Andrew Bates

electric newspaperman

April 27, 2012
by Andrew Bates
1 Comment

Outtakes: SO MANY WORDS about Storm the Wall

Illustration courtesy Indiana Joel (The Ubyssey)

When we did Storm The Wall in March, we all put together a diary of our experiences. I, true to form, wrote WAY MORE WORDS than could be used in the format we were going with. So Internet, you get the full EXPANDED edition. Enjoy!

At The Ubyssey, the requirements for athleticism are “go outside the SUB” and “eat vegetables.”
I’m not too bad. My particular job gets me around campus and I try to bike to school every once in a while. In the summers, I’m a cook in Penticton, so I’m no stranger to hard work. But let’s be real: I am a man of the stout beer, the pizza, and what you can call a gregarious figure. My enthusiasm for outdoor sport is restrained only by the weak arms years of desk jobs provide. Let’s Storm the Wall.

DAY ONE

We filed in for the training video, minus our itinerant captain Jonny and cold victim Geoff. I was a little worried about not getting disqualified, but the challenges seemed workable. I went over the wall first, and it was a flashback to all of the times I failed at climbing fences. Things were real testy, as I forgot the admonishments to keep my legs straight and tried to scrabble over. I couldn’t even haul my leg up to Micki, and I was worried I was about to fall. Once I actually hauled myself over, I found the pulling easy—perhaps I did have arm strength, but just not enough to get me over. It worked out! But there were certainly questions to ask.

That evening, we went over to Arshy’s house to sing along. Jonny and I wandered home through the forest drinking wine and we encountered an owl, who stared us down for two minutes. What did that experience mean? I tried to climb something I’d failed to before my attempt at the Wall in the morning. It was too icy, but still I worried.

DAY TWO

The next day was a journalism day—a job interview, for which I prepared heavily, but for which I didn’t rehearse specific questions. I rambled a little bit. I went to hang out with soccer people, but I felt too tired and hung over to go to a match, so I did good things, like buy groceries and make veggie shepherd’s pie. Then we went out for a drink at Micki’s house anyways. I jumped on my bike for the first time in a few weeks, and felt out of breath scaling Kerrisdale’s weird fucking topography. I turned onto Arbutus and some bikers chirped me. I tried to ignore them, but I knew I had to practice further. Before bed, we planned to go to brunch. It was going to be good.

DAY THREE

Nobody was good on Sunday morning. An hour after I meant to, I texted Kai, asking if the folks sleeping at her place were waking up. She replied “JONNY PUKED ON MY COUCH.” That is how that went. I took time to brunch knowing it could put me late for my assignment—a rugby game at noon. I biked up down West 16th between Ubyssey Haus and Thunderbird Stadium in a bad way. I was wearing a wool coat and a heavy bag. My legs felt empty. I was labouring up it. I was trying to explain it on my hangover, but at that rate, how could I storm the wall?

DAY FOUR

I fixed my helmet in the afternoon, but my new bike, the Rocky Mountain, wasn’t on campus. It was a hand-me down from my mountain biking mom—she brought it from Penticton. I hadn’t checked it, but I was sure it’d be okay, as long as I got Jonny to help me put it together. On the way home, I tried looping the War Memorial parking lot. Turns were hard to master and I didn’t feel quite right, but I felt I was as ready as I was going to be. It’d be fine.

D-DAY

It was a fine morning. Took me a bit to get out of bed, but I had what I always did—cooked spinach, cheese, fried eggs and a pair of English muffins with some green tea. Jonny had already been to class, but although I couldn’t put the front brake on, the back one went fine. And the bike was wonderful! So much more power, suspension made it a much more comfortable ride, and gear changes went fine. It was really a pleasure to ride, and all I had to do was get Jonny or the Bike Kitchen to fit the front brake on.

Did you know that the front brake provides 80 per cent of your braking power? I found out when the nice man at the kitchen repeated it three times in telling me that in transit, the brake cable housing had retreated inside itself and the brake would need to be recabled entirely in order to work properly. I wasn’t able to use my wonderful new bike. 15 minutes beforehand, I was without a ride. Jeff offered me his; entirely appreciated, although a purple touring bike I had never ridden before was not what I wanted. I was worried.

I had the advantage of an early start because of Geoff and Micki’s strong performances and pushed out. The new bike took a bit of getting used to, and finding a rhythm between acceleration in the straights and turning with any kind of speed. In the third lap, I felt like everything was firing properly, and even though I hadn’t entirely picked up in the turns, I was running well. Teammates on the sidelines really helped. In the last runs, I was catching up to a few bikers and trying to figure out when was best to pass—I managed it a few times. Coming out of the last turn, I was neck and neck with a guy and pushed pretty even, but I didn’t want to tap into the end of my tank; there was still the wall to do. I couldn’t push just that bit harder and came in just behind. My legs were made of lead, so I got on my bike and rolled to the Wall. (And for your information, I never used my front brake once.)

