The Urgency Of Defeating Gallant (From A Progressive Perspective)

Brian Gallant is showing every sign that he wants this election to be decided upon ideology, not competence.  Pretty much every Liberal ad, tweet, and scripted utterance has been built around a simple theorem:

We spent money on X

Blaine Higgs might spend less on X

Re-elect Premier Gallant, because otherwise less money will be spent on things you care about.

Now, the “X” is usually something pretty good – the talented tap-dance team of health care and education usually lead the list – so as a clash of political theory it might well work for the Liberals.  It is a common play for the Liberal playbook across Canada, because it not only defines the choice with the Conservatives in a way Liberals like, but it also forms the basis for an appeal to NDP/Green voters.  For voters on the left, the Liberal appeal is usually that the blue menace is so great that one must accept the Liberals, with all their flaws.

The central question is, then, considering how Brian Gallant has governed for four years, has he earned re-election on his proposition – that he will protect and further progressive goals.

Here, I am defining “progressive goals” broadly and from this perspective.  I believe that government has a role to play in society, in particular, in programmes that provide equal opportunity and/or a minimum safety net that allows people to remain connected to the economy and society.  I believe it is legitimate to ask those who do well to pay a little more for those programmes.  That does not mean that tax rates can be confiscatory, or ignore realities of competition.  It does not excuse waste, or government expansion into areas where the market does fine.  But there is a role for government.

That’s a broad definition, and I accept that.  Likely moderate Dippers, Red Tories, and many small-l liberals could nod along.  But that is the vision Gallant says he is defending and the mainstream that he says Higgs is outside.  And by that vision – progressive taxes that support a safety net and social programmes – how has Gallant done?

I actually believe that Brian Gallant, and his enablers, have put our social safety net at greater risk than any government in years.  I further believe that their defeat is necessary to protect the social safety net.  I am willing to explain that.

The Fiscal Oxygen

There are limits on how much government can tax.  Eventually you run into one constraint or another – the competition of nearby provinces and states, the mobility of business, the black market, or just the political tolerance of citizens.  For a while sin taxes were the one thing government could raise without a huge outcry.  After all, who could oppose making it harder to afford cigarettes? Then black markets appeared, and government had to reluctantly roll back cigarette taxes (and enthusiastically enforce laws to keep beer shoppers from driving to Quebec).  A small province like ours can only be so far out of synch with neighbours before diminishing returns kick in.

At any time, there is a small list of “plausible tax hikes” government could try if they want to increase revenue.  Think of these as the “In Case of Fiscal Emergency, Break Glass” tax hikes.  The Gallant regime has seen broken glass everywhere.  Pretty much every bit of tax room has been used up to fund this premier’s four years.  Tax the wealthy?  Done.  Raise the HST? Sure.  Property tax hikes?  Yes, to the point of scandal and overreach.  Gas tax? Done.

Even after all those taxes, our credit rating has been issued a caution.  So the borrowing is also at the outer limits.  Brian Gallant has deemed his ideas, his vision for government, to be so vital that he has sucked up all the fiscal tax and borrow room any aspiring progressive could use.  This is either an investment in the greatest expansion of the social safety net in history, or an act of self-aggrandizement by a premier so the thralls of the self that Emperor Narcissus would blush.  If he spent all the money anyone could use, one would expect social programmes to be stronger.  So, what are the results?

Spending Without Results

Quick challenge – name one statistical indicator on the social side which has improved since 2014.  In education, literacy scores are down.  In health care, wait times for everything from surgery to physician rostering are up.  Enrollments in post-secondary education are down.  And this is in areas where the government has bothered to keep tabs on results at all.  In several cases now in education, testing simply got cancelled, as it did conveniently around the student scores that would have allowed for a comparison with immersion entry points. 

