A Shift In Power

Warren Kinsella: Ipso facto, voters have misgivings about all of the parties.  So, none of the parties is definitively ahead.

The rest of Kinsella's analysis talks about how the Convervatives will become competitive again, with the focus being on someone eventually becoming the people's choice.  That's how the system works, isn't it?  You gotta have a government, it's gonna be a party, so it's just a matter of choice.

Martin Regg Cohn: Canadians everywhere — everyone, it seems, except the federal government — are moving into that political vacuum. A lack of leadership and an absence of empathy have left the field wide open for others to respond decisively at every level of government, and especially at ground level.

This in response to an emerging reality:

An urgent humanitarian response is only human, but it is not enough. We must also reduce the causes of mass migrations (conflict and chaos), and avoid making those migrations even more dangerous (by tempting people to start a stampede) because people will die in the crush, drown on the high seas, suffocate in sealed trucks.

See, we can't keep playing the starfish-throwing game and patting ourselves on the back righteously - it isn't enough.  

The world is changing - literally - and it's impacting us all in more pervasive ways than at least we in the West are used to.

Which means that the way governance works needs to change and adapt.  As happens always, it's an organic process - as existing systems fall behind need, others step up to fill their place.

We live in interesting times...

Election 2015: Godzilla vs. The Zombie Apocalypse (UPDATED-IER)

He also wants Ottawa to fund infrastructure aimed at countering the effects of climate change.  It's not clear what he means by the latter.

It should be.  This could be a subtle stroke of genius by Team Trudeau - one all the lobbyists out there should be paying attention to.

Watershed management and floods.  Ice storm-ready buildings and the tools necessary for rapid response.  Emergency Preparedness plans that extend beyond the 72 hour cycle to what we've been witnessing, which is week-long or longer crisis impacts.

Oh - and individual training, community preparedness and better resource-allocation mechanisms between jurisdictions.  Not to mention the social-emotional learning, self-regulation and other things that go along with it.  Throw in some Open Government/citizen engagement for good measure.

Stephen Harper has done a great job over the years of positioning the greatest threats Canada faces as human (or not-quite-human) - terrorists lapping at our shores, separatists trying to tear us apart, special interest groups undermining everything that real Canadians hold dear.

It's man vs. man.

It has been in Harper's interest to get us angry, paranoid and functionally fixed on getting what we want right now, to hell with everyone else.

It's also how he's governed; fear the Zombie Apocalypse and build up the fire walls.

If Trudeau's team are being as clever as we should hope they are, they've landed on the perfect narrative to counter the Harpernian Progressive Apocalypse:

The Sustained Severe Weather Event.

It doesn't matter what kind of coffee you drink, whether you're a social elitist, a Bay Street power broker, a rural farmer or a middle-income worker anywhere.  When nature strikes, all of that gets stripped away.  If anything, in crises like these heroism tends to come from the ground up, not the top down.

Why?  Because it's in times of shared crisis that real leaders emerge, the kind that rally people to common purpose.  This doesn't tend to be a profitable enterprise, as leaders suck at putting themselves first.  It takes periods of darkness for their lights to shine fully.

In a people vs. nature conflict, it's in everyone's interest to work together.  We're still afraid - fear is a powerful motivator and politics is all about motivation - but what we fear isn't someone out there right now who wants to hurt us.

It's something that could happen to all of us that, collaboratively, we can prepare for.  It feels good to get ready.

Just(in) for fun, there are a growing number of man-vs.-nature movies coming out over the next year or so that will reinforce this concern into our social conscience.

Weather the storm together, or trust one leader to keep the zombies at bay.

The functionally fixed oak of a leader that is Harper, or the dynamic, empathetic force of nature that is Trudeau.  This can be portrayed as the immovable object vs. the unstoppable force.

It can also be framed as reaction vs. preparedness.

Now that would make for an interesting ballot question.

UPDATE:  Hard hit municipalities across southern Ontario had said the recovery efforts could cost more than $250 million, including $106 million just for Toronto.

I swear to god, I don't plan these sorts of narrative-builds out in advance.

Ontario is tapped out - you can reactively blame whoever you want, but the fact remains the province does not have enough cash to support municipalities in their ice-storm damage repairs.  And that doesn't even touch what damage might occur if we have a particularly torrential spring.  

Think flooded streets, flooded basements, mold, damaged cars and roadways - the potential costs are a nightmare.  When the storm hits, people (whether voters or not) aren't going to be focused on who to blame, but who can help.  

You know who does have some coin to spare, though?  Ottawa.  The federal government, if it was feeling civic-minded, could assist the provinces and municipalities directly in a coordinated effort to mitigate existing storm-damage costs and better prepare to avoid or minimize future damage.

