Contemplating the current frenzy over the census, I am moved to ask: What should we call an issue that excites the usual suspects in Ottawa but doesn’t interest, or matter to, normal Canadians? In the United States they say “Inside the Beltway” but “North of the Queensway” isn’t really adequate.

When I was in the UK studying, I heard a talk by a very senior civil servant who, instead of using the “Whitehall” language to describe British government preoccupations, called them “SW1 problems”, SW1 being the postal code that covers much of the government machinery in London. “SW1 problems” were by definition “insider insider”, the things that preoccupied grey mandarins and fed the conversations in the pubs around government offices, but had no resonance in Balham or Birkenhead or Bristol.

I think we should adapt that to Canada and talk about an “Inside K1A” issue. because all postal codes beginning with K1A are for federal government offices and, moreover, it is the only postal code in the country that crosses a provincial boundary in order to take in parts of the federal bureaucracy located in Gatineau. (Only federal offices; all residential or private business addresses in Gatineau start with J.)

I think that if Canada has 100 top problems, whether or not we fill in a long form census is approximately number 536. What an “Inside K1A” issue.

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WikiLeaks shot to fame in April 2010 when it posted a video of a 2007 US Army assault in Baghdad. Not for the faint of heart, the grainy video is taken from a roving gunship circling a group of men suspected of being militants. Tragically, cameras are mistaken for RPGs and civilians for insurgents. After being granted permission the pilots engage the group, killing twelve, including two Reuters employees.

Reuters spent almost three years trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act. They didn’t get it. WikiLeaks was given a copy anonymously. They posted it online for everybody to watch and millions did.

This time around, WikiLeaks published 75,000 “secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.” They’re promising to release another 15,000 shortly. They also gave the New York Times, The Guardian, and Spiegel access to the cache a couple of weeks in advance to allow mainstream media the time to cover both the leak and the documents. All four organizations published their material in unison on Sunday.

At first blush, the documents are overwhelming and I admit that I was taken in by them. Here is a free and accessible trove of formerly classified materials that on any other day, grad students, academics, and journalists would have simply salivated over. There’s a ton of information in here, much of it risqué. It’s a treasury of official paperwork that helps corroborate events and developments in Afghanistan. Used as raw, quantifiable data, the documents should help test theories of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. In fact, I might have to revisit my dissertation because of WikiLeaks.

But beyond their academic value, there isn’t much new in this material.

The documents tell us this: The Afghan war is a bloody slog. Civilians sometimes die. The Taliban is a ruthless and adaptable adversary. The US is selectively targeting and killings insurgent leaders. Friendly fire incidents occasionally occur. Afghan National Police and Army aren’t up to snuff. Pakistan and Iran are feeding the insurgency. Elements of the Afghan government are corrupt. NATO’s having trouble stabilizing the country. And military operations sometimes go awry.

“If any of this startles you,” writes Fred Kaplan in Slate, “then welcome to the world of reading newspapers. Today’s must be the first one you’ve read.”

In reality, the WikiLeaks documents aren’t a smoking gun because our governments have been open about the kind of struggles we’re facing in Afghanistan. And mainstream media is doing its part by thoroughly covering the war effort.

As Andrew Exum writes in the New York Times, it is simply “ridiculous” to compare these documents with the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Those papers revealed that several US administrations had consistently and purposefully misled the American public during the Vietnam War.

The WikiLeaks Papers don’t do that at all.

If anything, they help corroborate what our governments have been trying to tell us: that this war in complex, deadly, and far from over.

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MLI authors Brian Lee Crowley, Robert Knox and John Robson continue to make waves with their call for an Economic Charter of Rights for Canadians. The Windsor Star is the latest Canadian newspaper to agree with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s call for federal action on domestic trade barriers. In an editorial today, they comment on MLI’s recently-released Citizen of One, Citizen of the Whole study:

So far, only three provinces — Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan — have moved to sign agreements to encourage more trade, investment and mobility.

As a result, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute — a non-partisan think-tank — is calling on Ottawa to use its constitutional authority to get rid of the barriers through an Economic Charter of Rights and then set up a commission that would deal with non-compliance.

…

As the Macdonald-Laurier Institute points out, Ottawa has the moral authority and power to get rid of interprovincial trade barriers. What it really needs is the courage to dismantle them.

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John Robson, in his weekly Citizen column, brings a touch of humour to bear on the issue du jour…the non-con-census flap. If you are tired of, or simply worn down by, the earnestly important debate surrounding Canada’s next body count you’ll enjoy John’s well-timed lampoon…as he whips up the Robson Long Form Intrusive Questionnaire:

Question one: How excited are you about lengthy debates on the government’s decision to scrap the long form census?

(A) I don’t give a hoot

(B) I only give one hoot and I got it from a passing owl

(C) The government’s decision to do what?

(D) Get off my porch before I call the cops

Now that we’ve wet your whistle… read more here.