I’ve tried to generously think of a measurable social problem government has planned to improve and improved.  Health care access? PSE enrollment? Mental health professionals? Reading scores? Adult literacy? Poverty rates? Tuition fees? Population growth? Family court wait times?  I mean, anyone can spend more money.  Inflation and collective agreements force it on you even if you hide in your office.  But what social cause seems to animate the Liberals’ quest for power?  What are they passionate about fixing?

You can even think more generally – what would be one case where government identified a social ill, put forward a plan to fix it and provided a statistical indicator to say “here is how you will know if it is working”?  If you’re struggling to think of one, that is not some nagging academic concern.  That framework – identify the problem, plan a solution, measure results – is the most basic expectation of competent government.  Government plans are often hidden when the money gets spent, or so vague they amount to picture books that say "Things will get better."

That problem – a lack of basic competence – has been this government’s Achilles Heel.  Too often, they have lacked the pretense of having any core belief that lasts for more than 15 minutes.  Today, Premier Gallant brags of having committed to hiring 200 new teachers, but he fired 200 teachers in his first budget, and did so after pledging in Opposition not to fire teachers.  In Opposition, Mr. Gallant blasted the Conservatives for rolling back Liberal tax cuts, but today enthusiastically raises taxes and suggests that Blaine Higgs is a cruel Visigoth at the gates of decency for expressing doubts about it.  On post-secondary education, Minister Don Arsenault  cut the tuition rebate program and rolled back the timely completion programs that were launched in 2009 by…..Minister Don Arsenault. A programme review was much ballyhooed, then shelved.  In short, one never gets the sense that there has ever been any plan, principle, or policy that can survive the lure of tomorrow’s shiny object.  This isn’t the Gang Who Can’t Shoot Straight.  They are the Gang That Doesn’t Know What To Shoot At So They Shot Off Their Toe.

When social problems have found them, where due to inaction or incompetence a problem grows to the point where others ask, the cabinet has shown a curious lack of interest in the problem.  Steve Horsman, the Minister responsible for child protection, has repeatedly responded to questions about children in his charge showing up neglected or worse with the kind of glazed-over wonder one would expect from a man who was just sent here from an alternate universe, only to find he’s been made minister of something against his will.  Minister Landry, asked why the government made its tuition bursary programme less generous than the Ontario programme it copied, literally ran from the room.  The Education Minister rose in the Legislature to state that he wasn’t worried about declining student reading scores because he himself had performed poorly in school, and here he was, being a minister like a big boy.  This was done with a straight face.

It would be sad, if it weren’t so serious.  Even a right-wing government of Liberal nightmares might, while neglecting the social side, leave some taxing and spending room available for those who might come later.  In their rush to brag of having spent more, the Gallant government has done absolutely nothing on the social side and they’ve used up all the money that someone more passionate and useful could have used.  That isn’t just wasteful – it sets social progress back.

And, Actually, Not Much Spending

Part of the reason why the results have been lousy on the social side under the Gallant government is because, in truth, they haven’t really been investing in the social side of the ledger.  In many cases, the things they attack Blaine Higgs for wanting to cut are areas where they have a pretty lousy record.

On education spending, they delivered the largest cut to school districts in a quarter century in the 2014-15 budget, firing teachers and closing schools.  Their overall rate of spending on education has gone up far less than the Graham or Lord governments, and about the same as the Alward government.  For all the hype about the “free” Tuition Access Bursary, it was set to such a low qualifying point that 80% of those eligible were already getting federal bursaries equal to “free” tuition.  In fact, the programmes and tax credits cancelled at the same time took millions more away from students than TAB gave.  Health spending is lower under Gallant than under Graham.  The poverty reduction plan has seen every element cancelled, and the Department of Social Development received a real dollar cut under Gallant for the first time in 17 years.  The only anti-poverty announcement of any significance has been a grant of $10million over 5 years for Saint John policy groups to study poverty – cruelly, this money will not actually reach anyone living in poverty, so there will be a fair bit to study.  And on minimum wage, the Gallant government has been more miserly than any government in my lifetime in terms of percentage increases.

