Category Archives: canadian politics

Shared IT Services across the Canadian Government – three opportunities

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Earlier this week the Canadian Federal Government announced it will be creating Shared Services Canada which will absorb the resources and functions associated with the delivery of email, data centres and network services from 44 departments.

These types of shared services projects are always fraught with danger. While they sometimes are successful, they are often disasters. Highly disruptive with little to show for results (and eventually get unwound). However, I suspect there is a significant amount of savings that can be made and I remain optimistic. With luck the analogy here is the work outgoing US CIO Vivek Kundra accomplished as he has sought to close down and consolidate 800 data centres across the US which is yielding some serious savings.

So here’s what I’m hoping Shared Services Canada will mean:

1) A bigger opportunity for Open Source

What I’m still more hopeful about – although not overly optimistic – is the role that open source solutions could play in the solutions Shared Services Canada will implement. Over on the Drupal site, one contributor claims government officials have been told to hold off buying web content management systems as the government prepares to buy a single solution for across all departments.

If the government is serious about lowering its costs it absolutely must rethink its procurement models so that open source solutions can at least be made a viable option. If not this whole exercise will mean the government may save money, but it will be the we move from 5 expensive solutions to one expensive solution variety.

On the upside some of that work has clearly taken place. Already there are several federal government websites running on Drupal such as this Ministry of Public Works website, the NRCAN and DND intranet. Moreover, there are real efforts in the open source community to accommodate government. In the United States OpenPublic has fostered a version of Drupal designed for government’s needs.

Open source solutions have the added bonus of allowing you the option of using more local talent, which, if stimulus is part of the goal, would be wise. Also, any open source solutions fostered by the federal government could be picked up by the provinces, creating further savings to tax payers. As a bonus, you can also fire incompetent implementors, something that needs to happen a little more often in government IT.

2) More accountability

Ministers Ambrose and Clement are laser focused on finding savings – pretty much every ministry needs to find 5 or 10% savings across the board. I also know both speak passionately about managing tax payers dollars: “Canadians work hard for their money and expect our Government to manage taxpayers dollars responsibly, Shared Services Canada will have a mandate to streamline IT, save money, and end waste and duplication.”

Great. I agree. So one of Shared Service Canada’s first act should be to follow in the footsteps of another Vivek Kundra initiative and recreate his incredibly successful IT Dashboard. Indeed it was by using the dashboard Vivek was able to “cut the time in half to deliver meaningful [IT system] functionality and critical services, and reduced total budgeted [Federal government IT] costs by over $3 billion.” Now that some serious savings. It’s a great example of how transparency can drive effective organizational change.

And here’s the kicker. The White House open sourced the IT Dashboard (the code can be downloaded here). So while it will require some work adapting it, the software is there and a lot of the heavy work has been done. Again, if we are serious about this, the path forward is straightforward.

3) More open data

Speaking of transparency… one place shared services could really come in handy is creating some data warehouses for hosting critical government data sets (ideally in the cloud). I suspect there are a number of important datasets that are used by public servants across ministries, and so getting them on a robust platform that is accessible would make a lot of sense. This of course, would also be an ideal opportunity to engage in a massive open data project. It might be easier to create policy for making the data managed by Shared Service Canada “open.” Indeed, this blog post covers some of the reasons why now is the time to think about that issue.

So congratulations on the big move everyone and I hope these suggestions are helpful. Certainly we’ll be watching with interest – we can’t have a 21st century government unless we have 21st century infrastructure, and you’re now the group responsible for it.

The State of Open Data Licenses in Canada and where to go from here

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(for readers less interested in Open Data – I promise something different tomorrow)

In February I wrote how 2011 would be the year of the license for Canada’s open data community. This has indeed been the case. For public servants and politicians overseeing the various open data projects happening in Canada and around the world, here is an outline of where we are, and what I hope will happen next. For citizens I hope this will serve as a primer and help explain why this matters. For non-Canadians, I hope this can help you strategize how to deal with the different levels of government in your own country.

This is important stuff, and will be important to ensure success in the next open data challenge: aligning different jurisdictions around common standards.

Why Licenses Matter

Licenses matter because they determine how you are able to use government data – a public asset. As I outlined in the three laws of open data, data is only open if it can be found, be played with and be shared. The license deals with the last of these. If you are able to take government data, find some flaw or use it to improve a service, it means nothing if you are not able to share what you create with others. The more freedom you have in doing this, the better.