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News reaches me that the British government has teamed up with Facebook on the “largest public engagement project” ever by a British government, the Spending Challenge seeking ideas from the 26 million Britons on Facebook on taming the deficit (through Facebook’s Democracy UK page). It sure sounds good… but it’s not.
The determination of governments to appear to be listening to the public is understandable. But if you calculate that giving one minute of attention to 26 million different people would require nearly 50 years you can see that it is not a technically doable consultation project.

It is also poorly designed for a quite different reason. James Surowiecki, in his fascinating book The Wisdom of Crowds, demonstrates that much elite disdain for the opinions of ordinary people is profoundly misplaced. Surowiecki starts with a discovery by a professor inclined toward eugenics and contemptuous of the masses, that when a crowd at a fair bought tickets with a prize for estimating the butchered and dressed weight of an ox present in a live state, the average of their guesses was amazingly close to the final figure even though many of the individual entries was wildly wrong. He proceeds to discuss a great deal of subsequent research suggesting that the aggregate of a group of guesses about things like, for instance, the number of marbles in a large jar is not only likely to be very good, it’s often better than all but a handful of the individual guesses.

Surowiecki’s conclusion is not that mobs are smarter than philosophers. It’s that the common sense of the common people taken in aggregate is statistically far more accurate than any other method. Which rather vindicates democracy but in a special way and of a particular sort.

For Surowiecki further demonstrates that this sort of aggregation of lay opinions is very good at a structured process of choosing between alternatives (including in the original case of the ox, since anyone capable of purchasing a ticket knew its weight had to be a particular number and their job was just to figure out which one). It is not nearly as valuable in determining alternatives. That is why populism leads to instability while first-past-the-post is, at least, what Churchill said democracy was.

What the British government ought to be doing, therefore, is having experts devise alternatives that are not conspicuously insane or internally contradictory, and then asking the public to choose between them. Also known as developing platforms then having an election. For the rest, if you could spend 50 years sorting through 26 million brief Facebook comments you’d get about what it sounds like: a half century older, deeper in debt, and bonkers.

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For a “stealth” aircraft the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter seems to be drawing a lot of flak before it even gets to the runway. A great outcry followed last week’s announcement by Defence Minister Peter Mackay that Canada will be purchasing 65 of the next generation fighter planes. Since I was working at National Defence at a time when Canada was involved in the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) development program and Lockheed Martin was chosen as the contractor in 2001 I can say with some confidence that most of the criticism is off target.

In the first place, Mr. Mackay’s announcement last Friday was not some bolt from out of the blue. The government signalled this intention some time ago and last Friday was just the latest step in a process that actually began in 1997 under a government of a different political stripe. Canadian governments have put up some hundreds of millions of dollars, since 1997, in order to belong to the “club” that developed the F-35 stealth fighter, led by the US and including Italy, the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, Australia, the Netherlands, and Turkey.

This announcement should have been no big surprise and no cause for alarm. Substantial taxpayer dollars have been invested in the program. Canadian firms have been involved in the project and seen over $300 million in contracts since 2002 and, of course, there are always important considerations of “interoperability” with respect to NORAD in this type of purchase. Simply stated, we share protection of North American air space with our American allies and it is best that our equipment be the same, particularly in this age of digital command and control.

“Interoperability” is not some mysterious fantasy word. It means precisely what it seems to mean: The military equipment of our two Forces should be able to work together seamlessly. In the 21^st century it is the “systems” in the planes rather than the physical hardware that must be truly interoperable. Navigation and weapons systems should let fighter jets from both countries cooperate tactically anywhere along our North American perimeter. It is just common sense. Including from a maintenance perspective.

Our Navy is certainly highly interoperable and is recognized by the Americans as being so. And it has been most beneficial in deployments to the Middle East, as well as in at search-and-rescue work close to our North American shores.

The shock and surprise over the recent announcement is difficult to comprehend. The path towards a purchase of F-35s has been clear for many years. And our southern neighbours will expect Canada to pull its weight as part of the post-911 defence of the North American continent. You can bet they intend to be vigilant, as our seat in NORAD lets us be. And if we don’t update our military equipment precisely the way this F-35 purchase does, you can bet the Americans will be watching over us. Our sovereignty is best served by being part of the effort not merely subject to it.

In spite of all this, a debate has erupted over the announcement. Military purchases will always be subject to intense scrutiny because of the massive dollar figures involved, and so they should be. But this decision is being criticized on two particular grounds. First, the “sole source” nature of the contract and whether there is better value to be had for the largest defence purchase in our history. Second, whether this particular capability is even needed by the Canadian Forces. And it is fair to say the government did not do a particularly good job of explaining either point even though its decision was sound on both.

Is it really a sole-source contract when the government and Canadian industry have been involved since the start of the JSF project? Hardly. The Government should have explained it that way from the outset. Additionally, when it comes to large purchases of military equipment that must be interoperable with the armed forces of a much larger ally there are not always choices available; there is only one F-35 and the Americans are buying it and so should we. That too should have been explained.

Whether or not we need jet fighters is another question that has popped up in recent days. It is a strangely abstract question to raise suddenly in public after thirteen years of involvement in the JSF program. Given our enormous land mass and shared custody of the North American continent, and even the occasional need to mount overseas missions with air support, it is not obvious why critics believe we should be using a European alternative.

