Let the hostage-taking begin

At the stroke of midnight, Torontonians walked out of restaurants, bars and movie theaters to discover that they had no way home, thanks to the TTC's Amalgamated Transit Union's sudden strike. Streetcars, buses and subways abruptly stopped and ejected their passengers into the night, with the stations locked behind them. The promised 48-hour strike notice was nowhere to be seen, with union chief Bob Kinnear rebuffing Toronto Mayor David Miller's demand that the union respect its earlier commitment.

The citizens of Toronto can be excused (well, mostly) for their bewilderment at this sudden turn of events. After all, it was only last Sunday that overtime negotiations produced a tentative deal to head off a looming strike including three per cent annual wage hikes over the next three years, top-offs to various benefits and a rather unbelievable clause that will keep TTC bus drivers as the best-paid in the GTA — one presumes that these TTC employees will get additional bump-ups if any other GTA transit system gives its employees a raise. One cannot help but wonder what exactly the citizens of Toronto got out of these negotiations:

Bob Kinnear, president of Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Union , which is now in contract talks representing 400 drivers for York Region's Viva bus system, told The Globe yesterday that the "confrontational" talks with the TTC would have repercussions.

"These negotiations I don't think have helped labour negotiations between our local and [TTC chief general manager] Gary Webster and the TTC. ... There is a very sour taste," Mr. Kinnear said.

When the union chief is dissatisfied with a deal that makes his members the best-paid in the GTA and the union rank and file clearly wants more, it is incumbent upon Toronto's leadership to find a more permanent solution to an apparently endless upwards spiral of wage costs and union militancy.

Unfortunately, it is the same old non-solutions that are being bandied about in the opening hours of the strike:

A visibly angry David Miller said he has secured an agreement with the province to bring in back-to-work legislation as soon as possible after thousands of transit riders found themselves stranded Saturday morning when TTC workers went out on strike...

Mr. Miller also said he would be reconsidering his opposition to the idea of having the province declare the TTC an essential service, like police or firefighters, to take away the union's right to strike permanently.

Regardless of whether they are deemed an essential service and forced into arbitration, the TTC's unions will never have an incentive to act reasonably and make compromises unless they are exposed to some sort of competition to keep them honest. Consider, if I am dissatisfied with the TTC's service, I cannot choose to take another form of urban mass transit in Toronto, as the City forbids its. In the same vein, an entrepreneurial soul cannot operate a competing mass transit service, even when the TTC provides inadequate or non-existent service. It is a double monopoly: mass transit in Toronto can only be provided by the TTC, and the TTC can only be staffed by members of the union. I ask you, in such a situation, what incentives do the TTC's unions have to act reasonably and compromise?

Competition, read: expanded mass transit service, can be organized in several ways. Individual routes could be auctioned off to private providers, who would be required to meet certain service frequency standards. "Curb rights" could similarly be auctioned off. Or, multiple providers could compete on the same line — in Toronto it is not uncommon to wait 30 minutes or more for a streetcar along one of the City's major arteries (e.g King and Queen Streets) in the middle of day, when service is ostensibly "frequent". Furthermore, the TTC can be broken into three independent corporations (bus, street rail and subway) to reduce the stranglehold that the union holds over all mass transit services in Toronto.

The ultimate question is whether the corporation of the City of Toronto is run for the benefit of its 2.5 million citizen rate-payers, or, the 50 or 60 thousand unionized employees that make up the City's work force. Too often it has been the latter, and we have all paid the price in terms of escalating costs, poor service and the general stagnation that has settled over the City in the past decade. It won't be pretty or easy, but Toronto's civic leaders have to take the difficult plunge towards reforming how the City does business. The public opprobrium that will no doubt accompany this latest bout of union churlishness may be their best chance to do so.

evening in America?

In his book The Cold War, journalist Martin Walker noted an interesting pattern whereby the end of every decade was accompanied with predictions of eventual American decline and defeat. After a brief hiatus, this pattern has seemingly returned, with prophecies of doom echoing through bookstores, broadsheets and, least convincingly of all, in the blogosphere.

