Party platforms all about you and the kids

As we eagerly await election day, let’s take a moment to talk policy.  

Don’t stop reading, I’ll try to make this interesting. 

Unfortunately, political parties struggle with the same problem – trying to grab your attention when it comes to what they'll actually do when they’re in government. 

You may not recall, but Justin Trudeau had a multitude of policies in his 2015 campaign platform. Most people weren’t aware of even half of them. I still remember a co-worker asking in disbelief if Trudeau, after being elected, supported marijuana legalization. 

Trudeau also promised that 2015 would be the last election using the current voting system. Yes, things may change once in government.  

But even with that broken promise, Trudeau was still riding high in the polls until the SNC-Lavalin Affair. A political party is not expected to fulfill every campaign commitment. 

Some are just too impractical. A third-place party (like the Liberals were) that suddenly ends up winning the election may find that its policies were too ambitious. If the Green Party were to form government, you can bet they’d tone down their climate change plan as soon as the economy started taking a hit. Or as soon as crowds started marching to protest high gas prices. You have only to look to France to see how fast President Emmanuel Macron caved. 

That being said, if a party breaks a straight-forward promise once elected, there can be consequences. Former premier of B.C. Gordon Campbell can attest to this after introducing the HST shortly after his election win – he was quickly shown the door for breaking his promise on taxation. And if Stephen Harper hadn’t cut the GST after winning a minority government in 2006, it’s doubtful he would have stuck around for 10 years. 

Simple commitments that require very little action on the part of a new government are non-negotiable. The public remembers them. Other commitments, like reducing healthcare wait times, another Stephen Harper promise of 2006, are far more ambiguous and challenging. The public will understand if these commitments aren’t fulfilled, so long as it looks like their leaders are trying. 

President Trump promised a big, beautiful border wall and has little to show for it, but his supporters are still behind him. In fact, it was such a stupid promise to begin with that his supporters understand if he’ll never achieve his goal. 

Our Canadian leaders have made a multitude of promises this campaign. But what do you remember? 

Off the top of my head, I recall an income tax cut promised by both the Liberals and the Conservatives. The NDP has promised more childcare spaces and expanded pharmacare. The Greens have committed to climate change (okay, I don’t really remember the details other than no pipeline) and the People’s Party has committed to reducing immigration (again, sketchy on the details - in this case, for good reason). 

There were also some gimmicky promises, like the Conservatives’ promise to re-implement the fitness and arts tax credits for children. And how can anyone forget the Liberals' promise to subsidize camping trips for low-income kids? As for the NDP, their slogan is gimmicky enough: “In it for you!” 

Lost in these gimmicks is the real direction the governing party is going to move us in. But do we really have to delve too far into a party’s platform to know? The Liberals have given us four years of what they govern like (generous social programming and deficits); the Conservatives have given us ten years prior to that (tax cutting and deficits); and the NDP has been around long enough provincially to show what they would do (even more generous social programming and yes, most likely deficits). The Green Party has little experience in government, but we can imagine (think NDP on steroids). And don’t even imagine where the People’s Party would take us (Trump on steroids?)  

So there you go. Our limited understanding of a party’s policies, as it turns out, is typically enough.  

You’re ready to vote.

Have your bacon, and eat it too

When my doctor told me after my physical that I could eat bacon every day if I wanted, I was a little surprised. 

Surely, not bacon. In grade 12, I wrote an essay on the effects of bacon on the human body. My conclusion: Bacon makes you obese. It clogs the arteries. It’s a heart-stopper.  

But is it true? 

As it turns out, I was likely basing my findings on misleading research that first, fat causes you to be fat, and second, that red meat significantly increases your risk of heart disease. 

Not so, says the latest research. Researchers at Dalhousie and McMaster universities led a panel of international scientists who concluded that lowering red or processed meat consumption had little and often-trivial effects in reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, heart attack, cancer, diabetes, or death from any cause. Any cause! 