What we want from the license regime (and for your government)

There are a couple of interests one is trying to balance in creating a license regime. You want:

  • Open: there should maximum freedom for reuse (see above, and this blog post)
  • Secure: it offers governments appropriate protections for privacy and security
  • Simplicity: to keep down legal costs low, and make it easier for everyone to understand
  • Standardized: so my work is accessible across jurisdictions
  • Stable: so I know that the government won’t change the rules on me

At the moment, two licenses in Canada meet these tests. The Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) used by Surrey, Langley, Winnipeg (for its transit data) and the BC government open data portal license (which is a copy of the UK Open Government license).

Presently a bunch of licenses do not. This includes the Government of Canada Open Data Licence Agreement for Unrestricted Use of Canada’s Data (couldn’t they choose a better name? But for a real critique of why, read this blog post). It also includes the variants of the license created by Vancouver and now used by Toronto, Ottawa and Edmonton (among others). Full disclosure, I was peripherally involved in the creation of this license – it was necessary at the time.

Both these licenses are not standardized, have restrictions in them not found in the UK/BC Open Government License and the PDDL and are anything but simple. Nor are they stable. At any time the government can revoke them. In other words, many developers and companies interested in open data dislike them immensely.

Where do we go from here?

At the moment there are a range of licenses available in Canada – this undermines the ability of developers to create software that uses open data across multiple jurisdictions.

First, the launch of BC’s open data portal and its use of the UK Open Government License has reset the debate in this country. The Federal government, which has an awkward, onerous and unloved license should stop trying to create a new license that simply adds unnecessary complexity and creates confusion for software developers. (I detail the voluminous problems with the Federal license here.)

Instead the Feds should adopt the UK Open Government Licence and push for it to be a standard, both for the provinces and federal government agencies, as well as for other common wealth countries. Its refusal to adopt the UK license is deeply puzzling. It has offered no explanation about why it can’t, indeed, it would be interesting to hear what the Federal Government believes it knows that the UK government (which has been doing this for much longer) and the BC government doesn’t know.

What I predict will happen is that more and more provinces will adopt the UK license and increasingly the Feds will look isolated and ridiculous. Barring some explanation, this silliness should end.

At the municipal level, things are more complicated. If you look at the open data portals of Vancouver, Toronto, Edmonton and Ottawa (sometimes referred to as the G4) you’ll notice each has a similar paragraph:

The Cities of Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa and Toronto have recently joined forces to collaborate on an “Open Data Framework”. The project aims to enhance current open data initiatives in the areas of data standards and terms of use agreements. Please contact us for further information.

This paragraph has been sitting on these sites for well over a year now (approaching almost two years) but in terms of data standards and common terms of use the work, to date, the G4 has produced nothing tangible for end users. (Full disclosure, I have sat in on some of these meetings.) The G4 cities, which were leaders, are now languishing with a license that actually puts them in the middle, not the front of the pack. They remain ahead of the bulk of Canadian cities that have no open data, but, in terms of license, behind the aforementioned cities of Surrey, Langley, Winnipeg (for its transit data).

These second generation open data cities either had fewer resources or drew the right lessons and have leap-frogged the G4 cities by adopting the PDDL – something they did because it essentially outsourced the management of the license to a competent third party. It maximized the effectiveness of their data, while limiting their costs all while giving them the same level of protection.

The UK and BC versions of the Open Government License could work for the cities, but the PDDL is a better license. Also, it is well managed. If the cities were to adopt the OGL it wouldn’t be the end of the world but it also isn’t necessary. It probably makes more sense for them to simply follow the new leaders in the space and adopt the PDDL as this will less restrictive and easier to adopt.

Thus, speaking personally, the ideal situation in Canada would be that:

  • the Federal and Provincial Governments to adopt the UK/BC Open Government License. I’d love to live in a world where the adopted the PDDL, but my conversations with them lead me to believe this simply is not likely in the near to mid term. I think 99% of software developers out there will agree that the Open Government License is an acceptable substitute. and
  • the municipalities push to adopt the PDDL. Already several municipalities have done this and the world has not ended. The bar has been set.

The worse outcome would be:

  • the G4 municipalities invent some new license. The last thing the world needs is another open data license to confuse users and increase legal costs.
  • the federal government continues along the path of evolving its own license. Its license was born broken and is unnecessary.

Sadly, I see little evidence for optimism at the federal level. However, I’m optimistic about the cities and provinces. The fact that most new open data portals at the municipal level have adopted the PDDL suggests that many in these governments “get it”. I also think the launch of data.gov.bc.ca will spur other provinces to be intelligent about their license choice.

 

 

Province of BC launches Open Data Catalog: What works

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As revealed yesterday, the province of British Columbia became the first provincial government in Canada to launch an open data portal.

It’s still early but here are some things that I think they’ve gotten right.