Whether it is a manifestation of the declinism that Andew Potter recently examined, or the schadenfreude typically applied to any American slippage, it has been an especially rich season for pessimistic prognosticators. Make no mistake, the challenges that America currently faces are significant in number and severity: the Iraq War, a suite of menacingly large deficits and ambitious challengers from many corners of the globe. In a way, it is a bit silly to even discuss relative American decline when you consider that at the end of the Second World War, the United States accounted for 50 per cent of the global economy and all of the atomic weapons. There was really no other direction in which to go!

Nevertheless, today there is a perception that America is on the edge of a precipice and can no longer maintain its status as the indispensable nation. While this notion has sold a swath of books and newspapers on a regular basis it has consistently proven false and will be exposed as such yet again. America has overcome greater challenges in its past and will do so again, no matter what the declinists say.

A quick review of the various predictions of American decline and eclipse over the past 70 years:

The 1930s

What was said: The Depression is prima facie evidence that American capitalism and democracy are doomed. George Bernard Shaw travels to the Soviet Union and declares "Stalin has delivered the goods to an extent that seemed impossible ten years ago... Jesus Christ has come down to earth." Gee whiz, those new German and Italian leaders really seemed to have turned things around over there.

What happened: The Great Depression was likely the greatest threat to the American experiment and way of life. However, even under such traumatic circumstances where the economy shrank by 30 per cent, the New York stock market fell to 11 per cent of its pre-crash level and 10,000 of 25,000 bank branches shut their doors, America resisted the worldwide slide towards authoritarianism and recovered sufficiently to serve as the arsenal of democracy in the Second World War.

the late 1940s & 1950s

What was said: Communism is on the march everywhere, from Sputnik in the stars to fifth columnists undermining the stars and bars on the home front. Stalin mercifully departs from the scene, but Khrushchev declares to the West that "we will bury you" and many take his word for it.

What happened: America halts post-war disarmament and checks Communist aggression in Korea. Massive investments in infrastructure and higher education are made, both on their own merits and to ensure that America does not fall behind in the arms, or space, race. The states of the West bind themselves into the NATO alliance, while the Soviets conscript their war conquests into the Warsaw Pact, removing uncooperative governments (e.g. Hungary) along the way.

the 1970s

What was said: Everywhere, decline. Stagflation, unemployment and crime at home, embarrassment and shame abroad at the hands of the Ayatollah in Iran and the fall of Saigon.
Its economy rescued by the surge in energy prices following OPEC's blockades, the Soviet Union appears to be both intractable and at full strategic parity with the United States.

what happened: The 1970s were indeed a painful transitional decade for America. However, from the ashes of Vietnam the American army reconstituted itself as an all-volunteer force, while in the hitherto obscure environs of San Jose and in University labs, garages and basements across America a new economy beckoned. If you allow me some (bad) poetic license, it was the final, and darkest, hour before morning in America.

the 1980s

What was said: Japan is going to up and buy the joint — America simply cannot compete! The President is a war-mongering maniac with his Star Wars and his deficits are unsustainable.

What happened: America competes just fine, and somehow manages to avoid becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Toyota. Reagan's combination of tax cuts, inflation-fighting, deregulation and military spending does indeed pile up debt but it unleashes the American economy and buries the Soviets.

The usual caveat of past performance not guaranteeing future results does of course apply, but betting against America has shown a rather poor record over the past seventy years, wouldn't you say? I did not choose the time periods randomly, but to put the current challenges that America faces in some badly lacking historical context. Economically, America has survived worse shocks that the bursting of the housing bubble and has been more indebted than it is at present. Militarily, the United States has either defeated or outlasted three empires (the Nazi, Japanese and Soviet) each at various times thought to be invincible. We look back now with the benefit of hindsight and occasionally say that both the Japanese and Soviets were to some extent paper tigers, but that is not at all how they were perceived at the time of the actual conflict. Politically, George W. Bush's Presidency has estranged American from many of its traditional allies, but one must also consider that the United States overcame the international opprobrium associated with with the Vietnam War. While, a critic would point out that post-Vietnam America always had the specter of Soviet aggression to keep its allies from drifting, it would be similarly fair to point out China's nonchalance regarding its repression it Tibet is a timely reminder that the other great powers auditioning for a global role are likely to have a highly malign influence on their own populations and neighbours.