I have to admit, I like this research. Because as much as I tell myself I feel better when I eat more chickpeas and kidney beans instead of steak, it’s a sham. I can’t convince my body of that. 

Some types of food definitely make me feel better than others. After eating out for three days in a row, I start to feel lethargic. But when eating home-cooked meals, whether they include bacon-wrapped sausage or cheese-chili hot dogs, I feel just fine. 

There has to be a balance. And one of the best rules is to not over-eat. My co-worker, who has tried numerous diets, says this is the key (other than exercise) to keeping off the pounds: Eat until you’re 80% full, and then quit. 

I sometimes do this, but it’s only so I can eat more later in the evening. Maintaining room for ice cream is important, too.  

But maybe ice cream isn’t so bad for you either. My doctor said I have “normal high” cholesterol. In the past, he said they’d give me medication for this, but not anymore. Perhaps new research has come out? I don’t know, but do I really want to investigate? 

I believe in science and I think all research has value – but science is constantly evolving and it does succumb to bias. Researchers build on other research, sometimes without thinking. This is why existing claims must continually be challenged and re-examined. 

Correlation does not equal causation. Just because someone who eats red meat dies at 35 from a heart attack, doesn’t mean it’s because he ate red meat. This is, in essence, what some of the new research revealed. 

And they found that the increased risk on a population, if there was any, was still very small. In one study, reducing red meat intake by three servings a week offered seven fewer cancer deaths per 1,000 people. That sounds good, but this is still less than 1% of the population.  In other words, you still have pretty good odds.

If you’re that concerned about living longer, you might want to take public transportation instead of driving a car every day. Based on U.S. data, it’s twenty times safer to take the train or bus. This is statistically significant. You might also want to think twice about walking. Walking in Vancouver instead of driving increases your risk of death by 50%. As an avid walker, I’m convinced that walking is one of the riskiest behaviours you can engage in! 

We’re constantly weighing the costs of partaking in activities against the benefits, whether we realize it or not. We can now re-weigh the costs of reducing red meat consumption – the lost pleasure, the lost protein, the lost friends – against the apparently small health benefits. 

There’s only one question that remains. What about ice cream? Where, might I ask, are all the studies on the benefits of ice cream?

Climate change is real, but...

As humans, we don’t like to be preached at nor told what to do. 

But when it's a small 16-year-old girl lecturing us, we’re more prone to listen. Greta Thunberg, a climate change activist from Sweden, has shown that age is no barrier to changing the world. She will have an impact. If not on our generation, then the next. 

I say the next generation because it’s going to take time. It's quite obvious that we’re not ready for the kind of change she demands. We're not ready to take a solar-powered boat across the Atlantic, as she did. We’re not ready to pay twice as much for gasoline. We’re not even ready to pay more than nine dollars a month to save the planet (based on polling of Canadians). 

We need more time to change our economies than the Earth has to recover from current world emissions. We're on a course to change the Earth’s climate, even if we halt all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. 

I’ve said before that a carbon tax is little more than window dressing when the largest world emitters fail to take action. Countries like India and China are in the midst of an economic renaissance, the same growth the West has experienced since the industrial revolution. This economic growth has come at the expense of the environment – habitat destruction, air and water pollution and climate change. 

 We have slowly been making the Earth less livable for other species, while at the same time making it more livable for humans. There’s a reason those in less developed countries have climate change far down on their list of priorities. Things like food, healthcare and education take higher priority when one is battling for survival. Millions have been lifted out of poverty thanks to fossil fuels and economic growth.

Fossil fuels will one day be replaced by other sources, but it comes at a cost. I’m sure solar panels will one day power the factories that are pulling Vietnamese labourers out of poverty, but this will take time.

In the meantime, how do we handle the fact that we likely won’t reach our climate change goals? There's a growing helplessness among many young people. Young adults are choosing to have no kids because of their worries about the future. Thunberg herself was prone to depression, overcome by the dire warnings she heard about the climate future. She has dealt with this depression through her calling.