In short, it makes perfect sense to utilise technology from our closest ally, technology Canadian firms help create. And when decisions like this have been made after many years of planning, in a process that was well known, involving governments from different parties, they should come as no surprise.

I know. I was there.

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As a social scientist I’m not happy with the idea that Ottawa is considering abolition of the long form.  The social sciences require data, especially data that can be compared over years. As a private citizen, I’m beginning to think that it might not be a bad idea. The long form nudges and prods. It’s intrusive.

This household had the long form in 2005. We were asked how many hours of unpaid work we did “in and around” the house. List and describe.

Person A (male, 69 years, of Jewish origin) said that his unpaid work around the house consisted of reading, writing, and thinking. In response to the form’s delicate inquiry as to how much time he spends daily on these activities, he wrote: “sixteen hours.” (As the song says: “that leaves eight hours for sleep”)

Person B (female, 70 years, admitting to a Canadian identity) said that she did no unpaid work in and around the house. Indignant thoughts filled her mind as she made out her reply. She’s a householder, not an indentured servant! Householders, homeowners, do not do “unpaid work.” They look after themselves. What would it mean to do “paid work”? Should a householder pay herself, or himself, out of the family account?  What nonsense.

Person B is Jewish, but she put herself into the census as “Canadian” because she wants to see the census continue to list “Canadian” as a category in the section on “identity.” When the question about “identity” first appeared, one was more or less forbidden to describe oneself as “Canadian.” One was not encouraged at any rate. There were complaints. On this form one was not able to indicate that one was both Jewish and Canadian. Pity.

A few weeks afterward, B came into the house to find A on the telephone. He was saying: “Well, she writes books on Canadian constitutional law.” For goodness sakes! It was Ottawa on the line, inquiring about just what B did with her time. Intrusive? I’ll say.

[From The Idea file]

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This week rumours of the demise of the federal Department of Veteran’s Affairs came to light. Two days ago Brian Lee Crowley provided sage comment to the Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson on this issue.

Today, in an editorial titled Honour the veterans, the Calgary Herald says (the bold is mine):

“As Canada’s Korean and Second World War veterans pass away, plans are afoot to downsize or even eliminate the Department of Veterans Affairs, possibly by rolling it in with the Department of National Defence. Our gut reaction is to agree with Brian Lee Crowley of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute for Public Policy. “If there is one group to whom the country owes an undeniable debt of gratitude that should be manifested in solicitous attention to their needs, it would be those who risked their lives on behalf of the country,” he said this week.”

It is clearer each day that Brian Lee Crowley, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and all our associates are rapidly becoming the go-to source for comment and opinion on federal issues.

I thought you might like to see the entire comment which Dr. Crowley provided upon the original request from John Ibbitson which came via email.

Question: “I’m writing a story questioning whether the Department of Veterans Affairs should be shut down, since there are only 140,000 vets left, and their ranks are thinning by 1,700 a month. Do you folks have any thoughts on that?”

Reply from Brian Crowley: “I see two competing principles at work here. On the one hand, we have great pressures on the government to reduce spending and so abolishing the DVA might result in some administrative savings, e.g. by rolling it into DND.

On the other hand if there is one group to whom the country owes an undeniable debt of gratitude, that should be manifested in solicitous attention to their needs, it would be those who risked their lives on behalf of the country. I tend to come down on this side of the conflict between these two principles. Veterans have earned an agency of government whose sole function is to be attentive to their needs (even if in practice it sometimes fails to deliver to the standard we might all like).

There are also practical issues. It is true that we are losing a large number of older vets as the passage of time takes its toll on those who fought in WW II and Korea. On the other hand, we are now several years into the first major combat role we have played since Korea, recruitment is way up, and the kind of warfare we are engaged in has unleashed a big wave of e.g. PTSS, and we are going to be replenishing the ranks of veterans significantly. There are also huge family issues around the stress of this kind of warfare, and I suspect that we will need to care and support for the vets themselves and their families long after they have left the service.

Taking the long view, and looking at the balance of moral and practical obligations, I’d say that abolishing the DVA would not be the right thing to do. Now if you ask me if that hidebound bureaucracy could be shaken up to deliver more to vets and their families more effectively, the answer to that is undoubtedly yes …but to their credit they have been making a lot of effort in recent years through e.g. contracting out.

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The Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Managing Editor, John Robson, writes a weekly column for the Ottawa Citizen. Last week, he touched upon a topic that is of vital importance to Canada – national security – and which has been in the news recently. John started off by noting an absence of logic in part of the recent debate:

“The appearance of CSIS director Richard Fadden before a special sitting of the House of Commons public safety committee revealed a problem. We seem unable to think logically about national security.”

John also tipped his hat in the direction of MLI Managing Director Brian Lee Crowley’s postings on the Fadden Files (in the June archive of the MLI Blog).

But, getting back to the column…his conclusion was stated in John’s usual direct manner:

“We have a problem.”

You can find out what it is by reading the entire column…here.

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