This is not to deny the fact that the government can claim to have spent more – much more – in the last four years.  They can claim to have spent aggressively.  They simply have not spent much of it on health and education and social programmes, much as those concepts have reappeared magically in Liberal campaign ads.

But if a Liberal vote is not a vote for social spending, what spending are they really defending?

What the government has spent on is clear from a review of the budget.  The largest growth areas have been infrastructure projects and grants to private business.  The Gallant government has managed the feat of becoming more statist without actually being more progressive.  Money is not taken from the well-off and provided to the less well-off.  Money is taken from everyone and given to the politically connected in the form of pavement and subsidies.  The timing of projects is often political, rising and falling with the political timetable, and sometimes seeing phantom announcements that don't align with any budget at all.

As we saw in the last fiscal update, government is growing debt beyond the rate of annual deficits by expanding capital budgets.  We have seen a rush of government spending announcements, released in such a rush that they have come out before any infrastructure plan, and even before the Legislature has actually approved them.  In the recent case of nursing homes, there is no pretense that government has even budgeted enough to build everything they are announcing.

This isn’t just a concern about contempt for Parliament (although it is that).  It is a reminder that the spending the Liberals have favoured is the most political, least policy-driven spending in which government can engage.  Unlike education and health spending, which takes place within certain parameters and has to meet particular outcomes, infrastructure spending has often been driven by raw politics and Cabinet whims. 

If the infrastructure spending has been opaque and mysterious, the corporate welfare has been more galling.  In general, corporate welfare has gone to two types of companies – those who don’t need it (the TD Bank) and those who can’t compete in the free market (Sears).  Under Gallant, we have been treated to a culture of non-accountability for these grants, with Opportunities New Brunswick officials smugly telling MLAs they have no right to inquire of jobs promised at multimillion dollar ribbon cuttings have ever materialized.  These questions seem more relevant than ever when we have seen past grant recipients – IBM, BMM  – gobble up their grants and then cut or never create jobs.

In some cases, we are bidding only against ourselves.  We have seen the Gallant government lavish money on marijuana companies, even to the point of giving one company financial help to ensure a supply of recreational marijuana.  You might ask when it become a concern worthy of the public purse to ensure the supply of a recreational drug when the free market is available.  You might ask, but the answer is rarely forthcoming.  Yet, one of Canada’s largest marijuana companies, Tilray in Nanaimo, British Columbia, chose that location despite a refusal by government to offer subsidies.  As a report prepared for local government showed, Nanaimo won against places offering government funds by offering a better business environment – something which would favour all competitors equally but perhaps rob government of ribbon cuttings.  Yet the Gallant Liberals speed towards subsidized companies offering product through a statist pot monopoly that will lose money in the first year.  You might not recall any public debate on the merits of reducing the public funds available for schools so that access to recreational drugs could become part of the public weal.  That’s because there was no public debate, just a government communications plan where the mind and soul of a government should be.

Again, the lack of a plan is striking.  Premier Gallant used to call subsidies a "short term fix", and not a real solution.  Now, he hands out payroll rebates like his political life depends upon it.  Grants often seem driven by political timing or companies’ connections to the ruling party.  (One minister openly encouraged businesses to purchase tickets to a Liberal fundraiser to discuss their business projects.  While I am not so naïve to believe that the Gallant Liberals are the first to sell access, they are the first I’ve seen openly brag about doing it).  Too often, entrepreneurs are deciding projects based upon what will please the government rather than what will work in the market.

The orgiastic splurge has been driven by the worst kind of junk economic analysis.  From the 2014 campaign on, government has continued to offer studies showing that throwing millions of borrowed dollars at projects has “economic impact”, meaning that it gives dollars to people who will likely spend those dollars.  Smart readers will notice that this is a low bar – every project has some economic impact.  Throwing money off the back of a truck in the local parade, a la Eva Peron, would have economic impact.  One thing these studies never do, at least under the Liberals, is study the relative impact of one spending project versus other uses of the same money – a basic calculation before spending any finite resource.  Yet the Liberals continue to gorge as long as some policy analyst can show an economic analysis, which is the public policy equivalent of stating, at 1:55 a.m., that you will only go home from the bar with someone if they can be proven to have a pulse.  It’s an existentially low bar.

