Things They Should Invent: minimum Service Canada staffing levels proportionate to the number of unemployed Canadians

Recently in the news: there are delays in Employment Insurance because the government has cut EI processing jobs.

That seems rather backwards, doesn't it? Demand is up, so you cut back your workforce? I can't imagine that decision being made anywhere in the private sector. (Of course, I also couldn't imagine it being made in the public sector.) If Service Canada increased the number of EI workers during times of high unemployment, they would not only be addressing the increased demand, they'd be marginally reducing demand (and the unemployment rate) by hiring unemployed people. Automatic job creation!

Therefore, I propose they make a policy that the number of EI workers has to be at least X% of the number of people on the unemployment rolls.

At this point, you're wondering why I want them to make a policy rather than just being smart and hiring more people. The reason for making a whole policy is to prevent the same problem from reoccurring in the future. The government could spin it beautifully as a sustainable policy to better serve Canadians and put people back to work - alluding to the fact that private sector totally hires people when demand goes up, to play to certain segments of their base. Once it's all written down and codified, then they'll have to jump through hoops to lay off EI workers during times of high unemployment rather than the current situation of having to jump through hoops to hire more EI workers during times of belt-tightening.

You're probably also wondering why I put the wiggle-words "at least" in there. That's to give Service Canada reasonable leeway in its staffing. If they have some people who are nearing retirement, this will allow them to hire replacements (and get them trained and reasonably experienced) before the retirees leave with all their corporate memory. This also prevents them from necessarily having to lay off workers at the slightest fluctuation of the unemployment rate.

At this point, you're probably wondering "But what if improved technology results in fewer workers needed per unemployed person? Then they'll be stuck with all these extra workers." That could be addressed with a clause requiring an automatic review of the prescribed minimum threshold whenever existing workers find themselves with a certain amount of downtime.

Things Politicians Should Invent: keep track of constituents' track record

I write to my elected representatives on a fairly regular basis, often expressing concern about possible outcomes of certain policy proposals. There have been times when I've been clearly right or clearly wrong. In other words, my emails says "I'm concerned that if you pass this piece of legislation, this Unquestionably Bad Thing will happen." And sometimes it either does or does not happen. In many cases it's too soon to tell, and in many other cases I'm expressing a personal preference rather than making a prediction, but sometimes my emails contain predictive statements whose accuracy can, at some point in the future, be objectively verified.

It occurs to me that I'm most likely not the only constituent making predictive statements whose accuracy can be verified. And if this is the case, politicians' offices could keep track. Perhaps patterns will emerge as to which constituents have the best foresight, and then politicians could weight the opinions of those with the best foresight more heavily, to the benefit of us all.

Some post-election information

1. The report from Three Ontario Votes (which I've mentioned before) is now out. I'm disappointed they didn't do a full seat count for the AV model, but otherwise it's informative.

2. My traditional post-election test of the Hill & Knowlton Election Predictor: Using the actual popular vote as reported by CBC, Hill & Knowlton predicts Liberal 56, Conservative 31, NDP 20. Actual seat count: Liberal 53, Conservative 37, NDP 17.

Voter's Resources

Since we just had a federal election in May, I'm not rewriting everything from scratch. The pertinent links are below. For how to use them, click on "How to Vote", "Where to Vote", and "How to Vote Strategically" below. As usual, this post will be updated until election day. If I've missed anything, please let me know in the comments.

Getting Started

Election day is October 6.

Voter information from Elections Ontario

My How to Vote
My Where to Vote
My How to Vote Strategically


Platforms

Conservative
Green
Liberal
NDP

Tools

CBC Vote Compass
Election Prediction Project
Hill and Knowlton Predictor
DemocraticSPACE
LISPOP
Riding-by-riding polls for the GTA

Voted

Another election on a beautiful day, and another provincial election nursing a virus (which has mutated from a sore throat to a runny nose today). I encountered many many doggies today and got a lot of petting in, including my next-door neighbour's dog for the whole elevator wait and ride. Hopefully that's enough good luck.

