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Update: Since I wrote this, Duffy announced his resignation from the Conservative caucus. Although the Prime Minister’s Office presumably hopes this will quell the controversy, and is probably right given the generally pliant state of the conservative-leaning media, in actual fact the Duffy resignation merely illustrates the self-serving character of the government. The most important information to come to light this week was that Duffy’s announcement  few weeks back that he was voluntarily repaying $90,000 which he bilked from taxpayers was actually a carefully stage-managed part of a conspiracy in which Duffy received money to make the payback from Harper’s chief of staff, even as Harper’s office praised Duffy for coming forward with his own money. So it’s, at the very least, unclear why Duffy should be required to take the fall for this operation, while Harper expresses “full confidence” in his chief of staff. It’s unclear how, in Conservative minds, only one side of that transaction could be morally in the wrong.

In case you’ve been sleeping under a rock for the last few months, the National Post’s Matt Gurney has a useful summary of Mike Duffy’s corrupt antics in the Senate, up to and including the decision by the Prime Minister’s Office to bail out Duffy with $90,000 in cash from Harper’s chief of staff, Nigel Wright, which Duffy then used to pay back his $90,000 in ill-gotten gains bilked from the taxpayer via fraudulent expense claims. At the time, the PMO praised Duffy for “voluntarily” paying back the money. It now turns out there was nothing less than a conspiracy to rescue Duffy from having to make good on the expense accounts, and then to cover up the truth.

It’s illegal for Duffy to accept these sorts of payments in connection with his job as a Senator, so Gurney’s colleague, Andrew Coyne, is probably a little off base when he suggests that the matter wouldn’t have been nearly so awful if Duffy had disclosed the payment when it was made. In any event, I do thoroughly endorse the calls from both Coyne and Gurney (and many, many others) for Duffy to resign.

But there’s a broader observation to be made here, and I’m going to draw on another recent and scandalous episode in order to make it: where the hell has Stephen Harper’s admittedly self-interested sense of ethics gone?

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I’m not terribly interested in speculating, at least for the moment, about why the pollsters would be devastatingly incorrect — again — about a provincial election campaign. My guess is that in this case it has something to do with young people not voting, but again, the answer will become clear over the next couple of weeks. Mainly because that’s what the media will be focusing on.

Instead I have something else to get off my chest. I’m disappointed every time a far-right anti-government political party led by ignorant, unimaginative, corrupt, pro-global warming oligocrats wins an election. But to be honest, I’m not entirely surprised, and I’m actually surprised I’m not more disappointed. Being a leftist of my generation — I’m almost 30 now, so I can no longer truly claim to speak for the youth, but I am part of a generation that elects not to vote in unprecedented numbers — is a lonely lot. It’s also a thoroughly depressing lot, to the point that you sort of get inured to this kind of thing.

In my lifetime, I have not witnessed the creation of a single truly significant social program of any kind. I almost share a birthday with the Constitution, which I revere, but it’s pretty much downhill from there: the erosion and now open elimination of universal healthcare; the rise of free trade and the consequent devaluation of Canadian citizenship; the selling off of most of the profitable elements of the public sector at both the federal and provincial levels; the beginning of the end of Employment Insurance, public pensions and Old Age Security; the rise of a political culture of naked deceit and overt criminality of a sort not normally tolerated in democratic countries with the rule of law and not seen in Canada for a century; the slashing and burning of public education…

And, last but quite the opposite of least, the great turning away from scientifically informed climate policy. That one may sound a bit unfair, since my lifetime also saw the rise of scientifically informed climate policy. However, since the year I was old enough to vote, there has been nothing but setbacks on the question of whether dangerous climate change will be mitigated, let alone prevented. Emission regulation ideas surfaced, and were defeated by the right on the grounds they were inefficient. The carbon tax arose, and was defeated by the right on the grounds that it was a punitive move. Cap and trade arose, and was defeated by the right on the grounds that it was unnecessary government intervention in the economy.