Why America will continue to be successful is not a secret; in fact it is the exact same reason why our own Wilfred Laurier accorded the 19th Century to America and the 20th was unanimously conceded to Washington. I quite naturally defer to the esteemed Tom Wolfe in expressing the essential idea of the United States:

America remains, as it has been from the very beginning, the freest, most open country in the world, encouraging one and all to compete pell-mell for any great goal that exists and to try every sort of innovation, no matter how far-fetched it may seem, in order to achieve it. It is largely this open invitation to ambition that accounts for America’s military and economic supremacy and absolute dominance in science, medicine, technology, and every other intellectual pursuit that can be measured objectively. And it is absolute.

Yet from our college faculties and “public intellectuals” come the grimmest of warnings. The government has assumed Big Brother powers on the pretext of protecting us from Terror, and the dark night of fascism is descending upon America. As Orwell might have put it, only an idiot or an intellectual could actually believe that.

Any real threat to America cannot be considered existential until it challenges the continued viability of the rambunctious open invitation to ambition described by Wolfe. An observant critic of America would point to the mostly stagnant number of foreign students studying in the United States since 2001. Consider, according to a Chinese survey, 17 of the top 20 Universities in the World are American. What enormous advantage the United States has gained through attracting the World's best to its shores. Open immigration to the United States, both skilled and unskilled, has been a tremendous boon to both the immigrants themselves and to America. If a threat to continued American prosperity exists, it would be found in misguided policies that hamper the best global students from studying America and dissuade even the most highly-motivated potential immigrants from becoming Americans (legally). These are the crucial policy questions that America must get right if its endless opportunity generator is to continue to function.

America has not become wealthy and successful by accident of history or circumstance. Many of the world's states have been endowed with rich natural resources and swaths of fertile land. America is successful because it has combined the bounty of nature with an idea of governance and society that allowed its people to make the most of it, and then compounded this success by renewing the invitation to the most motivated and ambitious of the world's citizens to join. Unless this idea falters, America will live to see many new mornings.

China's coming out party

For the Chinese government, the Olympic games have been planned to be the pivotal event in China's re-emergence into the international order — an epochal event to catalyze China's triumph over bitter memories of Western domination and its own later self-imposed Maoist estrangement. The world would come to Beijing and see a modern and powerful China. The Chinese government would then reap what it craves: respect for China's many accomplishments and its place in the world.

Of course, whenever you throw a party there exists a risk that the guests will behave unpredictably, open doors they shouldn't and ask all manner of uncomfortable questions. Such is China's current dilemma. Just as you can't put lipstick on a pig and call it a supermodel, it is rather difficult to dress up an authoritarian one-party state as anything else.

It is highly unlikely that the Tibet / Olympic Games dust-up will be solved to the satisfaction of anyone. To begin with, the protagonists are viewing the current events and the larger geopolitical context through diametrically opposed prisms and are unlikely to ditch their respective worldviews anytime soon.

The Chinese leadership considers the greater part of the modern era as both a great historic aberration and humiliation in which the Middle Kingdom was dominated by foreigners, carved up and left far behind technologically and economically. An acute sense of grievance against the West remains. In this view, "human rights" and "democracy" are just the latest clubs that the West has employed to keep China down. Whether or not we sympathize with or reject the feelings of China's leadership or people is irrelevant. Their feelings will affect their thinking and actions regardless of whether we reject or validate them.

While we may think it is beyond parody for the Chinese government to call the Dalia Lama a "terrorist," play the role of the victim and pitch a storyline in which he is directing an insurrection from exile, it is a narrative that works very well domestically and apparently in emigrant communities as well (the host of a Mandarin and Cantonese-language call-in show reported on Thursday's Metro Morning that calls were running 80 - 20 in favour of Beijing's actions).

The Chinese government, and likely many of its people, are also projecting how their country operates onto Western reactions to the Tibet Crisis and making judgments on these erroneous assumptions. Prominent in ChinaDaily's coverage of the crisis are articles on how the Western media is biased against China and of the efforts of netzens to 'set the record straight.' The idea that a controversial issue can be widely discussed in the media without the consent of the state is a foreign concept in China. If articles in the Western media are making China look bad, then Western governments are complicit in this smear job, which feeds back into carefully nurtured historic grievances.