I didn't get a voter's card this year and had to wait in a bit of a line to register (a process that was a bit slower than I recall) but it got done in under half an hour with no particular difficulties. I voted in a seniors' residence instead of a school this time. Some of the residents were milling around outside watching all the comings and goings, and I believe some of them were working at the polling station. Nice friendly community-like chat waiting in line, dogs and children got squeed at, and the whole process took under half an hour.

Now I'm at home to nurse my cold and a glass of wine, and watch results.

Teach me how union finances work

There is clear choice in this election, said Hudak from Dundas on Saturday. Taxpayers can’t afford to pay big union boss salaries anymore or pay for their ad campaigns, he has said.

Does Tim Hudak not understand how union finances work, or do I not understand how union finances work?

My understanding, extrapolated from conversations with union members and observations from having worked in a unionized environment, is that union members pay union dues out of their salaries, and the expenses of operating the union (including advertising and any pay the union leaders receive for doing their union leader duties) are all funded from the union dues. My understanding is that the employer does not pay into the union (wouldn't that be a heinous conflict of interest?) So the amount of money a union spends on various things is between the union and its members.

Extrapolated to the provincial government, this means that the money union leaders get for their work as union leaders and the money unions spend on ad campaigns come out of the pockets of provincial public servants, in their role as the employees. The taxpayers, in their role as employer, aren't paying for any of it. And what the unions spend money on is between them and the public servants - the taxpayers and the government, in their capacity as employer, have no say in it or authority to change it.

Am I understanding this correctly? If not, please correct me in the comments.

Wherein I once again consider a career as a political advisor

Me in January 2009.

Bob Rae today.

The Ontario voter list mystery

I'm not on the Ontario voter list this election. I'm never on the Ontario voter list. Every single Ontario election since I was 18, I didn't receive a voter card and had to register on election day.

I have voted in (and registered at) every Ontario election since I was 18. Last election, I lived at the same address as I do now, so my registration from last election should be valid.

I was registered federally for, and voted in, the election this past May, and I'm pretty sure both federal and provincial get their voter's lists from the tax rolls. I recently got a jury duty questionnaire, which means provincial does know about me. But I'm not on the voter's list. And the same thing happens every election. Weird.

Ever wondered what Ontario would look like with a different electoral system?

Check out Three Ontario Votes. You go and cast an imaginary ballot under three different electoral systems, and after the election they'll release the results, so we can see what our province would look like with a different electoral system.

Previous results models for different electoral systems use real-life election data, which is problematic because some voters' strategies might be different under a different electoral system. But this model lets you cast a vote under each of the systems being tested, for the election that's actually happening right now in real time.

We'll get extremely useful information out of this study - more useful than any existing data to inform any future decisions about electoral reform. I strongly encourage everyone of all political stripes to go to Three Ontario Votes and vote with each of the ballots so this information will be as complete as possible.

Why it would not be appropriate for the library to charge for hold delivery

I've seen a number of comment-thread commenters suggest that, as a budgetary measure, the library should start charging to deliver holds. But that wouldn't be appropriate, because if the library were to charge for delivering holds, it would create a two-tiered system.

Popular novels tend to accumulate far more holds than the library has copies even before they're released. This means that all copies in the system are sent to people with holds on it, and (with the exception of the "Best Bets" section) none of the copies are in the library.

Currently, anyone can put a hold on a book, so everyone has an equal chance of getting at the book. You just have to get in line.

But if they started charging money for holds, only people who can afford to pay would place holds. This means that richer patrons would get at the books before poorer patrons, because the poorer patrons can't afford to get in line. Speaking as someone who could easily afford to pay a fee for this service if necessary, I consider that unfair, unacceptable, and contrary to the mission of libraries.