I was first up. I failed to lean into the wall on my first attempt, but the bases rearranged themselves and I was able to get together. I remembered to keep my legs straight and got my arms over, but I had to tap into my arm strength—I do have it!—to get my elbows across. I didn’t have any problem hauling my leg up, and Geoff had it fine. I got it over, and the worst was done from there. After helping Jonny over, the last three in the base were easy. We ran around, and we did it. We stormed the wall.

April 24, 2012
by Andrew Bates
1 Comment

The 1980s CUP conference that ended in war in the Ubyssey office


Here’s a fun anecdote I stumbled upon doing some web searches. In the middle of a relationship advice column in the Regina Leader-Post about a UBC study that asserts that women are attracted to scowly men and men to smiling women, the late Ron Petrie, columnist and Sheaf alumnus, drops an anecdote about what he learned at a CUP regional conference in the 80s:

The study supports similar findings at UBC thirty years ago. Back when I was editor of the University of Saskatchewan Sheaf, colleagues from student newspapers across western Canada gathered in Vancouver.

Understand this was an era when campus newspapers weren’t concerned so much with “campus news,” per se, as with social justice in the news media.

We young, humourless journalists saw ourselves as the vanguard of a new society, where males and females were treated equally and where, perhaps, some day, 50-year-old guys wouldn’t go around using expressions like “luuuv,” “chicks,” “gettin’ smitten.”

Anyway, true story: Our conference agenda called for us to break off into groups for earnest, gender-specific deliberations, a male caucus and a female caucus. (How enlightened were we male students back then? Not one of us even snickered at the word “caucus.”) It was agreed the men would gather in the newsroom of the UBC Ubyssey, the woman at another room in the student union building. We split off.

To this day, I don’t recall how it all started. Perhaps a paper jet launched by Alberta’s editor glanced off the forehead of Brandon’s. Regina might have then lobbed a scrunched ball of paper at Capilano, prompting Victoria to declare the largest desk as its fort, and good thing, too, given that Lethbridge had discovered the awesome aerodynamics of the cardboard mailing tube as a projectile. By the time Simon Fraser dropped, rolled, stood up again and raced through the neutral zone, firing staples, manila folders flew, typewriter tables zoomed back and forth, Calgary answered Winnipeg’s volley of flung pencils with a barrage of trash can waste, and it was the only most fun EVER, and then, and then .

The women walked in.

Freeze frame. The respective facial expressions of the female student editors and the male editors, at that exact instant, are best described through Hollywood illustration.

FEMALES: Clint Eastwood, as the stranger in A Fistful of Dollars.

MALES: The dwarf Dopey, as himself.

Just the recent UBC findings have confirmed, there was definitely no post-conference necking that weekend. And we were college students. On a road trip.

Note: Just after publishing this, I noticed that Petrie passed away in February at the age of 52. I hadn’t read anything of his before, but he seemed pretty awesome. Rest in peace.

January 24, 2012
by Andrew Bates
0 comments

rain verse

Photo by Andrew Bates

rain lies layered on the surface of the road like snow.
but unlike snow, which sleeps until it vanishes,
rain lies ready to surprise us by jumping.
if we are open, we feel it, coating our clothes
and finding our bones with cold.
if we are closed, we stare at it through a pane wondering
and then in flight through open air
feel it anyways.
the grass fills with rain like a riverbank, swollen but holding its shape
so it is with us.
the rain alone touches every being in the city
to its core.

January 11, 2012
by Andrew Bates
0 comments

Outtakes: All of the sassy things Kai Green said when I interviewed her

Photo by Geoff Lister

Tonight, I wrote an article over at THIS CAMPUS’ NEWSPAPER OF RECORD (if that other paper is the Grey Lady, are we the Blue Lady? I don’t know if we deserve that title, though, I know what we do at parties) about changes to the Voter Funded Media system in elections, during the process of which Taylor Loren said I was OFFISHUL.

ANYWAYS. AMS Confidential editor Kai Green was sassy as hell in an interview and us heartless traditional media types cut out so many hilarious jokes about UBC Insiders only ten people would get. Luckily, only ten people read this blog! So maybe you will be one of those ten people, dear reader. HERE ARE THE SASSY JOKES.

“Insiders is over ten years old. Insiders is like, back in the Gerald Deo days. Insiders is, it’s a dinosaur. It’s not going anywhere.”

On continuous VFM:

“Continuous when we had funding or continuous when there was just a point system and we had to compete with Neal?”

“There was a brief period in which the AMS thought about funding for continuous VFM, which was just not sustainable, because essentially you’re paying other people to do the work that Ubyssey does, and nobody even reads the Ubyssey, so you’re paying extra for nothing.”

“It’s just that there’s not enough involvement and connection at UBC, I think, to make that an accurate reflection, just based on the number of times we were able to spoof the system and keep our numbers above Insiders even though we weren’t posting anything.”

On the promotion for VFM applications:

“I never pay attention to the promotions. I just get an e-mail from Mark that says, hey, do you want to sign up for VFM again this year? and I say, yes, I would like to run that novelty blog. Promotions. Have there been promotions? I hate to say that. There’s a criticism. Have there been promotions?”