1. License: Getting it Right (part 1)

Before anything else happens, this is probably the single biggest good news story for Canadians interested in the opportunities around open data. If the license is broken, it pretty much doesn’t matter how good the data is, it essential gets put in a legal straightjacket and cannot be used. For BC open data portal this happily, is not the case.

There’s actually two good news stories here.

The first is that the license is good. Obviously my preference would be for everything to be unlicensed and in the public domain as it is in the United States. Short of that however, the most progressive license out there is the UK Government’s Open Government License for Public Sector Information. Happily the BC government has essentially copied it. This means that many of that BC’s open data can be used for commercial purposes, political advocacy, personal use and so forth. In short the restrictions are minimal and, I believe, acceptable. The license addresses the concerns I raised back in March when I said 2011 would be the year of Open Data licenses in Canada.

2. License: The Virtuous Convergence (part 2)

The other great thing is that this is a standardized license. The BC government didn’t invent something new they copied something that already worked. This is music to the ears of many as it means applications and analysis developed in British Columbia can be ported to other jurisdictions that use the same license seamlessly. At the moment, that means all of the United Kingdom. There has been some talk of making the UK Open Government Licenses (OGL) a standard that can be used across the commonwealth – that, in my mind, would be a fantastic outcome.

My hope is that this will also put pressure on other jurisdictions to either improve their licenses or converge them with BC/UK or adopt a better license still. With the exception of the City of Surrey, which uses the PDDL license, the BC government’s license far superior to the licenses being used by other jurisdictions:  – the municipal licenses based on Vancouver’s license (used by Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto and a few others) and the Federal Government’s open data license (used by Treasury Board and CIDA) are both much more restrictive. Indeed, my real hope is that BC’s move will snap the Federal Government out of their funk, make them realize their own licenses are confusing, problematic and a waste of time, and encourage them to contribute to making the UK’s OGL a new standard for all of Canada. It would be much better than what they have on offer.

3. Tools for non-developers

Another nice thing about the data.gov.bc.ca website is that it provides tools for non-developers, so that they can play with, and learn from, some of the data. This is, of course, standard fare on most newer open data portals – indeed, it’s seems to be the primary focus on Socrata, a company that specializes in creating open government data portals. The goal everywhere is to increase the number of people who can make use of the data.

4. Meaty Data – Including Public Accounts

One of the charges sometimes leveled against open data portals is that they don’t publish data that is important, or that could drive substantive public policy debates. While this is not true of what has happened in the UK and the United States, that charge probably is someone fair in Canada. While I’m still exploring the data available on data.gov.bc.ca one thing seems clear, there is a commitment to getting the more “high-value” data sets out to the public. For example, I’ve already noticed you can download the Consolidated Revenue Fund Detailed Schedules of Payments-FYE10-Suppliers which for the fiscal year 2009-2010 details the payees who received $25,000 or more from the government. I also noticed that the Provincial Obstacles to Fish Passage are available for download – something I hope our friends in the environmental movement will find helpful. There is also an entire section dedicated to data on the provincial educational system, I’ll be exploring that in more detail.

Wanted to publish this for now, definitely keen to hear about others thoughts and comments on the data portal, data sets you find interesting and helpful, or anything else. If you are building an app using this data, or doing an analysis that is made easier because of the data on this site, I’d love to hear from you.

This is a big step for the province. I’m sure I’ll discover some shortcomings as I dive deeper, but this is a solid start and, I hope, an example to other provinces about what is possible.

Lots of Open Data Action in Canada

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A lot of movement on the open data (and not so open data) front in Canada.

Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) Open Data Portal Launched

IATI-imagesSome readers may remember that last week I wrote a post about the imminent launch of CIDA’s open data portal. The site is now live and has a healthy amount of data on it. It is a solid start to what I hope will become a robust site. I’m a big believer – and supporter of the excellent advocacy efforts of the good people at Engineers Without Borders – that the open data portal would be greatly enhanced if CIDA started publishing its data in compliance with the emerging international standard of the International Aid Transparency Initiative as these 20 leading countries and organizations have.

If anyone creates anything using this data, I’d love to see it. One simple start might be to try using the Open Knowledge Foundation’s open source Where Does my Money Go code, to visualize some of the spending data. I’d be happy to chat with anyone interested in doing this, you can also check out the email group to find some people experienced in playing with the code base.

Improved License on the CIDA open data portal and data.gc.ca

One thing I’ve noticed with the launch of the CIDA open data portal was how the license was remarkably better than the license at data.gc.ca – which struck me as odd, since I know the feds like to be consistent about these types of things. Turns out that the data.gc.ca license has been updated as well and the two are identical. This is good news as some of the issues that were broken with the previous license have been fixed. But not all. The best license out there remains the license at data.gov (that’s a trick question, because data.gov has no license, it is all public domain! Tricky eh…? Nice!) but if you are going to have a license, the UK Open Government License used by at data.gov.uk is more elegant, freer and satisfies a number of the concerns I cite above and have heard people raise.