The bottom line is that since 2014, the number of public sector jobs has gone up by 10,000 and the number of private sector jobs has fallen by 5,600.  And now, more private sector employees are now on the public payroll.  It does not take a crystal ball to see the problem.  If there are more people being paid through taxes, and fewer private sector people paying taxes, AND government also starts paying private sector employees to do work for private companies…..who exactly pays for teachers and nurses and social workers and scientists and those who must do the public’s work?  A progressive government that follows the example of successful social pioneers would choose to fund social programmes through fair taxes upon a roaring private economy.  The Gallant government has chosen to underfund social programmes to fund a patronage-driven, statist economy in which teachers and nurses are squeezed out by a need to put private companies on the public payroll.  If you care about public services, there can be no greater urgency than the defeat of the Gallant government before the contradictions collapse upon themselves.

If you see government as a force for good, then you will care about the public trust and political functioning of government.  And it is on this question that the case is most urgent to defeat the Gallant Liberals.

Our Trumpian Premier

This heading is designed to be provocative, so let me start by noting that Brian Gallant has a number of public and personal qualities that deserve praise.  He is, as many of his generation are, comfortable with diversity and welcoming in his actions towards all.  I fear no truck with the alt-right from this premier, quite the opposite.  He is generally polite and proper where Trump is a norm-shattering disaster.  And, of course, while Premier Gallant has his political mentors, Dominic LeBlanc is a much more palatable handler than Vlad Putin.  I can also say that on some policy fronts – the recent changes to the Employment Standards Act and his recruitment of female candidates, the Premier deserves some praise.

Yet the damage Trump has done is by his wanton destruction of norms, institutions and ground rules.  Trump is truly sui generis in his attacks on a free press, judicial oversight, and the very idea of facts.

Yet Trump did not develop in a vacuum.  He feeds on the cynicism borne when people stop expecting any politician to play by any rules.  While I despise cynicism because it winds up rewarding the most brazen liars and sleaziest backroom officers, I do know that it grows when politicians are willing to bend the rules and disrespect institutions for short-term gain.

If Brian Gallant is re-elected, it will encourage more cynicism and move us closer to the “biggest liar wins” rule of Trump.  And Gallant has conducted himself in a way that is not politics as usual, because he has broken norms that Premiers McKenna, Lord, Graham and Alward did not.  Consider the following:

·         Within days of being sworn in, Team Gallant became the first government ever to unilaterally change the rules of the Legislature without an all-party consensus.  And the changes – giving New Brunswick the fewest sitting days of any provincial assembly – were done brazenly to weaken an institution for the benefit of the government.  This was new.  Even Premier Lord, faced with a 1-seat majority and a difficult Opposition, refused to move unilaterally to change the rules of the game.  Despite government’s Orwellian talking point that it was “modernizing” the Legislature, it showed a premier who saw decades of convention as meaningless compared to his immediate political needs.

·         The Gallant government has been more willing than its predecessors to resist the independent oversight of legislative officers.  The unexplained defenestration of respected Medical Officer Eilish Cleary, with a severance package that screams wrongful dismissal, is the most egregious example, followed as it was by a revamp of public health that apparently no one wanted.  But the attempted changes to the Ombudsman role, the surly underfunding of the Auditor-General, and even the Premier’s haughty dismissal of a court order to stop a school closure as “advice” all point to a government which – from its head down – struggles to accept objective truth and independent analysis.  And this is without calculating the severance packages that seem to have a risen from firings that were simply partisan revenge, which have cost taxpayers millions.

