So much for full public disclosure!

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Tue, 02/12/2019 - 08:55

Full public disclosure is a principle that politicians embrace as though it were Holy Writ when they are on the outside looking in. But when they are inside, sitting around the cabinet table and deciding how much information to share with the public, it is a different story. As little as possible becomes the mantra.

Canadians have seen this evolution occur in the last two political regimes. Justin Trudeau was an ardent advocate for open government when campaigning in 2015 to unseat the Conservatives, who had run a famously secretive regime under Stephen Harper.

Failure to control political corruption undermines democracy

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Tue, 02/05/2019 - 09:17

Once a year, Transparency International, a Berlin-based NGO, publishes a massive survey on corruption among the nations of the world.

The Corruption Perceptions Index, as it is called, gives national leaders, international businessmen, academics and journalists a tool with which to compare the honesty and integrity of the public sectors in no fewer than 180 countries world-wide.

Why did the unicorn lose his job?

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Mon, 01/28/2019 - 13:55

In Canada, prime ministers do not publicly fire ambassadors.

From time to time, they are removed from their posts for reasons of job performance or policy differences, but the axe is wielded by the foreign affairs minister or, more likely, by the deputy minister or a subordinate.

And the cause, if any is given, will be obscured in a fog of bureaucratic opaqueness.

Until John McCallum, that is.

Trying to find sanity in the wacky world of today’s politics

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Mon, 01/21/2019 - 09:09

Do you get the sense that political world has gone off its rails?

In Washington, the president has shut down a good part of the federal government for a month because he is in a snit over the refusal of Congress to give him $5.7 billion for a 30-foot wall to protect the United States from its southern neighbour, friend, ally and trading partner, Mexico. It’s a wall that everyone, except Trump and his core supporters, agrees will do nothing to achieve its stated purpose of keeping illegal drugs out of the U.S.

It’s time to Make Ontario Great Again

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Mon, 01/14/2019 - 08:33

Hon. Doug Ford,
Queen’s Park,
Toronto, Ontario

My dear Premier Ford:

It’s me again, Sir, your faithful fan out here in the foothills of Ford Nation.

I’ve already written to you a couple of times, first to commend your efforts to return Ontario to the glories of the 1950s, and subsequently to endorse your invocation of the notwithstanding clause to subdue that twit, John Tory, the mayor of Toronto.

The Ambiguous Definitions of Open Government

Submitted by Simon Kiss on Tue, 01/08/2019 - 11:00

My colleague George Wootten and I have a new paper in the Canadian Journal of Political Science out in which we survey journalists, parliamentarians and bloggers in Canada in 2014 and asked them to rank different definitions of “open government”.

We hypothesized that people would choose different definitions of open government that fit their institutional position.

Why not ring in the New Year with a Senate seat?

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Mon, 01/07/2019 - 07:58

A new year is the time for new beginnings, isn’t it? A time to accept new challenges and seize new opportunities.

So, if anyone is interested in a really new beginning in 2019, here is a suggestion.

Why don’t you apply for a seat in the Senate of Canada?

Yes, you can! It is no longer your grandfather’s Senate: a refuge for defeated candidates and clapped-out cabinet ministers and a reward for generous donors to the party in power. But it’s still a good gig, with an annual salary of $150,600 plus expenses and a pension on mandatory retirement at 75.

2018 was a miserable year. Will 2019 be any better?

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Wed, 01/02/2019 - 08:40

The headline in Saturday’s Toronto Star made no bones about the newspaper’s verdict on the year that ends today:

“That’s enough, 2018. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

The Star was reflecting on the miseries experienced in 2018 in the Greater Toronto Area, but a similar verdict could be rendered just about anywhere. It was a year to be forgotten, a year when we were pounded day after day by bad, often alarming, news.

Chaos consumes Washington this Christmas

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Wed, 01/02/2019 - 08:39

Christmas, as many of us were assured as children, is a special season, a time of kindness and generosity, of peace on earth and goodwill to all people everywhere.

That is one of the lessons we absorbed at our mother’s knee. Within a few years, we learned another lesson from teachers who taught us that the American system of government was a model democracy with its checks and balances among its executive, legislative and judicial branches. It is more perfect, we were instructed, than a monarchy or any other system of governance.

Here is why politicians are held in low esteem

Submitted by Geoffrey Stevens on Mon, 12/10/2018 - 09:18

“Please don’t tell my mother I’m in politics. She thinks I’m still playing piano in a bordello.” – late Nova Scotia Senator Finlay MacDonald

Politicians, as a whole, do not rank high in the public’s esteem. Most polls bury them toward the bottom, perhaps a rung or two above bill collectors and telemarketers.

The chief rap against politicians is that they say one thing and do another, that they make promises and do not keep them.

Opinion-Policy Nexus is a forum of opinion and commentary on topics related to public opinion and public policy. Views expressed in any blog entry are those of the author and do not reflect LISPOP's positions.

Authors

  • Ailsa Henderson
  • Andre Perrella
  • Anna Esselment
  • Anthony Piscitelli
  • Barry Kay
  • Ben Margulies
  • Christopher Alcantara
  • Christopher Cochrane
  • Geoffrey Stevens
  • Jason Roy
  • Jorg Broschek
  • Loren King
  • Manuel Riemer
  • Nikolaos Liodakis
  • Robert Williams
  • Simon Kiss
  • Timothy Gravelle
  • Zachary Spicer

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