In short, the Chinese believe that they are the aggrieved party in Tibet and that the response has been both reasonable and proportionate. But, in any event, they would reject any Western criticism as hypocritical and a meddlesome intervention in China's internal affairs. In fact, I am surprised that China's international line has not yet included more dredging up of the various misdeeds of its current detractors. There will be no compromise from Beijing.

The greater long-term danger is that the Chinese government has acquired a bad habit of talking itself into a highly nationalist corner on a variety of geopolitical issues — Tibet and Taiwan being the most prominent examples. With the effective end of Marxism in China, the regime has often turned to the promotion of Chinese nationalism and the reversal of historic grievances and injustices as the source of its legitimacy. Staking out such positions is popular, but extraordinarily difficult to back down from without triggering painful reminders of a weak China that the regime finds totally repugnant. Furthermore, with no free press to hold the government to account or to even allow competing points of view to be expressed, there are precious few escape valves for pent-up public discontent.

the tortured logic of J. Cherniak

I suppose it's a little undignified to be the last to leap upon a pile-on, but, Jason Cherniak's unbelievably disingenuous post there is no freedom to message hate begs response. Jason draws deep from the arsenal of spin to produce a shocking and awful post on the current debate over Human Rights Commissions (HRC) and the issue of free speech in general. All of your favourite characters are there: rhetorical fog, misleading metaphors, pro-Liberal hyperbole and many more. But, to Jason's credit, he does not bring out the Nazi bogeyman until the comments section.

Good morning hyperbole!

Canadians have a right to Freedom of Expression. We have that right because the Trudeau Government negotiated and passed the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Progressive Conservative Party of the time, led by Joe Clark, and the NDP both supported this Charter. It is now one of the most important constitutional documents in Canada. It should be beyond partisanship.

Yes, not only did Trudeau liberate Canada from more than a century of restricted speech, his Charter of Rights was so perfect the first time out that politicians should never use their only recently conferred right of free speech to do anything so intemperate as question the Charter. Perhaps we should throw in "partisanship" as it relates to the Charter into Section 13.1 as well.

What's that on the horizon? Ah yes: fog.

There is currently a debate about whether freedom of expression includes the right to say anything you want.

Jason would have his readers believe that the debate is between the status quo and completely unfettered free speech. This characterization is of course completely untrue. Nobody is arguing that the Criminal Code provisions regarding Uttering Death Threats be struck down. Likewise, there is no crusade to wipe the land clear of laws as they related to libel and slander. Either Jason does not understand the issue under discussion, or he is being intentionally misleading.

Remember in Super Mario Brothers when you B-ran as fast as you could, but could never quite leap to the other side of the chasm? Jason's logic here seems to suffer from a similar problem:

As a matter of principle, I support this law [Section 13.1 of the Canadian Human Rights Act RCE] Hate messages should not be protected expression. Indeed, they are an attempt to silence the free expression of others by removing their individuality. At its heart, I believe that freedom of expression, and the entire Charter of Rights and Freedoms, is about protecting the individual. People who attempt to use their individual rights to remove the individual rights of others should not be surprised when they end up on the wrong side of the law.

Hateful messages may be nasty business indeed, but do they have the power to "silence the free expression of others" and "remove the individual rights of others"? No. They are certainly hurtful, but they do not at all remove the rights of the target. To "silence the free expression of others" you really need the coercive powers of the State, which conveniently enough employs Human Rights Commissions to just such an end. But in the Orwellian rabbit hole that Jason dove down, the only way to protect individual rights is for the state to preemptively remove them.

Death to carrot tops:

For example, we all have freedom of opinion, assembly and expression. Perhaps somebody has the opinion that everybody with red hair should be tied up. Perhaps that person might gather together a mob of people with the same opinion. Perhaps those people will express themselves by tying up a person with red hair and leaving him in the middle of the Trans-Canada Highway. Obviously, such a chain of events should be illegal. However, it can be described as a group of people holding an opinion, assembling and then expressing themselves. Should the ability to describe their actions constitutionally mean that they have acted within their rights? I think not.

