard Florida, which claims that that home ownership reduces employment opportunities for young adults, since it limits their mobility. To support ownership, others — particularly Wendell Cox — have argued that home ownership levels do not correlate with the economic productivity of cities, and cite the rapid suburban development in the Sunbelt as evidence that home ownership is as valuable as ever.

My inclination is that the truth lies somewhere in between the two sides of the debate. For the sake of simplicity, I'll refer to them as New Urbanist supporters versus Smart Growth opponents (I realize these are broad generalizations). While they disagree on the merits of home ownership, there's an interesting point of agreement: both sides oppose subsidies to homeowners. I'd argue that both sides should focus on getting the issue of discontinuing subsidies onto the national agenda.

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The rise of the nanny state

It always amazes me that people seem so unwilling to respect the choices of others. Two examples appeared today in two separate newspapers of the total lack of regard for personal responsibility.

In the Chronicle Herald we have the classic example of experts lobbying the government to force adults to wear helmets when on bikes.

In the Ottawa Citizen we have Health Canada looking into more regulation for caffeine and alcohol mixed drinks.

Do we really need the government to tell us what we should drink and what we have to put on our head?

Yes we will be safer with a helmet, and yes caffeine and alcohol together is a combination that a friend of mine once described (in the morning) as being ‘deadly.’ But still isn’t that our personal business?

I doubt that there is an adult out there who is unaware of the risks involved in biking without a helmet or consuming the ‘deadly brew.’ So if somebody makes the decision to accept the risk for whatever reward he/she perceives, isn’t that really his/her own choice? Wouldn’t it be his/her own fault if he/she gets his/her head smashed in?

By allowing the government to make this sort of decision for us, we are giving up our responsibility for own actions. We are sacrificing the very thing that makes us adults and full members of society. We are becoming nothing but a nation of wards of the state.

Poll shows Michael Ignatieff has recovered from the spring

Talk of election has been sparked by a poll that showed Conservatives just below 30% and Liberals only 1.3% below the Tories. Now a second poll shows that the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party are still close, but the gap has widened with the Tories at 34% and the Grits at 31%. The questions that are now on the mind of the political class are: Is this the beginning of a new trend? What caused this to happen?

The first question can only be answered in time, but I think we can piece together evidence to explain these numbers.

Throughout the Spring and early Summer the Conservatives have been enjoying support in the range of 34%-36%. Meanwhile the Liberal Party has been suffering down at 26% or even 25%. If you compare those numbers to the most recent poll it is obvious that it is the Liberal Party’s support that has changed and not the Conservative Party.

We can then rule out explanations such as the census long-form and G20 controversies. The previous poll number of 29.7% for the Conservatives can be explained by either the month of bad press in July, or perhaps the poll itself was faulty. Either way the Conservatives have bounced back to their traditional level of support.

Normally opposition numbers drop in the summer months, but the Liberals have had a good summer. Their leader was highly visible while Stephen Harper has been reclusive. Michael Ignatieff’s bus tour had a few bumps but for the most part the media has given him positive reviews. Even his communication skills seem to have improved a little. So it appears that the bus tour actually accomplished its mission and Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals have recovered from their abysmal spring.

Ultimately this means that even if there isn’t an election the fall will be crucial. Having numbers that are 3% below your opponent is better than 10%, but a Liberal victory is still a long way off. Mr. Ignatieff now has to not only hold on to the summer gains but use the Parliamentary session to expand upon them. History has shown that Parliamentary strategy is a weak spot for Mr. Ignatieff, but if he ever wants to be Prime Minister he now has to prove that he looks good in Ottawa not just okay on a bus.

Russia from 1917 to today in 6:48

Thanks to Kalim Kassam at the Western Standard.

Premier Dad McGuinty

An interesting revelation has come out that reveals a bit about how Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty views the universe.

Tim Hudak, the leader of the Ontario PCs, has taken to referring to Mr. McGuinty has ‘Premier Dad.’ This is a great bit of messaging because in only two words the PCs can sum up everything that is wrong with the current Liberal administration. It brings up images of paternalism, control, and even a bit of oppression.

I’m convinced that if the Liberals lose the next election it will be because of the successful labelling of Mr. McGuinty as ‘Premier Dad.’

And it turns out that Dalton McGuinty likes being called Premier Dad. He thinks that the PCs have really captured his essence.

Premier Dad is forgetting a few things though:

1. Most of us already have dads.
2. We are all adults.
3. Adults tend not to like being told what to do by some stranger who thinks he is our dad.