At this point, some people are thinking "But what if you can place the holds for free, just not have the delivered to your home branch?" The problem is that would still create a two-tiered system. Think for a moment about how such a system would work. Either patrons would only be able to put holds on books that live at their home branch, or they'd have to pick up the hold wherever the book happens to be. If we are limited to putting holds on books that live at our home branch, that's a two-tiered system because the pool from which we can place holds is significantly smaller. If we have to pick up holds wherever they happen to be, then we might have to go to any corner of the city - very likely over an hour by bus given how wide-spread our city is.

I also question whether that would actually save any significant amount of money given how often books need to be shipped around anyway. If you return a book at a different branch (say you return it at the branch near work even though you checked it out from the branch near home) they have to ship it home anyway. If it's already been subject to a delivery hold, it will need to be shipped home. And if they're shipping them to one branch anyway, how much more expensive could it be to ship it to another branch?

In any case, charging for holds would have the basic effect of allowing richer patrons to access our entire library system, while poorer patrons are limited to the collection at their local branch, which completely defeats the purpose the fantastic library system our city has worked so hard to build.

Why Rob Ford and his allies should be responsive to slactivism

Doug Ford says:

“Ford Nation is too busy working, paying taxes, creating jobs. That’s what they are doing.”

But then Rob Ford said:

“I encourage people to come to the executive committee next Thursday,” he said during an interview on CP24. “Everyone has five minutes to talk to me personally at our executive committee. I invite the whole city. I don’t care if we have to sit there for three days. I don’t want to have people ... they have five minutes to tell me what business do you think we should be in. And it’s next Thursday at 9:30 at city hall. Come and let me know what you think – the average taxpayer out there – what are we doing right, what are we doing wrong. I want to hear from the people and I encourage them to come.“

So if their base consists of very busy people, why do they insist that people make the time-consuming effort of going all the way down to city hall and waiting around all day to speak in person? As a person who is in fact busy working, I find that prohibitive. Shouldn't they be more responsive to emails? Petitions? Facebook groups? I've noticed on more than one occasion they seem to write off existing feedback as insufficiently effortful and encourage people to use other methods of communication. If their base consists of busy people, they should be making it easier, not harder, to state one's case.

How long do we have to keep stating the obvious for?

Despite the bombshell nature of many of the cuts suggested this week by a city-hired consultant, there is no stampede of Torontonians signing up to tell the politicians face-to-face, or in writing, how they feel about them.

I'll admit it never occurred to me to tell politicians how I feel about them. You know why? Because it's so blatantly obvious that they're destructive and unworkable, and I figured it's just as blatantly obvious to anyone who lives in the world. The KPMG study proves that there simply aren't workable cuts to be had by listing what few remaining things could even legally be cut. It isn't advocating cutting these things, it's pointing out how destructive large-scale cuts would be by saying that these important things are the things that would remain to be cut if large-scale cuts were to happen.

It really frustrates me that not wasting my time stating the obvious to politicians could be interpreted as support for or indifference to such destructive measures. And I think, on top of all the damage already being done to our city, this need to constantly be loudly shouting the obvious at the top of our lungs is also destructive to our city, because it takes away energy that could otherwise be used to think of ways to make things even better.

It's like if you had to say to every person you encountered "Please don't hurt me," and if you didn't they'd hurt you. That would be really draining, wouldn't it? You have to be totally on top of making sure you noticed every single person around you and said "Please don't hurt me" to them, plus it would preclude saying "Hi, how are you?" or "I love your shoes!" or "Can I pet your doggie?" And on top of that, it would also take up the energy you need to think "This sidewalk would be more easily navigable if the planters were flush with the curb" or "Hey, that store might sell greeting cards" or "What if I used the egg slicer to slice the mushrooms?"

Real life operates under a tacit assumption of the obvious. Of course people don't want you to hurt them. Why can't politics do the same?

In which my planned blog post is obsoleted

I was going to blog about this, but POGGE beat me to it and did it far better than I could have. Please go read POGGE if you'd normally read my posts on municipal politics.