Speaking of the economy, it’s worth noting that so called “centre-right” political parties have correctly judged that the vast majority of Canadians are simply not interested in voting for anything other than a promise of budget cuts, tax cuts, and job growth, basically at the cost of anything else, whether it’s social services or accountability or even a minimal level of integrity and honesty in politics or the environment or our international reputation or anything else. This is precisely the result which my series on evolution and the future of humanity was building towards, so I’ll probably feel a little vindicated on that front if nothing else. These people will be basically evenly split between those who don’t bother voting at all and those who vote for whatever party they have a vague hunch will move in those directions.

Which is why, if there was an actual far-right-wing party, one defined by an actual commitment to the free market or an actual commitment to social conservatism or anything like that, it would actually garner very few votes. Because nobody would vote on principle for that either. I believe that most people assume that the social services they personally require will always be there for them, just as they assume that the environment they need to survive will always be there for them. And they vote, or don’t vote, accordingly.

As promised, I am steadfastly avoiding discussing the Globe & Mail, and its latest partisan salvo — a preposterous endorsement of the BC Social Credit-turned-Liberal Party that reads like it could have been written by said party’s PR hacks — doesn’t help matters. (The Globe describes the NDP leader as a “business-minded socialist,” which is sort of like calling someone a “nonpartisan Globe & Mail editor” — it’s an oxymoron. I do, however, continue to read the comment pages, because it’s unfair to punish them for the sins of the editors, and mostly because I just can’t help myself.

Which is why I feel compelled to respond, despite my sort-of boycott, to a recent op-ed by McGill economist Chris Ragan on the subject of climate change. Ragan and I appear to have very different political opinions, but he’s a serious, intelligent and responsible writer, at least so far as I know. Which, again, is why I felt compelled to write.

Ragan’s concern is that conservatives are not participating in the climate change debate. (On this part we agree: by and large they aren’t, even though they should be.) He goes on to argue the following: first, we need to have a “real conservative” alternative to the “left of centre” big-government types who currently dominate the climate change scene. Second, the conservative option would involve a mix of market-based pricing and taxing solutions as opposed to regulation. Third, we need a nonpartisan think tank-style commission to steer the debate away from hyper-partisanship. Fourth, ideally, that commission should be led by economists.

Now, it should be immediately apparent here that the real problems are (1) lack of education and (2) hyperpartisanship on the part of people who call themselves “real conservatives.” I’m not the slightest bit interested in judging whether Ragan’s “real conservatives” or the pro-global warming crowd that also call themselves “real conservatives” have a better claim to the label, but it’s worth noting that reality-based thinking is not really a defining feature for the conservative crowd by and large, so it’s maybe kind of a moot point anyways.

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This post is part 2 of a series on science, politics, and the future. You can also check out Part 1: “Science Denialism and the Future of Humanity.”

More or less on a weekly basis, every serious news outlet delivers a new report about antibiotic resistance. This week’s pertains to a hospital in Windsor. Within my lifetime, there is a fairly decent chance of reaching a point at which universal resistance is so common that antibiotics are basically passé, and at that point, large portions of the Western healthcare system will basically need to be shut down.

I mention this not just because it’s an issue of direct concern in and of itself, but because it’s an important analogy to climate change. The threat posed by climate change is, in the long run, bigger. But the end of antibiotics — if it comes — will come first. The science is (even) more settled. The effects are (even) easier to predict. The solutions will not require wholesale retooling of our economies. Yet so far, Western governments and drug companies have watched the end coming with studied unconcern. Why?

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One of the most irritating features of government-by-press-release is the “re-announcement” — the enthusiastic proclamation, with full fanfare, of something that has already been proclaimed before, often many times. Today the Conservative government engaged in this practice, or, just as conveniently, had the media do it for them by playing up a funding announcement for a biofuel experiment by Pond Biofuels as though it were evidence of the “new” commercially oriented National Research Council:

Hard on the heels of announcing a new commercial focus for the National Research Council, the federal government today provided an example of what this new mission could mean for Canada’s premier science agency.