The fact that Mr. McGuinty has latched onto the title of Premier Dad, tells us what we already suspected. He thinks that the role of government is to control every detail of every individual’s life (ironically Premier Dad is a more strict father than my actually dad. I’m pretty sure dad would have let me go watch a UFC match).

We can only hope that he starts describing himself as Premier Dad in public.

The consequence of the Conservative Party abandoning conservative economic theory

Almost two years ago a remarkable thing happened. Stephen Harper, the prime minister who once wrote a dissertation describing why deficit spending couldn’t possibly help the economy, declared himself a Keynesian. Mr. Harper once would have described himself as a classical liberal, a student of Hayek and Friedman. Suddenly he abandoned his own intellectual history and embraced policy formulas that he once railed against.

Many have said that he did it for pragmatic reasons. The opposition parties and the political climate in general conspired to force Stephen Harper to act against his will. I have never really been convinced by this argument but even if it is true it does not explain Mr. Harper’s full hearted embrace of the flawed ‘stimulus’ theory.

Basically the 2009 budget was the Conservative Party of Canada winning by surrendering before the battle could be fought. Instead of presenting a conservative position in the tradition of intellectual thinkers such as...well such as Stephen Harper, and negotiating a compromise with the Liberal Party, the Conservatives skipped the negotiations. They simply presented the position of welfare liberalism and faith in the government’s ability to fix all problems to win Liberal support. In the process the Conservatives abandoned any defence of conservatism.

The consequence of this has been profound.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has lately been saying that a second round of ‘stimulus’ may be needed. Harper’s government is meanwhile sticking to March 2011 as the deadline for all stimulus spending. Mr. Ignatieff makes the point that the government doesn’t know what the economy is going to look like in March so how can it rule out any new spending?

Mr. Ignatieff’s position makes a certain amount of sense, or at least it smacks of intellectual consistency. Once you accept that deficit spending can be a good thing, you can never automatically rule it out. The Conservatives don’t really believe in this stimulus notion and they truly want a balanced budget, so they do not want to leave a door open for more spending. Yet by publically embracing Keynesianism they have stripped themselves of any coherent argument against stimulus spending.

If it was a good idea in one recession why wouldn’t it be a good idea in the next recession? Or the recession after that and the one after that one? Canada has drifted back into the 1970s and a political dynamic that blindly calls for the government to spend Canada into prosperity with no dissenting voices.

We have two Keynesian parties with no one standing up for Hayek.

The government’s crime strategy makes no sense

Terrence Corcoran at the National Post is making a point that I’ve been making for a while. The sorts of crimes that the Harper government are targeting are victimless crimes. Gambling, prostitution, and drugs are all voluntary exchanges that do not require the use of force. So people who decide to engage in such activity do not need the protection of the state.

The only victim that proponents can point to here is society as an abstract victim of what they consider to be crass behaviour. I would be happy to engage in that debate, but even if you agree with the society as victim idea, shouldn’t victims of assault and rape be the highest priority of the police? Shouldn’t you be concerned that resources are being shifted over to lower priority crimes?

Mr. Corcoran also makes the point that the new government proposal to upgrade these victimless crimes targets the low end providers of drugs, gambling, and prostitution. These people will spend at least 5 years in jail and come out doing what? Really, after more than 5 years being locked up with other criminals they are going to come out and be what?

They are going to be criminals, except worse criminals because they have no other option in life. In the United States this created a permanent underclass of criminals and it is certain to do the same here. In the long run, these tough on crime proposals will institutionalize violence on the street. This is not mere speculation; it is evident by the ever worsening ghettos of the United States.

The truly bizarre thing is that there is no clear reason for why the government is doing this. Polling data shows that Canadians on a whole are not really worried about crime. Bringing out more and more crime legislation is doing nothing to increase the support of the Conservative Party. So what is the political gain?

Why is the government doing this?

Lady Humphrey on the census reform

The Globe & Mail has dragged out of obscurity yet another opponent of the government’s plan to make the long-form census voluntary. Dr, Sylvia Ostry is a retired senior civil servant and she has this to say about the proposal:

“I think it’s ridiculous the government would intervene and tell Statistics Canada how to collect its information,” Dr. Sylvia Ostry told the Couchiching Conference on public affairs after being presented with an award for public policy leadership.