·         The government visibly leans towards secrecy to a worrisome degree.  When there are clear failings of government – invented property tax assessments and contaminated beaches come to mind – the Premier has often seemed to run interference more than he has shown leadership.  The property tax imbroglio saw a judge hired and given a mandate carefully crafted to avoid any study of how the dishonest assessments occurred, only to see the judge leave when the Auditor-General offered to run a more fulsome review. And court time and lawyers’ fees have been used to hide basic details, from severance packages to health care contracts, from the public.

·         The ethical standards to which the Premier holds Cabinet have declined.  I once saw Shawn Graham red the riot act to his team about avoiding false statements and checking pronouncements with officials.  Premier Gallant watched CBC show a cabinet minister making 5 false statements in 55 seconds without doing anything but sending him out to obfuscate the next day. Government charts are fudged.  The discovery of obvious factual errors in ads just lead to the Premier doubling down.  Most ministers cannot explain at the most elementary level the reason for policy decisions, and this has led to continued public frustration of reporters who cannot get interviews, and the sad spectacle of apolitical public servants being sent out to defend policy decisions to a degree unforeseen in past governments.

·         Politics has never been pure of motive, but the triumph of politics over evidence has been notable under Gallant for just whom the government is willing to ignore to get its way.  Most notable have been decisions that affect children – the moving of mental health services to Campbellton over the objection of every professional and the disgust of former Advocate Bernard Richard, the cancellation of school tests and refusal to await results of Grade 3 immersion before changing the programme (which was then promptly shown to have raised test scores), and the closure of schools without economic savings being proven all stand out because, usually, even hardened pols hesitated to pursue petty politics when kids were involved.  That was a good norm.  Gallant broke it.

Conclusion

The ads will tell you that Premier Gallant is running as a champion of progressive government.  Yet the values government needs to survive – evidence-based policy, truth-based public debate, and a respect for basic principles of good government – have been under attack in a way that would have drawn bipartisan censor twenty years ago.  Further, by being loose with public money while redirecting it away from social programs and into pork, patronage and pavement, Premier Gallant has put social programmes at greater risk than even the stingiest right-winger could.  We have used up credit, tax room and a good global economy while improving neither economic growth or the social safety net. We are now very vulnerable to a downturn unless we change course..

Progressives must not rally to the Gallant government’s aid.  Those that do are, by innocent error or institutional interest, mistaking statism with social policy and spending with results.  Those who want to preserve the vital role of government in society should deny their vote to this wolf in liberal clothing.  What I make of the alternatives is for the next missive.

The Best Of Everything -- Thanks, Tom Petty

He always got the first line right.  So acknowledging that, right there, is how I’ll use my first line.  

Tom Petty nailed more first lines than any songwriter I can name.  His vignettes, usually about romantics who were chasing a dream, screwing one up, or trying to keep one alive, never crept into focus.  They slammed right in to view, telling you right where you were.  You knew where you stood with a Tom Petty song.

The displaced Southerner of “Rebels”, who we meet already hollering “Honey, don’t walk out/I’m too drunk to follow”.  The boyfriend, whistling past trouble in “Listen To Her Heart”, who tells you the straight up deal is that “He thinks he’s gonna take her away with his money and his cocaine”.  The wistful loner who recalls “It was nearly summer, we sat on your roof.  We smoked cigarettes and stared at the moon” tells you immediately what kind of song “Even The Losers” will become.  And the women in Petty’s world come into the narrative fully formed, too, whether they are good girls who love their mama; they work in a night club ‘cause that’s what her mama did, or were an American girl raised on promises.

What we do when those promises come due, and how we deal when they are denied to us and become hard promises, is a whole big part of who we are.  Your teachers call that “character”.  In many ways, it’s life – figuring out what’s out there worth chasing, running it down, and dealing with the obstacles in our way.  Most of our life, on the quiet days, we are in the process of doing one of those things.  And that’s where we find Tom Petty’s music jangling along.  If he shows up on almost everyone’s “soundtrack of my life” list, it’s probably because that’s what he writes about.