Yeah, well, that’s nice. One of the problems with this notion is that the NRC was already working on the algae file. In fact, unless I’m reading the entrails wrong, they were already funding Pond Biofuels to do exactly these sorts of projects. So while it’s nice to see that Pond Biofuels has made it another step toward full commercialization by building a subsidized bioreactor for a tarsands company in Alberta, this really isn’t the “new” NRC. This is the “old” NRC. Whether there will be a “new” NRC, and what form it will take, remains to be seen.

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The latest census is out and for one reason or another, one of the several numbers upon which media attention has been fixated are the religion figures. This sort of ties into my new series on science, evolution, and the future of humanity, but actually it’s a separate question which I probably would have written about anyways. So I hope you’ll forgive the digression.

Anyhow, the headline figure is that the number of Canadians who stated on the census that they were non-religious has increased from a small portion (16%) to a slightly less small portion (24%). What one is to make of this, it’s hard to say. The Globe & Mail has printed two articles on the subject, one titled “Canadians Losing Their Religion” and the other “Religion in Canada is Changing, But It’s Not Being Abandoned.” There’s also been the perennial gag about Jedi Knights, a subject which holds absolutely no interest to me except to say that it’s nice to see how many people approach the census with as much cavalier disdain as the Conservative government does.

But the thing that intrigues me about the religion figure isn’t that it’s shrunk. It’s that the figure is so high. About 75% of Canadians espoused a religion on the 2011 census. Almost all of them stated that they were Christian. It’s certainly true that those describing themselves as having “no religion” is increasing, but the vast majority of Canadians continue to say they are religious, Christian in point of fact. Next time you’re out in public (or at work), pick 13 people out of the crowd. Over the past 10 years, on average, 1 of those people abandoned their religion. All of this is simply to say that when the media prints statements like “we’re losing our religion,” they’re making statements that are really only valid for a very small minority of Canadians.

It does raise an obvious question, though: where exactly is all this religion?

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Recently, answering questions about the future of scientific research in Canada and the ongoing transformation of the National Research Council from a basic science research organization into a facilitator of “commercially relevant” private-sector research, Science Minister Gary Goodyear said the following:

On publishing, scientists—and frankly, professors at university—will tell you they are rewarded for publishing. In my view, publishing, while it’s a great place to be, is like second base. It’s not the home run. When the knowledge that is developed by the scientist, especially if it’s funded by federal dollars in any way, is transferred out of the laboratory into something—a process, an application, a product, a different way of treating patients, etc.—that knowledge transfer completes the cycle.

In doing that, you have the medical isotopes that are necessary for the next-generation diseases, you have customized health care that can diagnose situations much faster, more accurately, and then, of course, treatment protocols that are more effective and less expensive.

The NRC has become the focus of Goodyear’s campaign because it’s the science organization most susceptible to political pressure. NSERC will doubtless be next, to the extent that it hasn’t already been compromised. It’s been suggested in the press that the Conservative government has been inspired to model the NRC after the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, which also focus on applied rather than theoretical science. While this is true, the reason German applied science funding goes to the Fraunhofer Institute is because German pure science funding goes to the Max Planck Institutes. With the NRC going the applied route, Canada simply doesn’t have an equivalent to the Max Planck Institutes.

So far criticism has been restricted to the overtly anti-science agenda of the Harper government, and there is plenty to say on that subject. Even Goodyear’s examples of the promises of applied science are obviously ill-chosen. In Canada, medical isotopes were not produced by a drive to generate commercially relevant research. They were a useful sideline which came up while AECL was brainstorming about things it could do with its already-constructed research reactor. The NRU reactor at Chalk River is one of the leading radioisotope production facilities in the world — and there are only a handful of those anyways — but it won’t remain so for long. It’s decades old, and its sister facilities in other countries are being replaced. NRU isn’t.

But beyond that, there is a broader point to be made here. The distinction between pure and applied science is important — since, typically, industry will fund the latter but not the former, which is why traditionally governments invest in pure science and industry invests in applied science, except, of course, in Harper’s Canada.