She thinks it is ridiculous that the Minister of the Crown would be the one to set policy? The census issue is not one of pure science; it is a moral issue and a question of the proper relationship between government and its citizenry. That is exactly the area that elected officials, not unelected bureaucrats, should be in charge of. I am not surprised that Lady Humphrey Appleby here thinks that civil servants should rule the world, but the fact that she would say it so bluntly is shameful to her former profession.

I am a bit perplexed by the closing remarks of this news article:

Jail terms have never been imposed, and Dr. Ostry said that, when she was chief statistician, she instructed her officials to be flexible and sensitive with people who refused to fill out the form.

What exactly does flexible and sensitive mean? Is this civil servant speak for not enforcing the law?

I recall from my own experience as a census data collector that we were told to ‘warn’ people that they could be jailed or fined. We were also told that realistically practically no one was fined and absolutely no one was jailed. So the threat of jail is merely used as an intimidation tool to get more people to fill out the census. And this sort of intimidation, no matter how flexible or sensitive, is not acceptable coming from the government of Canada.

Premiers reveal an ideological divide on the census

The Premiers of Canada have not agreed to stand united against the rather moderate census reform that is being brought forth by the federal government. It is interesting to look at which Premiers are on what side of the issue.

On one hand we have the Premiers who are crying out about the injustice of the reform and making worried noises about the collapse of civilization:

New Brunswick’ Shawn Graham (Liberal)

PEI’s Robert Ghiz (Liberal)

Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty (Liberal)

Quebec’s Jean Charest (Liberal)

Manitoba’s Greg Selinger (NDP)

On the face of it, this looks like a pretty partisan list. But in Canada there is little or no connection between parties on the provincial level and federal level. None of these people care what federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff will think about their position. So you should ignore the partisan labels and look at what these people have in common.

They are the Premiers that put the most faith in the ability of the government to run the economy.

Now let’s look at the Premiers that say that the issue is not important:

Alberta’s Ed Stelmach (PC)

BC’s Gordon Campbell (Liberal)

Saskatchewan’s Brad Wall (Saskatchewan Party)

These are the premiers that have shown the most faith in the free market. Yes none of their track records are perfect, but compared to the last group of politicians these three are stalwarts of the free market.

The ideological division is clear. Those that believe in big government are for the census, those that believe in at least somewhat freer markets do not think that it is an important issue.

This underlines the fact that you only really care about the census if you think that government has the ability to run society. And the truth is that government can’t run society, so why should we care about the census?

Water is not a right

The UN has passed a non-binding resolution declaring the access to clean water a human right. But what exactly is a right and what does it mean to have that right violated?

A right is something inherent within any rational adult human being. A right is not something that can be given it can only be taken away. Think about the classic example of the right to free speech. You have the ability to speak whatever you want. No one gave you that ability, you have it on your own. As long as no one uses force to stop you, anything that you want to say you can say.

By calling free speech a right nothing is being given to you except the protection of the courts against the government taking away your freedom. Basically, calling something a right is the leviathan limiting what the leviathan can do. Your rights are violated when the state ignores its own restriction and uses force against you for saying whatever you want.

How exactly does water fit into the same category?

Having water is not something inherent within the human ability. For millions of years our ancestors have had to struggle to find clean reliable water. Yet we are all born with the ability to express ourselves freely. Free speech is something within us and water is something we have to try and find.

Now think what it means to violate a ‘right’ such as water. If a man is stuck in the dessert with no water, according to the UN his rights are being violated. But who is violating his rights? Who is responsible for taking from him? God? Nature? Pure blind bad luck? Do you think we will be able to take any of them to court?

Jacob Mchangama makes clear what is really behind the water resolution:

For rights to have meaning, it must be clear what they are and who is responsible for upholding them. Take free speech: If a government arrests a dissident for peaceful statements or thoughts, it is breaching its obligation to uphold a clear human right. Courts would then be responsible for upholding this right.

The right to clean water and sanitation is far less definable and depends on economic development, technology and infrastructure. Above all, if people have a right to water and sanitation, other people must provide it – in practice, governments using public money. Such privileges are called “positive rights,” as opposed to “negative rights” that cannot be taken away from you. So this is really a call for state intervention, at the expense of other priorities and freedoms – and water is no more a practically enforceable human right than other essential commodities, such as food, clothing or shelter.

This resolution follows naturally from activists’ ideological resistance to the privatization of water. This ignores the countless examples, from Bolivia to Egypt, where governments have failed to provide clean water due to corruption, cronyism, mismanagement and waste. It also ignores successful private models in Bolivia, Chile, Denmark and elsewhere. Giving governments ultimate control over the supply of water may even be dangerous, because authoritarian regimes can use their power to punish the recalcitrant and reward their supporters.