Building a better Senate

As I've blogged about before, there are things I like and dislike about the Senate. The things I like tend to be those that provide a counterpoint to the House of Commons, while what I don't like tends to be when the Senate blindly rubber-stamps the House of Commons, without using the safety net afforded by their unelected nature to provide true sober second thought. So I was disappointed that recent discussions of Senate reform have the Senate either becoming more like the House of Commons without a clear differentiation between the two, or simply want to outright abolish the Senate without introducing sober second thought elsewhere.

So I've started brainstorming some ways to make the Senate more of what I like about the current system with less of what I dislike about the current system and about others' ideas for reform. Here's what I've come up with so far:

What if senators had to be non-partisan?

Currently, senators are affiliated with a political party (generally the party that appoints them, although I think there might be a few individual exceptions.) This is a hindrance to sober second thought when they vote along party lines.

What if we took the complete opposite approach and outright prohibited partisanship in senators? They aren't allowed to be members of political parties, they aren't allowed to donate or work in support of parties or candidates, and people who have engaged in these activities within a certain period of time before appointment are not allowed to be senators. These kinds of standards exist for certain types of high-profile or influential public service positions, so it seems feasible to extend them to make a non-partisan senate.

What if senators could not serve under the prime minister who appoints them?

A problem with the current system is that senators might feel beholden to the PM who appoints them. To solve this, what if prime ministers appointed senators to replace those retiring under the next mandate? Under this model, Stephen Harper would look at which senators will be retiring in 2015-2019, and come up with a short list of possible replacements. The flaw in this plan is that prime ministers can serve multiple terms, so it might not be entirely effective.

What if senators were drawn out of a hat?

Currently, prime ministers appoint one senator to fill each senate vacancy. What if, instead, they selected a number of people for a senate candidacy pool, and then whenever a vacancy comes up, they draw a name at random from this pool of candidates? All candidates appointed by all prime ministers remain in the pool until they reach the age of 75, unless they do something really bad that merits elimination from the pool (this would be carefully defined in the law.)

What if senators were picked at random from the general population?

Instead of the prime minister appointing people, what if we had "senate duty" along the lines of "jury duty"? People are selected at random from the voter list and told to report to Ottawa for a year or five years or some other defined term for senate duty. Relocation expenses are covered, you get a senator's salary, and maybe they have a rule that your employer has to keep your job waiting for you like with the military. I can make an argument for making senate duty mandatory, and I can make an argument for letting people who aren't interested simply opt out. There would also have to be a way to screen out people who aren't mentally competent etc., although they probably already have something like that for jury duty.

What if Senate votes were secret?

It would certainly be more difficult for senators to be beholden to their political masters if no one knows how they voted (or perhaps even how many votes for or against each bill got). This might sound like a bad thing because it's less transparent, but it would also provide a counterpoint to the House of Commons where there are open votes and party discipline.

What if all political candidates had to work with exactly the same funding?

In the news lately has been the Conservative government's desire to get rid of the $1.75 per vote subsidy, leaving only fundraising to pay for election campaigns.

I've been thinking about what I like and dislike about election campaigns, and I think I'd like it better if fundraising wasn't even allowed. I'd rather have all candidates in each race allocated the exact same amount of money, with wouldn't be enough for a particularly lavish race, and strictly limited in the kind of donations they're allowed to accept.

Whatever the amount of money is, it should limit candidates to communicating with voters (in person, online, by phone), having an office, and handing out/mailing printed materials. No assholic TV commercials, no ridiculous promotional stunts, no rallies or parties apart from election night itself. (I'll allow lawn signs too, although I think they're silly and we'd be better off without them.) There would be budget for the minimum staff necessary, at the going rates for seasoned professionals. (This leaves the candidate with the option of larger paid staff who are less experienced.)

The amount each candidate receives should be commensurate with the realities of the riding. For example, candidates in downtown Toronto can probably get everywhere by transit and don't need a car, whereas a private plane would be a necessity for candidates in Nunavut. However, the Toronto candidates would probably have to pay more for office space.