There are other important distinctions too, though, mainly between those who see a future for science and those who don’t. The willingness of Canadians to tolerate a government led by anti-science religious zealots is now having its natural and probable consequence: the religious right sees no use in pure science, and therefore, given the choice, the religious right will not fund pure science. This is a fairly simple and logical equation, and one doesn’t need to hunt out conspiracies between government and big business to understand why a creationist like Goodyear sees more value in “customized health care” than he does in, say, probing the frontiers of theoretical physics. All the important questions that theoretical physics could try to research have already been answered, for thousands of years, by a divine author in a much better position to know the answers than mere physicists.

This is aided by the fact that (I suspect, anyways) the majority of non-evangelical Canadians, and certainly the majority of non-evangelical Conservative supporters, simply don’t care about scientific research one way or the other. It’s not that they think, as Goodyear does, that the theory of evolution is anti-Christian bunk. It’s simply that they don’t know much about it and don’t particularly care whether it is or not. Questions like the origins of the universe or of the human species simply don’t hold much interest for them. So when the federal government announces that it’s no longer interested in them either, well, that’s fine with them. If science can’t do anything for them, why should they do anything for science?

There are important evolutionary reasons why, absent a proper education system (which we obviously lack), humanity is saddled with a frustrating surplus of intellectual apathy on the one hand and religious foolishness on the other. I have theories — well, wildly speculative and untestable hypotheses — on these subjects. I’ll return to those. But for the moment, it’s enough to point out that they exist.

To understand the magnitude of the problem posed by traditional religion on the one hand and happy-go-lucky disinterest on the other, it’s worth briefly noting how Canada and other countries are responding to two problems: climate change and antibiotic resistance. There are interesting parallels between these. First, both are direct consequences of huge breakthroughs in applied science. Climate change is the blowback from an ongoing economic revolution which has lifted more people out of poverty more quickly than any other event in human history. Antibiotic resistance is the inevitable consequence of antibiotics — at least for those among us, the Cabinet evidently not among them, who have a layman’s understanding of the theory of evolution.

Second, given the present state of scientific knowledge, we can state with something approaching certainty that both of these processes, unchecked, will have catastrophic consequences for modern societies. The end of antibiotics will mean the end of modern medicine: a century ago, the leading causes of death were bacterial infections and these together with influenza accounted for almost as many deaths per capita as all major causes of death do today. Climate change would, left to run long enough, mean the end of modern, well, everything.

Third, there exist theoretical solutions to both climate change and antibiotic resistance. There are social solutions which we refuse to enact because of the short-term political consequences: we could simply stop using antibiotics and carbon-emitting technologies. There may also be technological solutions, although to find them, we will need to invest trillions of dollars in applied science.

Fourth, we will not arrive at these solutions in time to avoid at least some level of extremely serious harm. Hilariously, but also for good reasons which are readily explained by the theory of evolution (and its mentally defective cousin, economics), there is very little money to be made preventing climate change or inventing the next generation of antibiotic medicine. Such projects are not — to employ the terms now being used to decide upon research at NRC — commercially relevant.

There is, of course, one important difference between the two. The really catastrophic effects of climate change will probably be faced, at the earliest, by my generation’s grandchildren. In contrast, the effects of the end of antibiotics will be felt in our lifetimes. Under ordinary circumstances, you might think this, if nothing else, would spur some action on the problem. You would be wrong, and again, there are very good evolutionary reasons why.

I’ve referred repeatedly to evolution in this post, and not by accident. There’s a reason we fund pure science, or at least used to: because it leads to answers about some of our biggest questions and problems as a species, issues which are so large that they cannot be handled within the narrow confines of the commercial market. Such answers are intrinsically threatening to some sectors of society, the religious right and the apathetic not least among them. Understandably, these sectors respond by trying to eliminate that threat.

And they are succeeding.

Until yesterday, I suspect very few Canadian outside of the airlines industry actually knew that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the UN organization which promotes regulation of international air travel, had its headquarters in Montreal. Some more Canadians probably know it is today, and, as you probably know, the Harper government is trying to make it a cause celebre in their campaign to discredit the “international community” and, increasingly, to isolate Canada from the outside world.