On whether or not a thinner field of VFMs hurts the overall product:

“[Would] we getting actually be getting meaningful content out of that, or we’re a bunch of people who are all hacks and friends of friends getting paid to write about their friends? I belong in that category, I don’t think anybody can deny that we’re squarely in that category, but at least we’re upfront about it.”

“It does encourage outlets and media other than your standard Ubyssey. It provides a little bit of reward for people who work so hard on insiders, mostly Neal, I don’t know how Neal lives off of 400-600 dollars a year, but he makes it work somehow.”

To restore a sense of balance, I should also note that she accidentally used the word crippled and then got bashful about it and told me not to print it. I DIDN’T, KAI, YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY

There you go. JOURNALISM LIVES.

January 2, 2012
by Andrew Bates
0 comments

Suarez report makes protests seem foolish

Photo courtesy Michael Steele (Getty Images)


Show racism the red card; unless, of course, if was our player, in which case it was barely a foul.

The English FA’s surprisingly robust response–an eight game ban–to allegations of racism has caused a bit of a stir. Two months after Liverpool star Luis Suarez said something to Manchester United’s Patrice Evra in a heated moment that contained the word negro, anti-racism advocates are rather pleased that the FA has decided to respond so forcefully to it. Liverpool are less happy.

The response since the 1-1 draw on October 15th ranged from outward denial–it wasn’t credible, they said, as it all depended on the word of Evra versus Suarez–to cultural relativism: Suarez admitted to using negro and the issue became that the player, who is Uruguayan, wasn’t familiar with the racially charged nature of the word in England and his supporters have claimed that he shouldn’t be held accountable.

Then the Independant Regulatory Commission’s astounding report of the reasons for the sentence came out, finding Suarez had used the word seven times. Liverpool’s, well, slightly-more-than-zero tolerance of racism was always a bit puzzling: The players and coach Kenny Dalglish are loudly for Suarez, wearing his t-shirts in the warm up. Pain and support are words used. Their protestation hinges on one big point; that Suarez has not been socialized to recognize racism growing up in Uruguay. That would be a fair point if there wasn’t some other body whose responsibility it is to educate Suarez about racism: Liverpool Football Club.

The Commission’s report was commanding, to say the least, about the situation. 115 pages are used to detail the whole timeline of charges and a litany of evidence, from initial day-of statements to interviews taken on by the FA to experts in Castellan Spanish to the testimony commanded by the committee itself. (This included lots of rich description of the event; apparently, Evra started the conversation with the man who fouled him ten minutes earlier by yelling “Concha de tu hermana“, which describes a sensitive part of your sister’s anatomy but is analogous to yelling “fucking hell” or something similarly coarse. It also includes a lowly Liverpool equipment manager who hears of the allegations and hastens to Dalglish to tell him.)

The overall decision of the committee was to accept that there was a situation in which the term could be used in a conciliatory way that wasn’t racist–but it didn’t believe that Suarez had done so.

The root of this lack of belief was what had always seemed fairly obvious: that the conversation was never a happy one. “In our judgment, Mr Suarez’s use of the term was not intended as an attempt at conciliation or to establish rapport; neither was it meant in a conciliatory and friendly way,” paragraphs 266 and 267 read. “We were troubled by the fact that Mr Suarez advanced this case to us and relied on it to the extent that he did, when it was unsustainable.” This was bolstered as well by their interpretation of Suarez pinching Evra’s arm in what he described as an attempt to defuse the situation, which the defense later rather claimed was a copy error. The committee concluded it was an attempt to wind him up.

It was the first of three major pillars on which they lost the case: that the conversation was in no way friendly; second, that the case wasn’t a campaign by Evra to take down Suarez, and finally and most damaging, that various parties had changed their tunes from earlier testimony in order to try and sway the committee.

There was more than one instance of this: Liverpool director of football Damian Comolli’s statement that Suarez had claimed he said “Por que tu es negro” (“Because you are black”) instead of Suarez’s defense’s answer of “por que, negro?” (“why, black?”), which would have been more damaging, because the latter could conceivably be the harmless reference to race Suarez sold it as. According to the report, he also instructed that fourth-official Phil Dowd write it down. He now claims he has misheard it. Dirk Kuyt also said in his first interview that Suarez had told him in Dutch he’d said “because he is black” but in the same statement farcically said if the Uruguayan contradicted him then whatever the defense said was correct.

But the case really came off the rails in a deliberation described on paragraph 261. Essentially, Suarez described his word usage as “affectionate and friendly” in an earlier interview with the FA, but as “conciliatory” and “an effort at conciliation” in his witness statement to the commission. This change of language came after all parties received a brief from the language experts that explained that “negro” could constitute non-abuse if it was used in a conciliatory manner.

What followed was the tribunal’s first outright suspicion that Suarez was trying to pull one over on them. “It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Mr Suarez used the words conciliation and conciliatory to describe his use of the word “negro” because the experts had used those terms,” the report reads.