So this new data.gc.ca license is a step in the right direction, but still behind the open gov leaders (teaching lawyers new tricks sadly takes a long time, especially in government).

Great site, but not so open data: WellBeing Toronto

Interestingly, the City of Toronto has launched a fabulous new website called Well Being Toronto. It is definitely worth checking out. The main problem of course is that while it is interesting to look at, the underlying data is, sadly, not open. You can’t play with the data, such as mash it up with your own (or another jurisdiction’s) data. This is disappointing as I believe a number of non-profits in Toronto would likely find the underlying data quite helpful/important. I have, however, been told that the underlying data will be made open. It is something I hope to check in on again in a few months as I fear that it may never get prioritized, so it may be up to Torontonians to whold the Mayor and council’s feet to the fire to ensure it gets done.

Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) launches (non-open) data website

It seems the PBO is also getting in on the data action with the launch of a beta site that allows you to “see” budgets from the last few years. I know that the Parliamentary Budget Office has been starved of resources, so they deserve to be congratulated for taking this first, important step. Also interesting is that the data has no license on the website, which could make it the most liberally licensed open data portal in the country. The site does have big downsides. First, the data can only be “looked” at, there is no obvious (simple) way to download it and start playing with it. More oddly still the PBO requires that users register with their email address to view the data. This seems beyond odd and actually, down right creepy, to me. First, parliament’s budget should be free and open and one should not need to hand over an email address to access it. Second, the email addresses collected appear to serve no purpose (unless the PBO intends to start spamming us), other than to tempt bad people to hack their site so they can steal a list of email addresses.

CIDA announces Open Data portal: What it means to Canadians

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For those who missed it, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has announced it is launching an open data portal.

This is exciting news. On Monday I was interviewed about the initiative by Embassy Magazine which published the resulting article (behind their paywall) here.

As (I hope) the interview conveys, I’m cautiously optimistic about the Minister’s announcement. I’m conservative in my reaction only because we don’t actually know what the Minister has announced. At the moment the CIDA open data page is, quite literally, a blank slate. I feel positive because pretty much anything that gets more information about Canada’s aid budget available online is a step in the right direction. I’m cautious however, because the text from the Minister’s speech leads me to believe that she is using the term “open data” to describe something that may, in fact, not be open data.

Donors and partner countries must be accountable to their citizens, absolutely, but both must also be accountable to each other.

Transparency underpins these accountabilities.

With this in mind, today I am pleased to announce the Open Data Portal on the CIDA website that will make our searchable database of roughly 3,000 projects quick and simple to access.

The Open Data portal will put our country strategies, evaluations, audits and annual statistical and results reports within easy reach.

One of the core elements of the definition of “open data” is that it be machine readable. I need to actually get the “data” (e.g an excel spreadsheet, or database I can download and/or access) so that I can play with it, mash it up, analyze it, etc… It isn’t clear that this is on offer. The minister’s announcements talks about a database that allows you to search, and quickly download, reports on the 3000 projects that CIDA funds or operates. A report however, is not data. It may cite data, it may (and hopefully does) even contain data in charts or tables, but if what we are getting is access to reports then this is not an open data portal.

What I hope is happening – and what I advocated for in an oped in the Toronto Star – is that the Minister is launching a true open data portal which will share actual data – not analysis – with Canadians. More importantly, I hope this means Canada will be joining the efforts of Publish What you Fund, as it pushes donor organizations to share their aid data in a single common structure, so that budgets, contributions, projects, timelines, geography and other information about aid can be compared across countries, agencies, and organizations.

Open data, and especially in a internationally recognized standardized format, matters because no one is going to read all 10,000 reports about all 3000 projects CIDA funds. However, if we had access to the data, in a structured manner, there are those at non-profits, in universities and colleges and in the media (among other places) that could map the projects, compare budgets and results more clearly, compare our efforts against those of other countries, and do their own analysis to say, find duplication and overlap. I don’t, for a second, believe that 99.9% of Canadians will use CIDA’s open data portal, but the .1% who do will be able to create products that can inform the rest of us, and allow us to better understand Canada’s role in the world. In other words, Open Data portal could be empowering and educating to a broad number of people. Access to 10,000 reports, while a good step, simply won’t be able to create a similar outcome on any scale. The difference is, quite frankly, dramatic.