This is a bit of a tempest in a teapot. It’s very unlikely that ICAO will actually relocate to Qatar, which has put  forward a bid. Outside of the purported Arab bloc which is forming in support of the Qatari bid, ICAO will need to win support from countries that don’t really have a stake in this one way or the other. Bureaucracies — even international bureaucracies — hate change more than practically anything else. Qatar will have to sweeten the pot by subsidizing the bureaucracy to a large enough extent to make an expensive, tedious, and awkward international relocation feasible. And the Qataris don’t necessarily have that much of a stake in this either.

All of that said, we must recognize that if it emerges that ICAO’s Montreal headquarters really is in serious trouble, then that is a direct consequence of the Harper government’s self-declared “muscular” foreign policy, and that doubling down on muscular foreign policy now by declaring that Canada’s “principled” foreign policy holds that Montreal is the ICAO’s “rightful host” is not going to help matters.

Now, you might think that it would be self-evidence to any politician with a brain in their head that a small country with modest economic clout cannot throw its weight around on the international stage. For reasons about which I dare not speculate, the Conservatives have never agreed with that notion. Instead, they have swaggered around the international stage for years now, walking away from treaties, sneering at diplomatic protocol, and brashly declaring Canada’s shift away from neutrality on the Palestine question. A few days ago, Harper literally appointed his personal bodyguard to be ambassador to Jordan. Jordan probably doesn’t mind that much, because they probably don’t care about Canada that much, but it’s the sort of move which demonstrates a calculated contempt towards the Arab nations, and there have been many of these moves recently. So, is it any wonder that the Arab nations are seizing upon a cheap and simple opportunity to hit back?

As I say, bureaucratic inertia will probably keep ICAO where it is, but an intelligent government would have kept our relationships at the UN, and the ICAO council, positive enough to head off at the pass any such “Arab bloc” move. (I’m keeping the quotes in place because to be honest I’m not sure how much of this is simply being blown way out of proportion by the Harper government and compliant journalists.)

Once again, instead, the Harper government has repeatedly done the opposite. It has publicly denounced UN delegations to Canada, walked out of organizations when it can’t get its way, and, in a particularly embarrassing moment, last year foreign minister John Baird announced an official complaint (and withdrew our ambassador, naturally) that the UN Conference on Disarmament’s chairmanship, which rotates alphabetically, was passing from Cuba to North Korea. Read this one carefully to understand the significance: Baird’s press release did not complain that alphabetical order is a silly way to determine precedence, only that in an organization which uses alphabetical order in this way, “D” came after “C.”

Anyways, the point is, the Canadian government has provoked Arab countries by incessantly and inanely declaring that Canada is not a neutral party in Middle Eastern conflicts, and it has just as cavalierly disavowed its international obligations. A “principled” foreign policy could dictate the first of these, and a country with massive political, economic, and military clout could afford to routinely thumb its nose at the international community and expect everyone to keep treating us fairly and politely anyways. Canada doesn’t have that sort of clout, so it’s worth pondering why we think we get away with acting rudely and foolishly in international fora.

To that end, it’s worth asking why ICAO is in Montreal in the first place. The simple answer is that quite a good long while ago now, the evil spendthrift Liberals put the necessary, tedious investment into endless schmoozing that is absolutely necessary when a small country like Canada wants to get its way internationally. One of our prizes was the ICAO headquarters. It’s a safe bet that if an organization like ICAO was being set up today, there’s no way on Earth it would land in a Canadian city. Minister Baird would decide that the required quiet diplomacy would be too emasculating for him, he would issue an angry press release about Canada would not sacrifice its principles to win a few baubles from the UN, and that would be that.

It’s worth asking, then, why the Conservatives care about this. They didn’t seem particularly interested when large factories in Ontario — where they do need votes — closed up shop over the last few years. It seems odd for them to care so much about an office closing in Montreal, where they don’t need votes. And especially odd given that they pass up no opportunity to explain to Canadians and to the world that they regard the UN as an antiquated and unnecessary talk shop anyways.