That’s why he’s been my favourite artist since I was nine years old.  That’s why I’m coming too damn close to breaking my rule that it is stupid to cry over losing celebrities you didn’t really know.

My generation is at the age where our rock stars die.  Maybe it hits us so hard because the art form allows us to know them so well.  Singers who write their own songs develop a voice and a personality that gives us an intimacy with them.  When they express what we are feeling before we even know it ourselves, they become part of our lives.  They aren’t our parents.  But they are that cool older sibling we can talk to, the one who’s got enough years on us to get our respect but is still enough of a peer to get us.  Even if it’s a one way conversation, that voice can be as comforting as if they can hear us.  After all, they write like they already did.

So, no apologies.  I feel like my cool older brother Tom died, and I’m sad about it.  I’m going to tell you what he said to me over forty years, and why it stuck with me.

Tom Petty was classically stoic.  The ancient stoics believed that we never lost anything, because nothing was ever really ours.  If you lost your house, or your money, or even someone you loved, they were simply restored to wherever they were when you didn’t have them.  Petty, raised in a difficult home and a town where he was a perpetual outsider, always seemed to keep the same emotional distance.  His protagonists were a resilient bunch. They faced down all manner of heartache.  They screwed up what they had chasing something they couldn’t even know.  You could be kidnapped, tied up, taken away and held for ransom in “Refugee”.  Maybe your mother was in a clinic and your father had no job, like the “cute little dropout” we meet in “Zombie Zoo”.  You could be stuck in a One Story Town.  As Petty sang on a quirky little “Hard Promises” cut, you could put up with it for a little while, as long as you were working on something big.

For a while in my twenties, I was struck by how obstacles in Petty’s world appeared without explanation or analysis.  They were just….there, they appeared, and you dealt with them.  For a while, I used to think this made him a more simplistic songwriter than his fellow heartland rockers Springsteen and Mellencamp, whose work was more overtly political and explored causes.  Mellencamp knows what went wrong when the Farmers’ Bank foreclosed in “Rain On The Scarecrow”.  The Boss always told you who was closing down the textile mills in his hometown.  With age, I began to see that Petty’s lack of explanation for life’s obstacles were not the result of being incurious, but a world view that told you that hard times were part of the journey.  You didn’t spend time wondering why times were hard.  You just kept running down a dream, you learned to fly, you didn’t back down even if they stood you up at the gates of hell, because these obstacles were transient.   

As he tells us on a quietly powerful “Mojo” track, “There’s something good coming.  There has to be.”  And when you know that, what kind of explanation do you need?  In Petty’s world, the nobility comes from the struggle itself and even defiance when it’s called for.  That always made his work powerful for me.  In a world where we all read motivational books and need daily affirmations to know why we keep going, Petty tells us that perseverance is its own reward, and that life is about kicking back even when it’s hard.  Hell, drop the “about”.  Life IS kicking back when it’s hard.  Tom told me that.

In love, Petty’s work was equally accepting of hard times and hard promises.  He was not Don Henley, whose beautiful “Heart Of The Matter” finds acceptance by analyzing the breakup, chalking it up to “pride”, “self-assurance” and times that are so uncertain.  In Petty’s world, love doesn’t owe you an explanation.  One of his best album cuts is “Straight Into Darkness”, where he tells us “there was a moment when I really oved her, then one day the feeling just died”.  In “Letting You Go”, he opens with a similarly blunt “I used to think that when this was all over, you might feel different about me”.  At no point does he demand an explanation – the object of his affection just didn’t feel different after all.   It was as if he took to heart the counsel of the lover who left him one album earlier on the underrated hit “A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me)”.  After she laughed in his face and told him goodbye, she advised him “Don’t think about it, you could go crazy”.