So let’s wait and see. I’m excited that the Minister of International Cooperation is using the language of Open Data – it means that she and her staff understand it has currency. What I also hope is that they understand its meaning – so far we have no data on whether they do or do not, and I remain cautiously optimistic, they should, after all, realize the significance of the language they are using. Either way, they have set high expectations among those of us who think about, talk about and work in, this area. As a Canadian, I’m hoping those expectations get fulfilled.

If the Prime Minister Wants Accountable Healthcare, let's make it Transparent too

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Over at the Beyond the Commons blog Aaron Wherry has a series of quotes from recent speeches on healthcare by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in which the one constant keyword is… accountability.

Who can blame him?

Take everyone promising to limit growth to a still unsustainable 6% (gulp) and throw in some dubiously costly projects ($1 billion spent on e-health records in Ontario when an open source solution – VistA – could likely have been implemented at a fraction of the cost) and the obvious question is… what is the country going to do about healthcare costs?

I don’t want to claim that open data can solve the problem. It can’t. There isn’t going to be a single solution. But I think it could help spread best practices, improve customer choice and service as well as possibly yield other potential benefits.

Anyone who’s been around me for the last month knows about my restaurant inspection open data example (which could also yield healthcare savings) but I think we can go bigger. A Federal Government that is serious about accountability in Healthcare needs to build a system where that accountability isn’t just between the provinces and the feds, it needs to be between the Healthcare system and its users; us.

Since the feds usually attach several provisions to their healthcare dollars, the one I’d like to see is an open data provision. One where provinces, and hospitals are required to track and make open a whole set of performance data, in machine readable formats, in a common national standard, that anyone in Canada (or around the world) can download and access.

Some of the data I’d love to see mandated to be tracked and shared, includes:

  • Emergency Room wait times – in real time.
  • Wait times, by hospital, for a variety of operations
  • All budget data, down to the hospital or even unit level, let’s allow the public to do a cost/patient analysis for every unit in the country
  • Survival rates for various surgeries (obviously controversial since some hospitals that have the lowest rates are actually the best since they get the hardest cases – but let’s trust the public with the data)
  • Inspection data – especially if we launched something akin to the Institute for Health Management’s Protecting 5 Millions Lives Campaign
  • I’m confident there is much, much more…

I can imagine a slew of services and analysis that emerge from these, if nothing than a citizenry that is better informed about the true state of its healthcare system. Even something as simple as being able to check ER wait times at all the hospitals near you, so you can drive to the one where the wait times are shortest. That would be nice.

Of course, if the Prime Minister wants to go beyond accountability and think about how data could directly reduce costs, he might take a look at one initiative launched south of the border.

If he did, he might be persuaded to demand that the provinces share a set of anonymized patient records to see if academics or others in the country might be able to build better models for how we should manage healthcare costs. In January of this year I witnessed the launch of the $3 million dollar Heritage Health Prize at the O’Reilly Strata Conference in San Diego. It is a stunningly ambitious, but realistic effort. As the press release notes:

Contestants in the challenge will be provided with a data set consisting of the de-identified medical records of 100,000 patients from the 2008 calendar year. Contestants will then be required to create a predictive algorithm to predict who was hospitalized during the 2009 calendar year. HPN will award the $3 million prize(more than twice what is paid for the Nobel Prize in medicine) to the first participant or team that passes the required level of predictive accuracy. In addition, there will be milestone prizes along the way, which will be awarded to teams leading the competition at various points in time.

In essence Heritage Health is doing to patient management what Netflix (through the $1M Netflix prize) did to movie selections. It’s crowdsourcing the problem to get better results.

The problem is, any algorithm developed by the winners of the Heritage Health Prize will belong to… Heritage Health. This means the benefits of this innovation cannot benefit Canadians (nor anyone else). So why not launch a prize of our own. We have more data, I suspect our data is better (not limited to a single state) and we could place the winning algorithm in the public domain so that it can benefit all of humanity. If Canadian data helped find efficiencies that lowered healthcare costs and improved healthcare outcomes for everyone in the world… it could be the biggest contribution to global healthcare by Canada since Federick Banting discovered insulin and rescued diabetics everywhere.

Of course, open data, and sharing (even anonymized) patient data would be a radical experiment for government, something new, bold and different. But 6% growth is itself unsustainable and Canadians need to see that their government can do something bold, new and innovative. These initiatives would fit the bill.

How the War on Drugs Destabilized the Global Economy

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This is truly, truly fantastic. If you haven’t already read this stunning story from the Guardian: How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico’s murderous drug gangs. This is, in essence a chronicle how the dark and sordid side of banking and about how one US bank – Wachovia – essentially allowed Mexican drug cartels to launder a whopping $378B.