No one would be allowed to donate money to election campaigns. Candidates would not be allowed to use their own money for campaign stuff. (They'd probably be allowed to buy themselves suits etc., but they can't pay for their own domain name - that has to come out of campaign funds.) People cannot make in-kind donations (i.e. no donating free printing for flyers). The only donation allowed is volunteering one's time. I haven't decided yet whether donating one's own professional services should be allowed or prohibited.

The goal here is to put all the campaigns on rather minimalist equal ground and leave the candidates with not much to do but dialogue with voters. This would leave us (and the media) with nothing to focus on but issues and candidate-voter relationships, which would make the whole thing a lot more pleasant for everyone.

Things They Should Invent: measure the non-NIMBY vote

In Local Motion, there are two stories of excessively NIMBY behaviour. In one case, a family put up a fence in their yard so the kids could play safely, and the neighbours objected because the norm in the neighbourhood was not to have fences. In another, a family wanted to tear down their old house and build a new accessible one to accommodate member of the household's disability, and the neighbours objected because of the historical nature of the house being torn down.

Both of these cases ended up having public meetings held about them, and it occurred to me that this is inherently unfair. Do you want to go to a public meeting about the Jones's fence? If you think their fence is an outrage, your answer is going to be "Hell yeah!" But if you don't care either way about their fence, your answer is going to be "Of course not, I don't care if the Joneses build a fence!" The vast vast majority of the neighbourhood might be completely indifferent, but the Joneses still find themselves in a public meeting facing dozens of angry opponents. No one is going to bother to go all the way to a public meeting and stand up in front of people just to say "Really, I do no care one bit," but most of the neighbourhood probably feels this way.

Non-NIMBYs often truly don't care, and may even think the issue is none of their business. This makes them harder to count, but we really do need to come up with a way to have the indifferent vote counted without requiring too much effort by the indifferent.

Things They Should Invent: Vote "Yes, but..."

Sometimes elected representatives will vote against a measure when they approve of its general direction, but don't think it goes far enough.

For example, suppose the status quo is that people have to buy their own widgets at retail prices, which is really hard on the poor. Widgets are a necessity of life, but they really are awfully expensive. An integral part of the Purple Party's platform is that the government should provide free widgets to everyone. However, the Purple Party is not in power. The Yellow Party is, and they have just tabled a bill to provide a 10% widget rebate to help citizens pay for the cost of widgets.

The Purple Party would consider this bill a step in the right direction, but nowhere near sufficient. Under the current system, they may well not vote for it. However, I propose that they should have the option to vote "Yes, but..." on the bill. "Yes, but..." is understood to mean "We do not consider this bill an adequate solution and it is not our intention to consider this issue closed. However, because this bill is an improvement over the status quo, we will support it until something better can be implemented." It counts as a yes when they're counting up all the yeas and nays, but also makes it clear that the Purple Party does not consider this sufficient. That way, the Purple Party cannot in the future be accused of supporting the Yellow agenda, and the Yellow Party cannot in the future claim that their bill had the full support of the House. And the people can at least get a 10% rebate on their widgets until the Purple Party can get a better bill through.

To use a real-world example, as I blogged about before, it has been reported that Canada may get in the way of royal succession reform because apparently "Canadians aren't interested in a debate on the monarchy." If a "Yes, but..." option existed, Canada could vote "Yes, but..." on gender-blind primogeniture, saying "While we agree that this is better than male primogeniture, we don't necessarily agree with this whole monarchy thing in the first place and reserve the right to dissociate ourselves at some point in the future." No need for a big messy debate no one wants, no one's views go unrepresented, and the right thing gets done.

I think this concept would be very useful, but "Yes, but..." is a stupid name. Taking suggestions for better names.

My traditional post-election test of the Hill Knowlton predictor

Click here for a projection of the 2011 election outcome made with the actual 2011 popular vote numbers.

It predicts Conservative 166, NDP 70, Liberal 36, Bloc 35, Green 0, Other 1.