There are other odd moments in the testimony: noting that the defense had let stand unchallenged testimony from four Man U players that Evra had described Suarez as saying “I don’t speak to blacks,” the defense was asked: what then was Evra’s motivation for doing so? Either (1) He was telling the truth, (2) He invented it, for the purpose of ruining Suarez’s reputation, (3) he misheard it, or (4) for some other reason.

The defense answered (2), using four instances of Evra having short temper during the game to characterize the confrontation as a point of explosion when, when Suarez refuses to apologize for fouling him, he loses control and…concocts a plan to tell people he was racist an hour later and have an an independent commission find him guilty for racial abuse. This explanation was rejected.

This has put a stunning halt to the runaway chatter that maybe Suarez is misunderstood in this case. What’s clear–and probably always has been–is that Suarez wasn’t and still isn’t a racist. But he certainly doesn’t seem like an innocent man of the world above the problems of racism; he is depicted first as trying desperately to wind up Evra and then his defense is characterized as an unreliable and desperate attempt to weasel out of the charges. All of this, of course, was known by Liverpool before they went on their media blitz, although they didn’t have a report to read.

Suarez is still available for selection Tuesday against Man City in the league, and then in cup fixtures against Oldham and City again. But if Suarez opts out of an appeal tomorrow and Liverpool overcome Oldham, only four matches of the ban will be in the Premiership, with the other four in the Carling Cup and early rounds of the FA Cup. His first match back would be an all-important league match against, who else, Manchester United. He should think about it.

Because Suarez and Dalglish and the players and the club and a good chunk of fans have shackled themselves to this sad sad boat of a case for innocence that’s carrying more and more water. Liverpool have done good work in this area and Suarez, while infuriating, doesn’t seem like an awful or hateful person. There’s always been a road out of this: admit you did wrong, pledge to work through it, sit out the ban, and maybe use your free time to work with anti-racism groups and burnish your image.

But all attempts to fight this to date, and certainly any subsequent attempts to reduce the length of the ban imposed because this issue is so important seem but a petulant attempt to argue with the referee about a decision that seems a foregone conclusion. Some have rightly worried about the rabid partisanship of those arguing the Suarez case, and it is time to lay swords down.

Neither Liverpool or Suarez are covered in glory at the moment. But at this point it’s not important to ensure that they never walk alone. It’s important that they simply walk away.

UPDATE (Jan 3, 11:30 PST): Liverpool have, as it seems they would, declined an appeal. But they’ve done it in the most odious way: By denying every charge, saying it was still all an attempt to discredit Suarez, and claiming the high road for losing at this case. Neither the club nor Suarez are providing much in the way of substantiation, but hey, at least this affair is behind us.

October 25, 2011
by Andrew Bates
0 comments

Journalism on a bike – Fall in review

I’ve been getting settled in Vancouver! It’s been great getting into the city, and I’ve been writing some excellent things for the Ubyssey. I figured I’d drop off a bit of an omnibus post for those who want to follow along.


Hovercraft for Wreck Beach fall victim
I got a piece in 24 Hours! It was a crazy breaking news story that involved a lot of running, and then an hour later the newsroom got a call that the metro daily was interested. We also got to do some excellent breaking stuff for the Ubyssey as well, about the small forest fire on campus. The five of us stuck out there until 3 AM, and then I came by again the next day.


Over 4000 fill downtown for Occupy Vancouver debut
Got to do some real new media stuff for this, with the video and the article. I’m rather pleased with both! I got to take a look at it before hand as well, too. That was the same week the Insite court decision passed, which I was able to do a neat web piece on.


A film only a fan could love
And I got to do some very Batesy stuff as well. At 3:38 above, you can see my piece about interviewing Tommy Wiseau, which was crazy, like interviewing a cartoon character. I’ve written about ALL OF THE SOCCER.

It’s been pretty rad! My articles are appearing here as I write them, and the rad videos we’ve been doing that I’ve been in and assisting on are at the Ubyssey’s Youtube channel as well. Now to actually, you know, do classwork.

June 25, 2011
by Andrew Bates
1 Comment

A principled parliament

Photo by Sean Kilpatrick, courtesy CP

58 hours later, we’ve learned a lot about the 41st Parliament that Canada elected on May 2nd. But more than anything else, we have seen politics injected with principles in a way the system has sorely lacked.

At 10:30 AM on Thursday, June 23rd, debate began in the House of Commons on Bill C-6, which would send Canada Post employees back to work under a legislated bargaining agreement. It would then require an arbitrator to make a binding decision between the offer made by the employers and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. CUPW had engaged in two weeks of rotating strikes before Canada Post began a lockout, citing increased operating losses from the strike.

Three days later, Hansard closed the book on the 23rd, with continuous debate on various motions relating to the bill’s passing, with the Conservative majority eventually successful in passing the bill without amendments. The NDP Official Opposition used a procedural rule which permits every MP 20 minutes to speak on any motion before the house. From a motion to delay the bill by six months to, farcically, a motion to call the question, debate rolled overnight into St. Jean Baptiste’s day, the Fete National in Quebec, and out the other end, finally wrapping up the House of Commons for summer break at around 8 PM.