Rights are about what a government cannot do, or about limiting government control. The UN resolution on water is about giving more government control. It is the opposite of what a true right should be.

Top Canadian export under threat

Douglas Haddow has published an interesting article at the Guardian. He points out that the marijuana trade has been an under the table staple of the Canadian economy for years. The value of the crop is that, much like alcohol, it is pretty much recession proof. Mr. Haddow suggests that this may at least be part of the secret of Canada’s not-as-bad-as-the-rest economy.

There is something about this article that rings true. It has been an open secret for a while that marijuana is one of Canada’s top exports. It is most certainly the most important crop in British Columbia. It is impossible to calculate the wealth that has been generated by marijuana sales, but it is likely in the Billions.

Mr. Haddow goes on to point out two threats to Canada’s position as a world leader in marijuana production. The threat that is outside of our control is the possibility of a liberalization of the marijuana laws in California. This will create more vibrant competition for Canada’s crop, but Canada has long competed with Californian products and so I am not terribly worried.

The bigger threat comes from within Canada. The anti-marijuana crusade of the Conservative government can’t possibly destroy the whole industry. When in history has any government been able to completely control the demands and supplies of the market place? But the government can certainly do a lot of harm to the wealth generation of the marijuana industry.

At a time that the country is limping out of recession and governments on all levels are in deficit, a booming industry like the marijuana trade should not be discouraged by the government.

Thief gets off lightly

A man who was claiming disability in the United Kingdom was caught on tape doing the jitterbug. It was soon discovered that he had fraudulently received nearly 20 000 pounds from the UK government. This man was punished with 120 hours of community service.

120 hours of work for 20 000 pounds is pretty good money. That is around 167 pounds per hour. I can only hope that I will one day get a job that pays that well.

Seriously, if you are going to punish someone, the punishment has to be worse than the gain that was made by the doing wrong. As far as I can see this man is still ahead. 120 hours of community service is not likely to deter someone from stealing 20 000 pounds.

*update*

It was pointed out to me that I missed a sentence at the end of the article that said the man was paying back the money.

It still not enough. The risk of stealing from a government program is very low if all you have to do is give the money back and spend 120 hours picking up garbage at the side of the road. That is about what I would expect from a case of a 15 year old stealing a $20 shirt.

Should homosexuals be worried about Ford?

Toronto Mayoral candidate Rob Ford is facing a controversy over supposedly homophobic comments. But should gays really be worried?

The case against Mr. Ford is based on his support of an anti-gay marriage pastor and a comment that he made in 2006. Neither of these adequately proves that Mr. Ford is a homophobic.
This is what he said about gay marriage according to the Globe & Mail:

“I support traditional marriage. I always have,” Mr. Ford added. “But if people want to, to each their own. I’m not worried about what people do in their private life. I look out for taxpayers’ money.”

This is exactly what libertarians would want to hear from someone who is socially conservative. His personal views are one thing but this statement suggests that he will not use the state to enforce his personal views. Mr. Ford is rather light on policy declarations but I doubt that he will have any policies that discourage gay marriage. In fact I doubt that there would be anything that the mayor of Toronto could do even if he wanted to eliminate gay marriage.

This is the quote from 2006:

“If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you wouldn’t get AIDS probably.”

This isn’t so much homophobic as it is true. It is like saying a black person is more at risk for vitamin D deficiency. It isn’t prejudice it is a medical fact. Homosexuals and people who share needles are more likely to get AIDS. Mr. Ford’s opponents will have to do better than that to demonstrate that he would make Toronto less “gay friendly.”

I am undecided on Rob Ford. He is being touted as the conservative candidate but his lack of policy commitment beyond a generic ‘cut spending’ is worrisome. Still, I see no evidence that Mr. Ford presents a threat to the gay community.

French organization and misleading the census

The Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities of Canada, a French language interest group, is using legal action to try and prevent the government from making changes to the long-form census. They claim that reliable data on the number of French speakers is needed to provide adequate French language programs.

I would be interested to know if this is the same organization that mobilized French speakers to lie on the 2006 census. Many bilingual French-Canadians were encouraged to claim on the 2006 census that they could only speak French. The idea was that this would boast the amount of French language programs, even in areas that it wasn’t needed.

How about that for reliable data?