Really, where do you start with this? Oh I see, since Jason's hypothetical mob chose to express themselves through kidnapping and assault we should think twice about this whole idea of a right to freedom of expression. But, of course, if Human Rights Commissions were concerned solely with things like assault and kidnapping we'd just call them Courts and none of this would be happening. Secondly, the right to free expression of the mob ends where it violates the right of the poor red-haired sap to his security of person. Issue conflation, pure and simple.

Nope, Luigi can't make that long jump either:

In the case of hate speech, a person might claim that all Muslims believe in terrorism. The person might claim that this is an inherent problem with the Muslim religion and that all Muslims should be discounted when they argue otherwise. Ultimately, that person would be attempting to remove the right of Muslims to be Muslim. That person would be using free expression to remove the right to freedom of religion. Should a person be able to claim that removing the freedom of another is justified because he is only exercising his own freedom? I think not.

Maybe they just teach a different brand of logic at Dal Law. A person can question and even insult Islam until he is blue in the face; but there's simply no coercive means by which he can remove their right to freedom of conscience and assembly. Who has such power? The State. I am not a law student or anything, but didn't someone once run afoul of a Human Rights Commission for the sin of expressing his right to freedom of religion and expression through printing a biblical reference or two?

Wouldn't it be much more frightening to live in a society in which religion and god cannot be questioned? Wait a minute, isn't that what Liberals get all worked up about when discussing so-called Republican values voters?

Ah, the nuance:

This does not mean that all insulting language should be considered "hate messages". Just like a person can be excused for killing in self-defence if his life was threatened, a person can be justified in attacking the values of another person when that other person's values are threatening. We political people do that to each other all the time.

Loopholes do come in handy, I agree. I mean, what if a good Liberal absolutely had to shake a purple dinosaur on national television in order to mock the beliefs of an Evangelical Christian? Let us not be Section 13.1 fundamentalists here!

There is a legitimate argument about whether section 13(1) is worded properly. In short, is it narrow enough to allow a defendant to make the argument that he was only protecting his own legitimate values by questioning the values of a specific religion?

I would argue that any piece of legislation that creates a situation in which the state is weighing whether one's values are "legitimate" in relation to the questioned "values" of another citizen has problems slightly beyond poor wording. It's absurd, and Jason's chosen example essentially legitimizes state punishment for thought crime if the HRC decided that the defendant's actions were based upon illegitimate values.

To be fair, Jason does make one statement that I agree with:

I do not know enough about the specific accusations against Mr. Levant, Mr. Steyn and Macleans to give an opinion in their individual cases.

Cherniak trundles on for a few more paragraphs, but cannot resist spewing a bit more fog:

we should not be talking about getting rid of hate laws just because three parties might have been wrongly accused - not even wrongly convicted.

It is not the current HRC actions against Ezra Levant and MacLeans that make Section 13.1 wrong. Any piece of legislation explicitly dedicated to limiting our genuine rights based upon such a nebulous and subjective test exposing a person "to hatred and contempt" has no place in a free society such as Canada, who's very success and strength is significantly derived from the principle of free speech. Note that Section 13.1 does not even require for the actionable communicated message to be hateful in and of itself. Rather, it only has to be "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination" — a double dose of subjectivity. The Levant and MacLeans cases have drawn such great, and overdue attention, to the endless possibilities of agenda-driven abuse that Section 13.1 allows; however, irrespective of their individual cases, Section 13.1 is bad law in and of itself.

But hey, all these arguments don't count for much with Cherniak. Just in case you're not sure:

[The Levant and MacLeans cases] are are not, on their own, proof that our entire human rights process is broken. Making such an argument only shows you to be ignorant.