The Commons desk calendar did not roll over during the course of the debate. Photo by Michelle Rempel.

The novelty of the situation wore off, I think, by the second night. What the filibuster meant, however, is up for debate (no pun intended). There was no literal effect from the action–no deal was cut outside the house and no amendments to soften the bill passed inside of it, so little would be procedurally different if the debate had wrapped up in hours on Thursday. This is an effect of the control political parties have on the Canadian parliamentary system, where there are no independent MPs and the vote is known to pass along party lines before it is taken. So was it a waste, or stunt? Clearly, something still happened.

Much was written before the election about how the political system had been seen to fall into an unprincipled malaise. As Andrew Coyne wrote:

To be perfectly clear: absolutely nothing is at stake in Canadian politics. There is no clash of visions, no conflict of values, because neither party has any. Nothing is riding, therefore, on the outcome of any election. It simply does not matter who wins.

The threat of a constant election didn’t just bind the government’s hand, but the opposition–after they backed down from defeating the budget in 2009, they were too light in order to avoid being too heavy. With everything at stake procedurally, they opted often to pick their battles. But now, with nothing at stake procedurally (and a new party in the Office of the Opposition), the only thing at stake was something that might have been previously absent from Parliament: principles.

Not everyone was game–certainly not the Liberal party, who tut-tutted on occasion throughout the debate, breaking up the rhythm of NDP speeches about unions and Conservative replies. But this was a staring contest lead by the NDP and enjoyed, sometimes, with relish by the Conservatives, who spoke much more than they needed to in a filibuster that relied on the length of individual speeches; “To pass the bill, you’ll need to last as long as we can talk, and we can talk for a long time.” “Well, we are going to pass the bill, and we can talk as well.”

So this is an opposition that is going to stick to its guns. Layton’s fifty minute speech on Thursday night was a loud invective that could pacify those worrying that the party will drift into the centre. They clearly possess muscle, and they can be counted on to do what they say. This Parliament’s benches are full of interesting people that have been more important here than they have in some time–Ryan Leef and Steven Fletcher impressed on the government side, as well as a bevy of new NDP MPs–Alain Giguere, with his goofy mustache! Ruth-Ellen Brosseau spoke, in French!–that can count Rathika Sitsabaiesan, Yves Godin, and Peter Julian as standouts. Elizabeth May made her new seat count, sitting in the House for over 41 consecutive hours. Almost all of them deserve respect for standing up for their constituents in what was for Parliamentarians an extreme experience.

And standing up for your beliefs is important. This was a meaningful act of defense for political ideas. Now, there is a clash, and now there are principles to defend. But for now, there is a summer break. We can be sure, this time, that the politicians deserve it.

June 20, 2011
by Andrew Bates
0 comments

Protest pageantry a breach of trust

Photo by Chris Wattie, courtesy Reuters


In the Canadian Senate, a funny thing was done by someone who had no business doing it.

You may be aware of the story of Brigette DePape, a 21-year old University of Ottawa student and Senate page who hijacked headlines after standing in Canada’s chamber of sober second thought during the reading of the Speech from the Throne holding a homemade sign that read, “Stop Harper!” She released a statement calling for a Canadian version of the Arab Spring, claiming that stopping Harper’s agenda was impossible without creative disobedience.

The reaction was swift. It swept through TV, newspapers, and Facebook pages across the country–it sat comfortably below the fold on A1 of that weekend’sOkanagan Saturday–along the way insulting some and impressing others. Rather than split across purely partisan lines, it largely broke along the observer’s opinion of civil disobediance and protest as a political tool. I opined that it was a breach of trust regardless of whether or not you agreed with her.

AMS VP External Katherine Tyson didn’t like the protest, signaling disapproval via her personal Twitter on the basis of disrespect for democratic tradition. No Logo author Naomi Klein liked it, signalling gratitude to DePape for speaking for Canadians. (So did some American guy who makes films.) Manifesto-writing alt-rocker Matthew Good thought this is what democracy looks like. Union leader Morna Ballantyne offered her a job.

So let’s process this. DePape was clearly standing up for her beliefs, which is commendable–she was smart to have issued a press release outlining her manifesto almost immediately after being escorted out of the chamber by sergant-at-arms Kevin Vickers. (It’s notable that the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) response also posted by the CBC describes her as a “professional protester”–wouldn’t that imply that she was paid? Does professional protester simply mean that she’s good at it?)

Standing up for what you believe in is commendable, and the fact that news on this is still coming out shows that she was doing a good job. “It’s not [just] rad because I agree with her”, said Twitter user @LexusMelanie in a reply to me, “It’s rad because she made a loud & clear statement for what she believes!” We malign the public servants in every department who kowtow to the CPC and Prime Ministers’ Office on details as minor as funding announcements, and we lionize former Statistics Canada head Munir Sheikh for refusing to defend what he saw as a bad decision in the axing of the long-form census. We want, in other words, people to stand against the pack and exercise their democratic voice.