Again, it is possible to take a critical view of this approach and attribute this to a kind of incuriosity, when so many spurned musical lovers take great pains to understand WHY love has been denied them.  But Petty’s take on love is not because he doubts its power.  When love smiles upon him, he can tell the whole wide world, shout “here comes my girl”.  Even just the potential of love animates “A Thing About You” with a dizzying crash of guitars that simulate the swell of a new crush.  And Petty knows what it means when love dies; one of his crowning achievements is the opener of his post-divorce album “Echo”.  On “Room At The Top”, Petty’s voice quavers like never before as the song builds to a quiet “I love you.  Would you please love me?” before the singer withdraws behind a wall of sound to find some equilibrium.  And arguably the best song he ever wrote is “Insider”, which has nursed many a Petty fan through a hard breakup.  When he describes his ex-partner’s personality and muses “I’m the one who oughtta know/I’m the one left in the dust”, he tells us a lot about the price you pay for letting someone close to you in an uncertain world.  With Petty, one should never mistake acceptance for detachment.

It struck me as meaningful that Petty closes “Into The Great Wide Open” with three tracks – “You And I Will Meet Again”, “Making Some Noise”, and “Built To Last” – that pay tribute to the constants of platonic friendships, rock and roll band mates, and romantic partners.  An album that opens with him starting out “for God knows where, guess I’ll know when I get there” ends with odes to the joys of loyalty to people in your life even as places and things change.  In Petty’s world, the redemptive power in love does not come from understanding it, it comes from giving it even through dark times.  Love is mysterious, but when it perseveres through hard times it is powerful and redemptive.  Like life itself, love gathers its power through resilience against the odds.  

And love is sweeter in Petty’s world because women are strong personalities who can make their own choices, not just objects for pursuit.  They can pay your tickets and leave you out in the thicket when you’re a screwup, like in “Rebels”.  And make no mistake, Petty may sing “Here Comes My Girl” with pride and joy, but it’s her who “looks me in the eye and says ‘we’re gonna last forever’”.

As I grew older, Petty’s work began to add an important element to its theme of determination and grit against long odds.  Petty’s later work addresses disappointment and preaches benevolence and acceptance as a way to deal with the times when the struggle falls short.  The benevolence you see creeping in on “Southern Accents” with its eulogy of an album closer “The Best Of Everything”, when he calls out to a lover past “Wherever you are tonight I wish you the best of everything in the world”. 

 In the criminally-underrated “Square One” he has reached a place of peace with the ups and downs of life.  Summarizing failures and successes, he simply stands at square one and invites a lover to “rest her head” on him.  As the chords keep a quiet constancy, Petty purrs “took a world of trouble, took a world of tears, took a long time to get back here”, but the tone does not hint at a triumph over adversaries as much as an acceptance of the sum of wins and losses, and a peace with wherever the end point of the journey was.  

By the time an older Petty puts out the second Mudcrutch album, he is able to counsel that “people are what people make ‘em, that ain’t gonna change” before asserting at the end “I forgive it all”, hinting that this Petty protagonist, at least, has found enduring love and the rest requires only benevolence toward the rest of the world.  Even if you did do him like that, or if you got lucky when he found you, anger at some point gave way to peace.

I hope that Petty, the restless romantic of my youth, found that same peace himself as he wound down his final tour and went home.  It would be foolish to think I know him because I know his art.  He surely had his demons – who doesn’t? – but the Petty who spoke to me deserves the peace he counselled me as I got older and youthful dreams became hard-won wisdom.  Whether the real Petty held that kind of benevolence and loyalty I do not know. 

 I do know that when I saw him live, I found it genuinely affecting when he thanked the audience for holding up lighters through a ballad. “I never get tired of that”, he told us, putting himself in our place as a fan even as he was also the star.  Certainly his life, whether withholding an album from his record company until they rolled back a price hike and speaking of his enjoyment of hearing how we experienced his music, seemed to show a genuine connection to his fans.  Indeed, “The Last DJ” is widely seen as his weakest album in part because he could not shake his pedantic anger at those who lose sight of the music for profit.  If the connection was only image, it was cultivated far better than any other part of his persona.