But this interestingly, is just the tip of the iceberg. It turns out that Mexican money may have been the only thing holding the US financial system together. Check out the following and the last paragraph especially (I’ve bolded it, it is so stunning):

More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn – a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico’s gross national product – into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.

“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank’s $12.3bn profit for 2009. On 24 March 2010, Wells Fargo stock traded at $30.86 – up 1% on the week of the court settlement.

The conclusion to the case was only the tip of an iceberg, demonstrating the role of the “legal” banking sector in swilling hundreds of billions of dollars – the blood money from the murderous drug trade in Mexico and other places in the world – around their global operations, now bailed out by the taxpayer.

At the height of the 2008 banking crisis, Antonio Maria Costa, then head of the United Nations office on drugs and crime, said he had evidence to suggest the proceeds from drugs and crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to banks on the brink of collapse. “Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade,” he said. “There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.”

But the more interesting part of the story, that picks up on the above quote by Antonio Maria Costa, lies deeper in the story:

“In April and May 2007, Wachovia – as a result of increasing interest and pressure from the US attorney’s office – began to close its relationship with some of the casas de cambio.”

and, a paragraph later…

“In July 2007, all of Wachovia’s remaining 10 Mexican casa de cambio clients operating through London suddenly stopped doing so.”

In other words from April through July, with increasing intensity, Wachovia got out of the drug money laundering business. Of course, this just also happens to be at the exact same time that the liquidity crisis starts hitting US banks prompting “The Bank Run We Knew So Little About.”

This is not to say that the financial crises was caused by drug money – it wasn’t. All those crazy mortgages and masses of consumer debt created a house of cards that was teetering away. But it could be that the sudden end to access of vast billions of Latin America drug money did tip the system over the edge.

I say this because here in Canada we have a government that not only does not believe in harm reduction as an effective way to deal with the drug problem, but it intends to pursue a prison focused US style approach to crime that even the most ardent US conservatives are calling a failure. And why does this matter? I mention the above stories because it is worth noting the size, scope and complexity of problem with face. This is a structural, systemic problem, not something that is going to be solved by throwing an additional 1,000 or even 100,000 people in jail. $378B. Through one bank. One third of Mexico’s GDP. And that’s all just pure profit. That’s probably 80 times more than we spend on fighting the war on drugs every year. Through one bank.

And, as the US authorities appear to have demonstrated it may be that the only thing more expensive than losing the war on drugs is winning a major battle – as apparently that can throw the entire global financial system into disarray. So if we think that upping the amount we spend on this war by $1B or even $10B is going to make a lick of difference, we’ve got another thing coming. But I suppose in the mean time, it will secure a few votes.

TorStar Op-ed: Liberals have to create a next political centre

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This past Saturday the Toronto Star published the following piece by Taylor Owen and myself on its op-ed page. Thought I’d put it here for those who might have missed it.

Liberals have to create a new political centre

Canadians may have once valued the Liberal party, but they reject what it has become. The reason is simple. The centre is dead. Worse still, Liberals let it die. What once was the pragmatic core of Canadian politics, today is a wasteland devoid of an imaginative, progressive vision, occupied by a largely obsolete electoral strategy.

Don’t believe us? Consider the issues the Liberal party managed over the 20th century. The creation of universal health care and the social safety net. The management of the Canada-U.S. relationship by balancing opportunities for Canadian businesses with our desire to preserve our identity. Engaging Quebec and seeking to affirm its place within the country. Cultivating multiculturalism while simultaneously securing individual rights in a charter. Fostering peacekeeping to ensure local conflicts did not escalate into nuclear confrontation.

These were significant accomplishments that defined three generations of Canadians. They are also no longer relevant.

Today Canadians, especially young Canadians, are confident about themselves and their identity — no longer is there a “lament for a nation.” The sovereignty movement, while not dead, struggles. Individual rights continue to erode discrimination and the hierarchical relationships that impeded free expression and liberty. While some progressives continue to bang these drums, no one should be surprised that they no longer resonate.

In other cases, the solutions offered in the 20th century are no longer relevant. Canadians know — as health care threatens to eat up 50 per cent of provincial budgets and service levels remain mixed — that their health-care system is broken. Young Canadians don’t even pretend to believe a pension system will exist for them. Anyone can see that peacekeeping cannot solve today’s international conflicts.

On all of these issues, the traditional offerings of progressive rings hollow. But there is an opportunity for progressives. An opportunity to build a new centre. A centre that moves beyond the debate between conservatives of the right and conservatives of the left.

On the right is a Conservative party that, at its core, doesn’t believe in the federal government. It’s a vision for Canada grounded in the 1860s, of a minimalist government that is responsible for little beyond law and order and defence. Its appeal is the offer to dismantle the parts of the system that are broken, but in so doing it will leave behind many of those who are protected and enabled by the government.