But what about the respect for Parliament itself? This is not the first time such protest has taken place on the Hill, nor shall it be the last. A quick search turned up at least two cases in 2009 when protesters joined in on Question Period by chanting to raise awareness of the seal hunt and climate change, respectively. As one of the enduring symbols of Canadian culture, it’s an attractive place to try and get your message out. “For our country, it was one hell of a show. Somewhat iconic,” said a former Phoenix colleague of mine, Robyn Travis. “I may not agree with her politics (her interview was embarrassing), but I commend her bravery to make a bold statement and express her strong objection.”

I think, however, that DePape’s actions differ from that of the protesters. They were activists, which meant that their responsibility was chiefly to themselves and their beliefs–it can be literally your obligation to do stuff like this to further your cause. But she had other stuff on her table. No, this is more like that time in 2002 that Keith Martin grabbed the Mace. Martin, then an Alliance MP, was unhappy that his private member’s bill had been amended to committee hell. He responded by striding down to the table and seizing the ceremonial Mace, which signals the authority of Parliament, raising it over his head and claiming that democracy was dead in this country, according to an account in Hansard. It was ruled that Martin had committed a prima facie breach of privilege–that is, he had violated the specific powers extended to houses of Parliament and parliamentarians themselves.

This is the standard on which we should judge DePape. Was the message important? Maybe. Was the stunt worth it? To DePape, surely. But let’s talk about privilege for a moment. Let’s talk about trust.

We trust professionals, yes? I can’t bring friends into the kitchen where I work because that is a privilege extended to cooks and employees–we have that power because we are trusted to use it responsibly and safely. As an editor at the Phoenix and elsewhere, I have had the privilege of being the last line of defense on articles that are ran in the newspaper because I am trusted by my colleagues and the membership of those papers not to abuse the thoughts of writers or modify it based on my own beliefs or interests.

“There was something inside of me that said, ‘You have to do this’”, DePape told reporters. And I get that. I’ve felt that urge too. I tried to suppress it, and I wasn’t always successful. But having privileges mean that many people trust that you will not violate them. Senate pages, who are self-regulated, are depended upon by the senators, by Parliament security, and by their colleagues. They serve the people, who impart a manner of trust on the institution of Parliament. And she violated the trust of every single one by doing that. If that urge is important to you, there are many things you can do other than be a page.

But that violation is important to recognize. DePape’s press release did not carry her actual surname, identifying her as Brigette Marcelle, as though nobody would question it. In the release, she did not resign. She only had three months left on her contract. Even if her actions were justified, she needed to at least acknowledge that she’d failed to exercise her responsibilities–that even though it was the right thing for her to do, it was the wrong thing for a page to do. Having beliefs and having been an activist or a partisan does not make you one for the rest of her life, but DePape’s actions will make it harder for young people to be a page.

Will future screening panels turn away pages for things like DePape’s performance pieces for TEDx or her work for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, where she praised protesters at the G20? They should not. Having been politically active on either the left or right wing does not mean you are unable to seperate your beliefs from your responsibilities and does not mean that you will be unable to uphold the trust placed in you to operate at an impossibly high level.

But they have a hell of a reason to now, don’t they?

April 21, 2011
by Andrew Bates
0 comments

Who wins an election?

Photo by Adrian Wyld, courtesy CP

Our frustrating national debate on minority governments will not be solved until we settle who wins a general election and, more importantly, what mandate that gives to governments.

Right up until the MOMENTUMQUAKE hit today, the week’s big political topic was the resurfacing of the coalition debate, but with some substance, this time! On Tuesday, Ignatieff confirmed in an interview with Peter Mansbridge that the Liberals could lead a government between elections if a Tory minority lost confidence. National Post columnist John Ivison wondered aloud whether or not they teach “Don’t answer hypotheticals” in MP school, and the right wing lost their shit over Ignatieff’s “lust for power”. On Wednesday, Harper didn’t exactly cover himself in glory either, as he refused to confirm that he’d work with the opposition in a minority, but boldly told Peter Mansbridge today that he wouldn’t try and lead a minority parliament as the second place party between elections despite the fact that he did that exact thing when the 2004 Martin minority was on the rocks. Still with me? Good.

Nobody wants an unnecessary bag--WAIT, THE LIBERAL LEADER IS TOMMY LEE JONES? Photo by Michael Ignatieff (!), flickr

What all this proves is that there is a serious disconnect between what some people think the system means and what it actually means. Democracies are either direct, where your vote makes a specific decision, or representative, where your vote selects someone to decide a whole mess of things on behalf of you and everyone in your area. Voting for an American president is an act of direct democracy (kind of! we’ll get to that in a bit), while voting for a Parliament is a representative one. In both models, everyone you elect is supposed to represent everyone–a President and an MP is everyone’s politician, not just the people who elected them. At the local level, the election is simple. The MP with the most votes wins. Even if more than 50% of votes were cast for other candidates, those other votes are discarded, as if they were goals scored by the losing side in a cup final. The most representative MP then goes to join 307 other MPs to run the country in Ottawa. What gets murky is when you add political parties.