Well, if I am err between censorship and catcalls of ignorance from Jason's corner, I will gladly choose the latter.

the beautiful city

Serene is not a word often used in the same sentence as Toronto, but once and a while this city can still surprise you. The weekend hours between sunrise and nine a.m. offer a rare portrait of the big city at rest — traffic at bay, the sidewalks and parks empty except for the occasional dog-walker and fellow morning connoisseur, and that most rare of Toronto commodities, silence. Occasionally, nature cooperates by wrapping the sleeping city in a blanket of white, making even some of Toronto's least-edifying visual features (the knotted tangle of overhead wires) into a delicate and frosted lattice. Enjoy it while it lasts, as an alliance of well-meaning plows, salters, sunlight and pedestrians are always poised to efficiently render the city back into its default winter condition of brackish, saline mush that turns every step into a potential soaker.

it's not black-only it's afrocentric

"Black-focused schools are not a choice, they're a right!" Claimed one of many passionate speakers at the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) meeting earlier this week (as reported by CBC Radio One). And once the conflation of "rights" and 'my preferred public policy choice' begins, the debate can only slide towards one conclusion.

So, for better or for worse (there seems to be no middle ground) the TDSB will have an afrocentric school of some kind, in some location with an indeterminate number of students beginning in the Fall 0f 2009. I can sympathize with the frustration of those who advocated for a black-focused school, confronted as they are with a 40 per cent drop out rate in Toronto's black communities. However, their proposed solution is premised on two very shaky assumptions, namely: (1) the under performance of some black students in the public system is due to a failure on the part of the schools, and (2) changing the curriculum to reflect an afrocentric focus will improve the academic performance of said students.

The blinders that have been worn throughout this entire debate are astounding, if grudgingly understandable. Race, culture and academic performance are touchy words to combine into one sentence — never mind school board policy. However, if we are to avoid making really bad decisions, we have to strip the blinders off and have this discussion in the full light of the facts. Toronto's school system is home to a wide variety of students from multiple cultural backgrounds, how do academic performance and drop-out rates vary across these groups? If the problem with the TDSB is indeed a Euro-centric curriculum and systemic racism, wouldn't it affect all non-whites? Furthermore, anecdotally, it has been noted that Portuguese students drop-out at a rate significantly above average in Toronto, which if true looks to be a bit hard to hang on a curriculum that is too European in focus.

All things considered, I agree with dissenting TDSB trustee Stephnie Payne:

Today’s black parents, whether due to poverty, socio-economic factors or marginalization, need to be fully engaged in the daily lives of their children.

Black mothers should examine their lifestyles with regard to issues of drugs, gangs, early pregnancy and multiple pregnancies and absent fathers, and how these factors affect their lives and that of their children to fully succeed.

Yes, our educational system needs to change drastically, and teachers should reflect the student body and the community.

A second broader problem is the gradual transformation of the public school system from a place of learning to some sort of surrogate parent with all of the attendant responsibilities of ensuring that children have healthy self-esteem and have role models that look like them. In the seemingly far-away world of not that damn long ago, self-esteem and role models were provided by the family while the teachers taught (Jeffrey Simpson makes a similar point in the Saturday Globe). With the balance today so upset and the schools now responsible for everything, is it any wonder that none of it is being done well?

Regardless, Toronto is going to have an afrocentric school of some type in Fall 2009, and despite my severe misgivings surrounding the rationale for such a school and what exactly it will teach, I do hope that it succeeds. We should keep this decision in perspective and recognize that we are talking about a very limited number of schools and students (who will be able to choose which school they go to) and if nothing else the creation of an afrocentric school will serve as a case study where outcomes can be measured and compared to existing TDSB performance, so that we can make better-informed decisions in the future — although, the experience of Toronto's First Nations school is decidedly unpromising and once created it is virtually impossible to dismantle a publicly-funded institution, regardless of performance or lack thereof. If the afrocentric school initiative does fail, it seems inevitable that such failure will be blamed on inadequate funding and/or support from TDSB leadership, or that old fit-all bugbear, systemic racism, rather than the merit of the original idea and the curriculum with which it was implemented.

survivorship bias in action

Writing in Sunday's Toronto Star, economist David Crane seeks to make the case for renewed government involvement in the business world:

Many other of our leading corporations benefited significantly from targeted government policies. CAE, the world's leading producer of flight simulators, grew out of our military offsets program. Nortel was able to become an international company because federal regulatory policies gave it the advantages it needed to develop into a world-scale business...

...Magna International, one of the world's largest auto parts companies, is an outgrowth of the Canada-U.S. auto pact and federal and Ontario programs to promote a Canadian auto parts industry.