The answer, I suspect, is that this is a cheap win-win scenario for them. If ICAO doesn’t move, which is the most likely event even if Harper’s ministers continue to behave like the jackass redneck creationists that most of them are, then they’ll announce that they “saved” the office and that the Liberals and NDP wouldn’t have had been able to take the strong muscular stand necessary to do so. If ICAO does move, then it will be yet another opportunity to announce that Canada is a morally principled hero in a world of deceitful fast-talkers, a world from which only the Conservatives are able to protect us.

Update: Andrew has suggested to me that it is unfair to judge the column by the title, since he didn’t write it, which is true, although it strikes me that such a complaint would be better directed to the people who write the headlines than to the people who read them. So: sorry, Andrew, for that. In any event, the astronomy pictures are not out of place. Coyne moves from the objection that government should be based on purpose instead of inertia, which (as you’ll note) I agree with, to a second objection that these sorts of sensational stories are inevitable because government is too big and spends money “on everything under the Sun.” I could have printed a list demonstrating the silliness of such hyerbole, but in some cases, pictures really are worth a thousand words.

Yesterday, I pointed out the three things that I thought the media was missing about the Auditor-General’s report on how the federal government has mysteriously “lost” $3.1 billion in anti-terrorism spending, with no idea where the money went. First, it must be obvious which departments “lost” the money, and when. Second, the government has actually lost much more than $3.1 billion, because that’s only the amount as of 2009; in 2010, the Conservatives mysteriously closed down the reporting system that tracked counter-terrorism spending altogether, which means all expenses since then are unaccounted for. Third, both the Treasury Board and, by extension, the Auditor General must know the answers to the first two points, at least in rough terms, yet neither Minister Tony Clement nor Auditor-General Michael Ferguson have deigned to tell us, the tax-paying public.

But that was yesterday. The media has swung into fine form, I can assure you, and they’re asking the Big Questions for a change. For instance, National Post columnist Andrew Coyne has alerted us to the fact that nowhere in the Auditor-General’s assessment of the missing $3 billion in counter-terrorism funding is — you’ll love this — an explanation for why Via, Canada Post, and the CBC receive government subsidies.

This is a bizarre leap, and it’s hardly worth bothering with, except to point out that even if this were a valid question to ask, it wouldn’t be the Auditor-General’s job to ask it. (Even though, according to Coyne, it’s “the real question that the AG report raises but nobody will ask”). The Auditor General’s job is to ensure that money was spent efficiently and responsibly. Whether public subsidies and Crown corporations are good things to have is a question for Parliament — you know, that other essential democratic institution which Coyne’s employer has been energetically flinging feces at for years by endorsing a government convicted of contempt of Parliament. Coyne may be right that we should ask these questions, but the AG’s report is hardly an appropriate opportunity to do so.

His broader point is a valid one — we should want a government driven by purpose, rather than by inertia — and yet the overriding theme here still appears to be the notion that government is too big. It’s not a matter of asking what additional tasks should be handled by government. It’s merely a question of what tasks government is currently handling but shouldn’t be. Yawn.

Still, since he asks, it is obviously the case that the Canadian government is not extraordinarily large. For that matter, no government on Earth is extraordinarily large. For illustrative purposes, some time ago I placed a graphic on the top right of this blog some time ago. The size of the largest government on the planet is indicated by the bright pink area on the big blue and green dot on the top left of the image. I’ve reproduced the image below so you can appreciate the magnitude of the problem:

Here, I’ll zoom in:

Yes, big government is indeed a travesty, an abomination, a hideous grostesquerie. The sooner we can get back to smaller and simpler things, the better off we’ll be.

Meanwhile…

Peace be with you.

In regards to this…

First of all, to the genius publishers of 24 Hours, nicely done. I know you’ve got a business to run, but all you’ve done is to make me instantly discount and ignore any “news” you print on your first page ever, ever again. I’m not sure what you were thinking, but this is ridiculous. I hope you were paid well for it.

Second, to the BC Liberals: Sixth Estate would like to offer you the same deal you got from 24 Hours. My rates are very affordable. Please contact me immediately at the site email and we can definitely work something out.