Political parties are private membership based societies that are a useful tool to group political will. Without them, as it was in BC until 1903, parliaments were governed by loose coalitions that, in BC, saw Premiers turfed by the Lieutenant-Governor often, with sixteen premiers serving in a period of ten elections. The problem is that elections have nothing to do with parties. Theoretically, your vote for a political party’s candidate for MP means that you would support that party’s leader as the Prime Minister. But Canadians never vote for a Government. The Prime Minister’s Office isn’t even in our constitution–there are no rules, only formal conventions about what constitutes the Queen-in-council. Eugene Forsey tells me that by convention–which is oddly enough enforceable, because Canada is weird–Parliament selects a candidate for PM, who names a Cabinet to run the government and formally advise the Queen how to exercise executive power.

I was going to make a joke about the Queen, and then I saw this picture and got scared. Photo by Chris Jackson, care of Getty Images

So who wins an election? Unlike a race for MP, the game doesn’t end and the votes mostly don’t vanish. But the unofficial rules surrounding how a political party controls democratic power ends up in weird solidifications of that power. Just after starting a brief hiatus from public life in 1997, Harper once told an American conference that the House of Commons was more like the US Electoral College than Congress; “Imagine if the electoral college which selects your president once every four years were to continue sitting in Washington for the next four years.” The Electoral College is a weird construction–in order to weight population density in presidential voting, Americans elect token representatives that meet after an election to vote for the President and then disperse. The thing is, if Harper thinks the House works like the Electoral College, it would make sense how he feels about winners and losers, because in that system, the votes DO disappear. The candidate with the most votes forms an executive council, everyone else goes home, and the apparatus for representative democracy is a completely different election altogether. But we don’t work like that at all.

Still with me? We elect MPs to represent us in Parliament. Parliament endorses a Prime Minister, whose Cabinet is, unlike the American system, answerable to the legislature. This is called responsible parliament, which sounds loaded, but really, it just means what it says–government must have the support of the house. That responsible thing is what throws everything off. Because in practice, the Parliament votes on party lines. Parties hire Whips to ensure party MPs vote with their leaders, and crossing the line outside of a vote your leader hasn’t declared a free-for-all means you usually get thrown out of the caucus, which makes it hard to get re-elected.

So who wins in a federal election? Without any rules, everyone agrees that the party with a majority–50%+1–of seats gets to form the government. With 155 or more MPs whipped to vote along party lines, Parliament will approve most of what the political party who forms government does because that party controls Parliament. But no party has had a majority in Parliament since 2004–a whopping four elections ago. (If you’re keeping an unnecessary-election score, two of those were called by Prime Ministers and two were the result of votes of non-confidence moved by the Leader of the Opposition; Stephen Harper two, Ignatieff one, Paul Martin one.) The rules of what happen in a minority government are clear, but how that relates to an election starts to get confusing.

By convention, after an election, whoever was the prime minister is still the prime minister. If they lose, they resign. Then, the GG approaches the leader of the party with the most seats and asks them to have a go at forming government. Government rules until they lose the confidence of parliament–a throne speech, budget, or any other confidence motion fails–and the Prime Minister goes back to the GG and asks them to dissolve Parliament and call an election. Usually, the GG says yes. We so rarely ever get past this point that it makes sense that nobody remembers how it works. The GG has the rare power to refuse advice from the PM in this case–since his job is to make Parliament run after an election, a GG could refuse to dissolve it under the rationale that another election would not be in the best interests of Canadians. If that happened, as it has happened before, the current GG, David Johnston, would summon the Leader of the Opposition, tasked with maintaining a government-in-waiting, to ask if he thought he could form a government that has the confidence of the House. Things like the 2008 coalition agreement, Harper’s 2004 letter to Adrienne Clarkson, and Bob Rae’s 1985 deal with the Ontario Liberals are really just props designed to prove to the GG at this point that they could form stable government. If Johnston was convinced, that party would get to form a Cabinet and make a Throne Speech. If Johnston wasn’t convinced, or the Leader of the Opposition said no, he’d go to the next party and so on, trying to encourage Parliament to work together for about six months before he got tired of it and would call an election already. Examples of this system at work include the last British election, where Gordon Brown placed second, but as Prime Minister, was given the first shot by the Queen at forming a government with confidence–which failed, because his opposition said no–and a coalition of David Cameron and Nick Clegg accepted the call to form a government.

David Johnston's not mad, he's just disappointed. Photo by Chris Wattie, care of Reuters

Who wins in a federal election when no party gets a minority? Brad Wall thinks it’s the party with the most seats: winners WIN. But without rules, what’s democratically correct is left ridiculously subjective. Is a government legitimate if less than half of Parliament supports it? Is the government with the support of the most MPs automatically the most legitimate? This is when political parties become a pain in the ass. Since political parties are viewed as Team Layton, Team Ignatieff, etcetera, majority thinkers like Wall and Harper see the seat counts as a score card, and whoever won the most seats wins the Legitimacy-to-Govern trophy. And while it usually does, the fact of a minority government–and arguably, its mandate–is that the government cannot continue without the support of other MPs. Whereas in a majority, the onus is on the opposition to work with the government, in a minority, it is the government’s responsibility to seek the support of the opposition, not the other way around.