On the left is a party whose vision is to return Canada to the 1960s. It’s a world of a strong national government, of an even bigger health-care system, social safety net and welfare state. Its appeal is a defence of the status quo at all costs, which in the long run will be many. The conservatism of the left means protecting what is unsustainable. It is the unreformed arc of old ideas.

If there is going to be a new centre between these conservative poles, Liberals will need to stop lying to themselves — and to Canadians. They need to acknowledge — loudly and publicly — that they failed to reform the institutions of the 20th century and, as a consequence, health care is broken and the welfare state as presently constructed is financially insatiable. A progressive future lies in taking these challenges head on rather that passively avoiding them.

Moreover, a modern progressive view of government needs to meet the consumer expectations created by Google, Apple and WestJet. Fast, effective, personalized, friendly. In short, progressives need a vision that not only safeguards citizens against the extremes of a globalizing market, but also meets the rising expectations Canadians have of services in the 21st century — all this in a manner that will be sustainable given 21st century budgets and demographics.

No party has figured out how to accomplish this, on the left or the right. And trolling through 20th or 19th century ideologies probably isn’t going to get us there.

The future for progressives rests in figuring out the political axes of the 21st century around which new solutions can be mined and new coalitions built.

We suspect these will include open vs. closed systems; evidence-based policy vs. ideology; meritocratic governance vs. patronage; open and fair markets vs. isolationism; sustainability vs. disposability, and emergent networks vs. hierarchies. It is these political distinctions, not the old left versus right, that increasingly resonate among those we speak to.

The challenge is enormous but progressives have done it before. In the 19th century, the rise of industrial capitalism led to a series of tense societal changes, including the emergence of an urban working class, increasing inequality and the terrifying possibility of total war.

A centrist party turned out to be the place where three generations of pragmatically driven progressives were able to lead nearly a century of Canadian politics. Doing this again will require starting from scratch, but that is the task at hand.

David Eaves is a specialist on public policy, collaboration and open source methodologies.

Taylor Owen is a Banting Fellow at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia

An open letter to new MPs

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Dear new MPs,

Congratulations on being elected! You’ve every right to be excited – as a fellow Canadian who is hoping that the house can be changed, I’m excited too. You are the largest group of young MPs to hit the house in a long time. You’re also mostly from the same province (Quebec) and of the same party (NDP). So you have a lot in common – you can act collectively. Don’t be afraid to use that power.

Because as exciting as everything is, things are stacked against you. Remember. Ottawa has worked itself into a nice groove around how MPs are supposed to behave and how the house is supposed to work. Everything will be pushing you into that mold.

First, you’ll arrive in Ottawa (maybe you already have) and you’ll partake in the one day (half-day?) new MP orientation. Don’t expect much. If you want a real orientation, find Aaron Wherry. Read his article here on why the House is broken (there is this video of him too). This is the orientation you really need.

But the real first test will come when you set up your office. The test will happen so quickly and so subtly you won’t even notice it. It will go something simple like this: you want to use a Mac or an Android phone as an MP. A friendly parliamentary IT staff will deferentially but sternly tell you that for reasons of security and compatibility this isn’t possible. There’ll be a moment of awkwardness and, the next thing you know, you’ll be sitting in your office, using a HP desktop computer with Windows 7 thinking “I’m so lucky to have been set up this quickly…”

Stop. Stop right there.

The real lesson that will be learned there is that – when it comes to parliamentary staff – you will do as you’re told. That you are young enough, pliant enough, naive enough to follow their lead. Remember. You are the elected officials. They are the staff. It’s their job to meet your needs. Not the other way around. If you are going to reshape parliament, make it more open, more democratic, more accessible to a broader group of possible MPs you cannot learn the first lesson they will try to teach you: compliance.

Sadly, it isn’t just the staff that will be trying to prod you into the gentle groove of an MP. One of your biggest obstacles will be your party elders. They will dangle a big carrot in front of you: the opportunity to be in government and the opportunity to be in Cabinet. In exchange they too will want compliance. You must read from the party line, sit on this committee, not that committee, ask this questions in the house, don’t ask that one. Be a good MP.

Stop. Stop right there.

Don’t believe it. Maybe you will have an opportunity to be in government, and even cabinet (and even if you do, even these positions are so controlled by the PMO as to have varying degrees of autonomy). But the reality is: it isn’t likely. Few people get into cabinet. Still more starkly, many people don’t get re-elected (it happens to even the best of politicians). You may think you are playing a long game, but the truth is, the opportunity to be difficult, to demand change in how the house works, to cause a fuss, is now. Not tomorrow. If you wait, you may think you’ll be able to change the house one day in the future, but in reality, the house will change you. The best way to change our house of parliament is to have a group of young MPs angry, hungry, carefree and naive enough to simply demand it. That’s you. That’s right now.