To change course like that, though, you need to be more like a reed than an oak.

Winter's coming to an end, it's time to get ready for Spring...

UPDATED 27/2/14 - He noted, however, that more extreme weather - like Toronto's December ice storm - may be more likely in the future due to a warming planet.

Indeed...

UPDATED 8/21/14

"And frankly, this terrorist caliphate in our judgment represents an increasing long-term threat to the security of our own country.  It is that serious."

Terrorist caliphate, like a mindless hoard.  Increasing threat, security of our country. 

Not to minimize the horrific beheading of James Foley or to absolve the murderers of the heinousness of their act, but what exactly is the risk they pose to our own country?  Are we worried they're going to bomb us?  Are they coming here next to behead Canadians on our own soil?

The answer is no.  They are a threat to Canadians overseas; they present a threat in terms of recruitment, probably, but that's got as much to do with internal conditions that make terrorism seem like an appealing choice to some.

Maybe Harper believes in what he says; maybe he's being a political opportunist.  Both have happened over his tenure, though I'd say we've seen more of the latter than the former.

Either way, you can see why "only we can keep the zombies beyond the wall" is a compelling narrative for Team Harper.

Winter is coming, however, and they may find that trying to keep threats at bay simply isn't enough.

Time will tell...

 

It's Getting Hot In Here: Stephen Harper's Hidden Agenda

The real reason Team Harper, who have made it clear their objective is to nurture a Canada that thinks like they do, both deny climate change and are working so darn hard to nurture it:

A hotter Canada will result in angrier, reactive Canadians! 

It's brilliant, really, in the most self-defeating way possible...

 

Hotter World Means Hotter Tempers, More Violence

By Maia Szalavitz @maiasz

 

Climate change may be one of the factors contributing to violence within and among societies, according to the latest study.

 

Whether it’s a drought in India, a heat wave in the U.S. or an extreme change in rainfall in Africa, Asia or South America, the outcomes tend to be the same: more wars, more murder, more riots and more domestic violence.

 

The intimate connection between climate and human interaction has long been documented, and could have contributed to the downfall of Chinese and Mayan empires, say the study’s authors. Reporting in the journal Science,  lead author Solomon Hsiang, assistant professor of public policy at the University of California in Berkeley. and his colleagues analyzed 60 studies of climate change and human conflict at several levels, from domestic violence to the collapse of entire civilizations. “All around the world across different societies in the modern world as well as throughout history, we find that human conflict seems to be linked to changes in climate,” says Hsiang.

 

Rising temperatures have the greatest effect on human conflict; the equivalent of a five degree Fahrenheit increase in an average U.S. county over a month, for example, could raise the odds of personal violence such as assault, murder and domestic violence by 4%, and the risk of civil war, riots or ethnic violence by 14%.

 

Rainfall and drought can also contribute to conflict; the researchers found spikes in domestic violence in India, as well as higher murder rates in the U.S. and in Tanzania and civil wars in tropical regions tied to relatively small changes in rain or temperature.

 

MORE: Google Searches Reveal Seasonal Trends in Mental Illnesses

 

The findings reinforce previous studies that linked climate change to human affairs, and raise concerns about the potential impact that changing environmental conditions will have on the stability of societies in coming decades. Most climate change estimates predict a rise of two to four standard deviations in temperature, rainfall or drought by 2050, which suggests a 30% greater risk of intergroup conflicts, says Hsiang.

 

“It’s a very, very impressive review of the literature,” says Dr. Mark Shapiro, chief of acute care surgery at Duke University Medical Center, who has published research on the link between heat and assaults, but was not associated with the latest study.

 

Heat could provide fertile ground for interpersonal violence by bringing people into closer contact indoors to seek relief. Assault, rape— even the number of baseball pitchers who retaliate against batters by hitting them with pitches — all rise with temperature, studies show. Even noise can become a more anger-inducing irritant, according to Dutch researchers.

 

On a population level, climate change may have more indirect effects on social stability; as crops fail due to drought or flood, for instance, migration may provoke conflicts as communities compete for more limited resources.

 

However, Shapiro says it’s not clear that rising global temperatures will necessary lead to ever-escalating conflict. His own work found a direct, linear relationship between assault and temperature, but other studies suggested there may be a threshold at which violence starts to decline.

 

Still, says Hsiang, his data show that man is historically ill-equipped to cope with changing climate, and may continue to fall prey to the influence that higher temperatures and more rainfall can have on the stability of both personal and society relationships. “We need to understand why climate changes cause conflict so we can help societies to adapt to these events and avoid the violence,” he said in a statement.