So why are we even having this argument? Simply, the political scenesters–politicians, strategists, pundits, reporters–have already decided this scenario is going to come to pass. Pollsters mostly predict that the status quo will hold for the second straight election, Harper’s said he’ll introduce the same budget that got voted down, the opposition says they won’t support it, just like last time, and so the political sphere has decided that unless something changes, David Johnston is going to have to earn his paycheque. Simply put, Harper can’t retain power unless he reaches out, so he has asked for a mandate to not have to reach out.

You'll never win an election with a pokecheck like that. Seriously, that kid is eight and he knows that's a shitty pokecheck. Photo by Chris Wattie, care of Reuters

Who wins the election? We don’t strictly vote for a Prime Minister; by-elections, which are the same thing we’re doing right now, are never construed as a mandate. It’s also not the fact that you can’t be the PM unless you lead the party that wins in an election–BC’s premier isn’t elected at all, but we’re fine with her taking power between elections because the sitting premier resigned, her party has a majority, and therefore the BC Legislature could give confidence to whoever it damn well feels like. What’s clear is that a minority leader must reach across the floor. So if you ask for a mandate to not have to do that, and then you don’t get one, have you lost? On the other hand, if you asked for the mandate to be PM–as everyone but Duceppe has done–and don’t get a minority or a majority, you probably lost for sure. The question becomes, does being a loser make you a loser forever (or until the next election, whichever comes first)? If Harper loses confidence, will everyone just sit in the House and awkardly stare at each other until Johnston just gets mad and sends everyone home for a fifth election in seven years over Christmas? They shouldn’t. That would be dumb.

The whole thing just goes to show that the political system in Canada makes no sense at all. If we elect representatives, then the representatives pick the government. Simple. But some argue that Canadians mean to elect political parties. If that’s the case, that’s screwed up, because spoiler alert: we don’t elect political parties at all. The whole point of the movement of strategic voting–literally voting for someone you don’t believe in because they are more likely to change government–is that people are trying to vote for government, but can’t, because that’s not how our system works. If the point was to elect parties, we ought to be able to vote for them, but we can’t–in the Okanagan-Coquihala and Kelowna-Lake Country ridings, a projected 46,000 votes for the Liberals, NDP, and Greens simply won’t count towards the national total. By comparison, a total of 57,000 votes counts for two. Unifying the vote isn’t good either, because diversity of voting choices rocks. Compared to two-party systems, multi-party scenes allow for a wide variety of viewpoints. Minorities, like the one that brought us universal health care, are awesome, unless they don’t work.

Who’s responsibility is it to make them work? Minority governments haven’t worked for seven years, because they have no rules to appropriately govern them. Because there aren’t any, people have decided that the system is all about political parties, and when the difference gets confusing, people start loudly shouting about what is democratic or undemocratic. Simply put, our system is democratic, but the actual legal workings of our democracy have nothing to do with political parties. It’s like arguing about the spirit of a law–it doesn’t matter what people meant when they wrote it, what matters is what the law says. Do you want to change it? The rest of Canada sure might. The law (or convention, I guess) says that the 308 representatives of the people get to decide whether or not they like government. If you can’t convince them, then I guess you lose.

these photos aren’t mine they’re from the people I said they’re from please don’t sue me. but this post is creative commons so you can pick it up if you want

April 21, 2011
by Andrew Bates
0 comments

How This Magazine's non-profit model works

I’ve been doing some research into alternative media models, like non-profit ones, for a research paper. I fired off This Magazine, a Canadian current-affairs mag dating back to 1966, an e-mail to find out how their model works. Graham Scott replied, and this is what he said:

This Magazine’s revenue model is comprised of:

  • Circulation revenue (subscriptions, newsstand sales)
  • Grants (Department of Canadian Heritage, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Ontario Media Development Corporation, etc.)
  • Charitable Donations (mostly individual donors who support the foundation)
  • Advertising (mostly small-press publishers and labour unions who support the magazine’s mission)

The important point is that we’re organized as a non-profit charity, so profitability is not our ultimate object—meeting our mandate is:

  1. To publish long-form investigative and public-interest journalism on Canadian current affairs;
  2. To showcase emergent Canadian arts and culture, including publishing short fiction and poetry;
  3. To incubate Canadian journalism talent by supporting young or emerging creators.

The non-profit model is not without its own set of difficulties, but for the kind of journalism we do — which has never been especially commercially viable — it has worked fairly well for quite a long time.

Interesting. And informative, since I didn’t really know what This was about before–it has one of those kind of inscrutable titles. (It’s also now citable, which I swear has nothing to do with this post.)