I don’t pretend it will be easy. You’ve got the government, parliamentary staff, even your own party leaders working against you in different ways. But don’t underestimate your influence. Even the small things you can demand could make everybody’s lives more interesting. Make CPAC pan out when MPs are talking so we can see how few people are in the house. Demand a bigger research budget so that you can display some independent thought on issues and not rely on your party’s research bureau for all your information. Blog about your committees so that Canadians don’t have to just rely on Kady O’Malley (who can only be in so many committee meetings at one time).

You’ve got a chance to make a fuss. I hope you’ll take it. But either way. Good luck.

PS Sorry for any typos, sadly lost the first draft of this, so have been rushing to publish this version before flying out the door.

How not to woo Liberals

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There is no doubt that many Liberals are engaged in some (much needed) deep introspection.

But on the issue of a merger with the NDP Douglas Bell’s piece in the Globe may have been one of the worst thing proponents (on either the NDP or Liberal side) could have asked for.

Bell’s piece, which links to a West Wing clip that ends with the line “there needs to be TWO parties” is beset by all the things NDPers claim to hate about Liberals: smugness, hypocrisy, and callous insensitivity. If this is the opening move in a potential merger, it may have been on of the shortest windows of opportunity in the history of politics.

It begins with the fact that Bell – by choosing this video – suggests that Liberals have rolled over on every major policy issue and lack backbone. For a party whose members likely feel they have innumerable social justice victories under their belt this is not an effort to woo those with ideas and a desire to advance the progressive cause, it is cheap effort to insult them. While I work as a negotiation consultant, you don’t need to be an expert to know that if you are looking to create a partnership, mocking the people you seek to engage isn’t an effective a strategy.

What makes the piece more galling is that Bell himself rejected a proposition in the past. Indeed, only last year Bell noted that a merger might not work and worse, might compromise the NDP. Better, he said, for the NDP to wait until conditions were more in its favour. Of course, now that the tables have turned, Bell expects Liberals to do the very thing he himself was unwilling to do: compromise. If the terms of a merger are do as I say, not as I do, they probably aren’t that appealing. The NDP was patient and successful. Bell’s tone will – I suspect – leave Liberals thinking they’d be better off follow his advice from last year and not his dictate from this week. Plan, build and wait until conditions are more favorably. (Note to Liberals: if it should come to pass, be sure that you write a significantly kinder offer to the NDP.)

But more importantly, the longer term implications of the election are still unknown. Most federalists would agree that if you have several referendums for independence and win only the most recent one, your claim to secede is not completely firm. The same probably applies to elections. The NDP has run in elections for decades. A single “win” which sees it sitting in opposition (not government) does not a viable or sustainable alternative governing party one make. Today the NDP is much, much closer to that goal and its members have a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate that they can be a national political party that sustains a strong base. Many hope it can. But to simply demand Liberals fold up camp because of a single NDP success (not victory) takes the arrogance of well, the worst type of liberal.

Moreover, speaking of secession votes, there are real risks ahead. It’s worth noting that the NDP’s gains were largely made by opening up the pandora’s box of national unity. As bad as the Liberal’s “snakebite” may be in Quebec, the NDP may have just received its own, far more potent one, the type that bit Muroney. I pray, for the country, they have not. But consider this quote from the NDP’s youngest MP: “What I’ve said throughout the campaign is that sovereignty, we know, won’t happen in Ottawa. As long as Quebec hasn’t decided, why not have a [federal] government in Quebec’s image?… That’s how I campaigned: As long as we’re in Canada, why not have a government in Quebec’s image.” In short, the NDP is a pit stop on the way to sovereignty. If the choice is between defining a progressive agenda at the cost, or defining a progressive agenda within Canada – I suspect that most Liberals (and many Canadians) will choose the latter. Can Layton and the NDP make this coalition stick? And is it a coalition federalists want to be part of? These are tough questions and tradeoffs that will have to be debated. They are also debates that, historically, have ended in tears for all involved.

Does the country need two parties? Unclear. What is clear is that such an end game won’t emerge on the left if the terms of debate are defined by insults. The attitude in Bell’s article suggests that any kind of reconciliation and merger will be much, much more difficult then some people assume. Ultimately, politics is driven by those who believe in a vision they want others to share, to win them over that vision needs to feel inclusive for people, not degrading. I’m sure the post felt fun to write but it is hard to see how it advanced the cause of the NDP.