The census should not be used as a tool to lobby the government for more money.

Stockwell Day still wrong on crime

Yesterday Minister Stockwell Day was bombarded with questions about crime. His response was that more prisons need to be built because crime was going unreported. The media ridiculed him and raised two questions: how can you know if a crime is going unreported, and how will building more prisons help?

John Ivison answered the first question. Statistics Canada does a survey (wait it’s a voluntary survey so it is unreliable, right?) on people’s experience with crime. This survey does indeed back up Mr. Day’s assertion that crime is going unreported. I agree that this is a worrisome statistic.

The problem is that it is very unclear why exactly crime is going unreported. Does it represent a lost faith in the police or the criminal justice system in general? Is it due to an immigrant population that have a natural mistrust of authority? Is it due to increased gang activity and the fear of reprisal? It would take a number of very comprehensive studies to discern the true cause of the decrease in crime reporting.

So if we don’t know the cause then how the hell do we know the solution?

Does increasing the prison population help to prevent crime that is not going reported? I can’t imagine any theoretical argument or empirical evidence that would support a claim that it would. If the Conservative government is really concerned about crime in Canada they should look into the causes and solutions to unreported criminal activity.

*update*

Montreal Gazette is reporting that Mr. Day is misinterpreting the data that was gathered by Statistics Canada:

But Statistics Canada quickly shot down Day's assumption, saying the data cannot be compared to police-reported crime statistics, since they surveyed only eight types of crimes as opposed to the hundreds of crimes investigated by police.

"So, for example, you can't ask somebody: Have you ever been a victim of a homicide?" said Warren Silver, of the agency's centre for justice statistics. "It's just not possible to do. So what (the Statistics Canada research) does do is track some of the types of crimes that people might not report and might report, and some of the reasons why."

The moderate Census 2011 reform

The census debate has been raging for more than a month now. My first post on the government decision to make the mandatory long-form voluntary was on June 30th. Re-reading that post I am struck by how much this debate has spun out of control. The opponents are jumping up and down in outrage for what they call a radical ideological agenda. The reality is that the reform is a very moderate one.

The important thing that has to be kept in mind, and I feel like so many people are losing sight of this, is that the government is not proposing to cut the census. The short-form will still be mandatory and refusal to fill in this form could still lead to fines or jail time.

The short-form is not as intrusive but it is still intrusive. It asks you questions about your age, your family, your ethnicity, and other basic demographic questions. The 2011 Census will then still be a ‘snap shot’ of Canada’s demographics.

I keep getting the impression that the opponents of the reform are confused. They keep defending the ‘vital’ demographic data that the census collects. We can debate how ‘vital’ this data really is, but such a debate would be abstract because that ‘vital’ data is not really being threatened.

The sort of information that won’t be gathered by coercive means in the new census is: how many rooms you have in your house, what time you get up to go to work, and which parent spends more time with their children. These are all examples presented by the government, and I have yet to hear any critic try to defend any of that as vital to the operation of government.

That is because there is no legitimate argument that any of that data is anything but of academic interest.

Some like the Western Standard have used this opportunity to engage in a debate over the legitimacy of using force to collect statistical data. This debate should not be confused with the debate over the government reform. Despite the libertarian language used by Minister Tony Clement, there is no proposal on the table to end the use of force in census collection.

Opponents of the government’s census reform should take a deep breath and tackle the issue more honestly.

Is it rational not to save for retirement?

The Globe & Mail has published an article that discusses why so many people don’t save for their retirement. Lots of reasons are given, including the cost of raising children and confusion over which strategy is the best. But down near the bottom of the page there is a paragraph that captures the core issue of any retirement plan:

More than 40 per cent of non-retirees admitted they spend more than they should, saying they wanted the “good things in life.” And more than a quarter said they felt they should “eat, drink and be merry” because they may not live to old age.

To put it another way: people don’t know when they are going to die. So there is a risk inherent in saving for the future. Giving up something you want right now for the sake of the future is perfectly rational. Yet at the same time there is no certainty that you have a future. So wouldn’t it be equally rational not to bet that you will live to retire?

We aren’t talking about chocolate bars here either. The decision to save or not to save could mean the difference between going to Europe or not. There are a lot of experiences in life that simply costs money and by being too frugal you can miss out on a lot. So isn’t there something rational about trying to live life to the fullest rather than save for an old age that may never come?

Personally I am betting on living for a while, and I want to have a comfortable old age.
So I plan to start a retirement plan...well eventually anyway.