Bombardier and SNC-Lavalin have also benefited from public policy. Even Research in Motion has used federal programs to develop its technologies.

If I conducted a study wherein I was looking to prove my hypothesis by only studying the most successful examples, I am sure that I could come up with all sorts of interesting conclusions too. Did any private sector companies receive government support and not succeed? Did they instead go out of business and disappear from our, and Crane's, view? What was the opportunity cost of transferring wealth from everyone and allocating it to a view government favourites? Who knows! All that Crane's statement actually shows is that some companies that are successful (Nortel?) have also been the beneficiaries of direct government support or an advantageous public policy environment. He provides no information whatsoever as to the value of such approaches to the Canadian economy as a whole.

Crane then descends into self parody with this paragraph:

This leads to a second myth that we need to ditch, namely the idea that "government can't pick winners." There's no doubt that government can also pick losers. But is the private sector record any better? Think of the vast evaporation of wealth in the dot-com boom at the start of this decade or the horrendous financial crisis in the world today due to financial products that now appear to be worthless.

'The government many not always be right, but I am not so interested in those examples as they do not fit with my conclusions. And look, the private sector makes mistakes too (with their own money of course) so obviously cannot be trusted. Case closed!' How is this man a business writer?

crime in the city part II

It has been a sad and dispiriting week in Toronto with two innocent men killed by gunfire as they went about their everyday business. But, what would personal tragedy be without politicians hijacking it to promote their agendas? Almost on cue, all of the usual suspects popped out of the woodwork to demand a complete ban on handguns buttressed by pro forma denunciations of America's gun culture. I too have a fondness for simple solutions as compared to complicated ones, but this knee-jerk reaction is especially mendacious and poorly-informed.

As with so many Canadian debates, when discussing guns the only permissible comparison is that with our neighbour to the south. The United States has many guns and, for a Western nation, a high rate of crime. Canada has less guns and less crime; therefore, if Canada further restricts legal firearm possession we will experience even less crime. It's a convenient storyline that fits well with our perception of ourselves, hence its ongoing popularity and resistance to non-conforming data.

In their headlong rush to solve gun crime, and of course generate positive media attention for themselves, Mayor Miller, Premier McGuinty, Jack Layton and Toronto Star editorialists might want to consider opening their eyes just a crack. They could for starters consider the example of the United Kingdom:

Despite a ban on handguns introduced in 1997 after 16 children and their teacher were shot dead in the Dunblane massacre the previous year, their use in crimes has almost doubled to reach 4,671 in 2005-06. Official figures show that although Britain has some of the toughest anti-gun laws in the world, firearm use in crime has risen steadily.

Down under, Australia and its various state governments enacted severe restrictions on legal gun ownership in the late 1990's, and the percentage of murders involving firearms has decreased since then. However, the proportion of murders committed with a firearm has been decreasing steadily since 1969, making it somewhat difficult to ascribe the drop to this legislative intervention. If you zoom out to examine violent crime in Australia as a whole: assaults have increased and homicides have decreased since 1993. A similar decline in the murder rate in the 1993-2004 period was also experienced in Canada.

It's perhaps a bit unfair to toss the example of Jamaica into the mix, but it's plain to say that banning guns has done nothing to improve the plight of that country. Looking further afield there are also countries with lots of guns and little violent crime (Switzerland) and almost no guns and little violent crime (Japan). Returning to Canada, we should be well aware of the fact that violent crime in Canada varies significantly across the nation and is considerably more pronounced in Aboriginal and Caribbean communities.

I would agree that a large number of easily available firearms increases the lethality of existing crime and violence and that some form of gun control is prudent and necessary (e.g. a criminal record or documented mental illness should disqualify you from legal gun ownership); however, an omnibus ban on firearms is not a realistic, or desirable solution. Crime has been illegal for a long time already.

What's the lesson of all of this? Violent crime is a complicated social phenomenon and will certainly be resistant to the simple-minded solutions offered by the 'just ban guns' and 'hang 'em high' camps. In fact, either approach is in my mind worse than doing nothing for the reason that if such policies are enacted people will expect progress — when none is likely to occur — and thus become disillusioned when the cancer of violent crime remains and may then become convinced that nothing at all can possibly be done.