You can click on the map to see what it predicts for your own riding.

More information please: post-election edition

1. I can haz poll-by-poll data? I'd very much like a map like this for the 2011 results. I found the swing within my own riding less predictable than I'd prefer, so I'd like to be able to look at poll-by-poll results and see where it's happening, and perhaps figure out why.

2. Whither riding predictions? I, and many others, use riding predictions when considering the possibility of a strategic vote. There were more predictors available this election than ever before, but their margin of error is also higher than ever before. What happened? How can they be made better? I'm glad to see that many of the predictor sites are already doing post-mortems. Hopefully, we'll have better predictions available next time. (Or, like, a fair voting system that makes strategic voting unnecessary...)

3. Whither Stéphane Dion? One interesting development last night is that Michael Ignatieff lost his seat, but Stéphane Dion kept his. And this in a context where the Ignatieff Liberals lost a huge quantity of seats, and the NPD, whose policies were closer to Dion's, gained a huge number of seats. I always found the transition from Dion to Ignatieff rather odd. Dion was there, quiet, unassuming, with a platform that showed some degree of thought and innovation, and suddenly out of nowhere the media started reporting that he was dislikable. Even weirder, they started reporting that his accent is difficult to understand, when even the staunchest (and actively anti-Liberal) Anglos I know told me they have no trouble with it. (Direct quote from someone who lives in a small town where I've never heard anyone speak English with an accent: "It's not like we've never heard an accent before!") Then, there were almost immediate reports that Ignatieff was the frontrunner for Liberal leadership, even though there was no sign of this other than media reports. But Dion has survived, and Dionish policies have thrived. What will Dion's role be in the future?

4. Whither Quebec separatism? Conventional wisdom on the Anglo side of things is that the defeat of the Bloc means the death of Quebec separatism. But it occurs to me that, as some time passes, a Conservative majority might fan the flames of Quebec separatism. Quebec went overwhelmingly orange, with very little blue. Their collective values much further left than the Conservative Party's. With the MPs who represent Quebec unable to get play for the wishes of their constituents, and tax dollars tied up in projects they don't support, Quebec might feel held back and oppressed by the federal government and increase its desire to get out. It occurs to me that Canada's last Conservative majority (Mulroney 1988-1993) led to the creation of the Bloc in the first place.

Voter's Resources

This post is post-dated. If the date and time indicated for this post have not yet passed, there may be new material below it.

Getting Started

Election Day is May 2!

First, go to the Elections Canada website and type in your postal code to find out your riding, your candidates, and where to vote.

If you have not received your voter information card, you can still vote on election day, you just need to take ID.

Your employer has to give you enough time off to ensure that you have three consecutive hours off during polling hours.

Issues

The platforms:

Bloc Quebecois (If you can't read French, click here for an English PDF)
Conservative Party
Green Party
Liberal Party
Libertarian Party
New Democratic Party


To help you figure out which party is best for you:

CBC Voter Compass
Political Compass: compare your results on the test with the Canadian political parties chart

Note that the two compass sites use different scales and their Y axes are the inverse of each other. Your results will not fall in the same place on both compasses - if they're in the same quadrant, something is very wrong.

Strategy and Predictions

My "How to Vote"
My "Where to Vote"
My "How to Vote Strategically"

Riding-by-riding predictions to help you with strategy:

- The Election Prediction Project
- Hill and Knowlton Election Predictor. (You need poll data for this. The site provides some, more is available all over the media.)
- DemocraticSPACE
- ThreeHundredEight (riding predictions in the right-hand column)
- LISPOP
- Project Democracy is designed specifically for those considering a strategic vote against the Conservative party. If this includes you, it might be of use. If not, stick to the other predictors.
- Too Close To Call

Other interesting sources

- How did your neighbourhood vote in 2008?
- Pundits' Guide
- Election Almanac

This post will be updated through to Election Day as I find more information. Do you know of anything else that should be included here? Are any of the links dead? Let me know in the comments!