She's fortunate. Many young people won’t have such opportunities.

My own daughter used to make posters about saving the Earth, with no prodding by her father who has succumbed to mid-life cynicism. She hasn’t made those posters lately, however, and doesn’t seem too worried about the future in general.

But should she be? I want her to be aware of the world around her, but I also want her to see things in perspective. We try to discuss how there are people suffering in the world today (especially when she doesn't appreciate her food), but I hesitate to harp on the melting of the ice caps. 

It can lead to overwhelming negativity. Like when a co-worker replied to my comment on how warm it was in spring with: “Yeah, but too bad about the polar bears.” 

It’s good to be aware of the issues, but negativity tends to do less for world problems than we think. Activists like Hans Rosling, who wrote Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, argues that we often get lost in our own bias and emotions when confronting world problems. It doesn't help when we don't understand the facts, or when we don't face problems with optimism.

Climate change is serious, but not insurmountable. Other problems also exist – malnutrition, disease and oppression – that are equally pressing.

Let's not be ignorant, but let’s not despair.

Signs of an election campaign

Lawn signs. They’re the foundation of election campaigns. 

Even if you don’t watch TV or imbibe the Internet, you can’t escape those obtrusive lawn signs. 

Last election we had an extra-large one next door – so big that it required fence posts to hold it up. Every day I was exposed to the mega-sized name of a candidate I didn’t plan to vote for. Although it didn’t change my vote, by election day I'm sure he was my second choice. 

Lawn signs are intended to sway the least interested voter. They’re for the person who comes to the voting booth thinking, “Now whose name looks the most familiar?” 

While lawn signs are the foundation, slogans are the windows into a campaign. Summing up a party’s platform in a few words is an art, revealing a party’s reason for existence. 

“Yes We Can” became a rallying cry for Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign. “Make American Great Again” was Mr. Trump's unoriginal but powerful retake of past Republican slogans.  

Our Canadian party slogans aren’t quite as grand, but they still hold meaning. They’re also eerily similar to one another. “Choose Forward,” the Liberal slogan, sounds a lot like the Green’s: “Not left. Not right. Forward together.” The Conservatives are also forward-looking: “It’s Time for You to Get Ahead” (emphasis on you) while the NDP keep it simple: “In it For You” (again, emphasis on you).  

I would assume the Conservative you is a little more upper-middle class than the NDP you, but in any case, I’m glad they’ve both made this election about me. The Liberals and Greens are both moving forward, which is also positive. I would hate for a government to move backwards, although it’s entirely possible. 

 Which brings us to Mr. Bernier’s People’s Party... His slogan at least tries something different: “Strong and Free.” If I were completely ignorant of his party’s xenophobic tendencies, I might even like it. 

All these slogans have found their way into ads and pamphlets distributed by each party. When that happens, we start to associate a message with a face – the campaign’s curb appeal, if you will. 

As crass as it sounds, there’s a lot riding on a candidate’s face. It has to be attractive and trustworthy. Don’t grow facial hair (see hard lesson learned by Thomas Mulcair) and don’t wear a hat, as both make it look like you’re trying to hide something. Through no fault of his own, Mr. Singh faces a double-whammy. We have only to look at Quebec’s draconian Bill 21 to see how suspicious the public can be of head coverings. 

Problems with appearance are not insurmountable, but an attractive candidate is still every political party's dream. There's a reason Mr. Trudeau became the golden boy of liberal democracy (pre-SNC-Lavalin affair/pre-blackface saga), his brown flocks of hair adorning every popular magazine in America. And Mr. Scheer’s dimples helped vault him to the top, giving him the boyhood innocence needed to tone down the Harper Conservative brand. 

The leader’s face, in our superficial, digital world, reflects the pride in our country. One can’t over-state its importance in a campaign. Along with the party slogan. And the lawn signs.  

Oh, and the policies... 

But we’ll leave those for another time.