In the end, in the reality of his fans, an artist is his work.  And as the cool older brother I adopted through a child’s early fandom, Tom Petty taught me well.  We could do worse than to learn that there are promises out there for all of us, even the losers; that to chase those promises down is its own reward; that setbacks are inevitable but that perseverance is its own virtue; and that when the struggle ends we should strive towards peace with ourselves, loyalty to those that stuck by us, and acceptance of everyone else.  If that was the soundtrack to my life, I could have done a lot worse.

And, Tom, wherever you are tonight – thanks.  I wish you the best of everything in the world, and I hope you found whatever you were looking for.

Explaining Well-Meaning Failure -- NB Second Language Training Edition

The news that only 32 people took advantage of the government’s $1Million programme to provide free second language training to unemployed New Brunswickers last year has been met with surprise from some quarters.

In particular, the minister responsible seemed disappointed, stating “You can’t just stay there and complain that you can’t get a job opportunity because you don’t know the second language but you are not doing anything about it.”

Let me say at the outset that, while Don and I famously have our differences, I think his support for bilingualism is heartfelt, sincere, and admirable.  This is not a hit piece.

But his statement confirms what the numbers suggest – Don doesn’t understand, on a human level, what the reality is for unemployed people.  Or for Anglophones who have not mastered a second language.

Often, our second language training in New Brunswick is terrible.  And I think it is because we design programmes for their symbolic value rather than their educational value.  We ask “Will this show we support bilingualism?” rather than “Will this make more actual people bilingual?”.  And we should be mature enough to break that bad habit, because bilingualism is here to stay.  We have to stop fighting the ghosts of the 1960s.

To understand the failure of this program, we have to understand one fundamental thing about what it is to be unemployed.  If you want to know what path an unemployed adult will choose, first ask the question “What will most quickly get this person into a job?”

For example, if I offered free philosophy degree courses to unemployed New Brunswickers, there would be low take up.  Even though statistically people with arts degrees, even in Philosophy, earn more than those with no degree at all, it would be a tough sell.  It takes four years to learn enough philosophy to get a degree, and even then the skills are general – there is no automatic job afterwards.  Some doors open, but that is the most that can be said with certainty.

But isn’t that also true, for most, of second language training.

If your skills in French are minimal today, learning a second language is not a quick solution to needing a job.  Because you are not three, six or even twelve months away from speaking French at a level that opens up any jobs.  (I had access to Arabic language training for six months last year.  Do you think I will be applying for any jobs classified Arabic-essential?)  Basically, if you lack the ability to have a basic conversation today, you are years from the point where you will learn French well enough that you can actually use your new French skills to apply for jobs that require French.

It is a great thing, of course, to be able to have basic conversations in Caraquet in French.  But that doesn’t get you hired.

And many unemployed New Brunswickers do not have even minimal French to start with.  (Remember that before Intensive French was introduced in 2008, 98% of non-immersion graduates lacked the ability to use even one sentence spontaneously, and fewer than 10% of graduates completed Immersion).  

Also, that is a number of years needed for the average learner.  Statistically, there would be a higher number of people who struggle to learn languages among the unemployed than there are among the general population.  (There most certainly are high-skill unemployed here, but it is also true that a higher percentage of unemployed adults report having struggled in school than the percentage of employed adults).  That means that many unemployed New Brunswickers likely doubt that, even with time and effort, they will master a second language well enough to make it a certified, employment-related skill.  If you struggle with first language skills, how plausible is it that you will master a second before your EI runs out ( or social assistance rules force you to take the first job available).

So if we understand that unemployed people desperately need jobs because they have kids and mortgages and basic desires to work, and second language training takes years to help an unemployed person get a job, and the government doesn’t help with living expenses while you get “free” training -- why are we surprised that the programme tanked?

For most adult learners, that is the calculation that adult responsibilities force upon us.  The question we ask when deciding whether or not to learn French is not “Would I like to know French?”.  The question is “what professional benefit does that bestow compared to other things I could do with the same time and effort?”

If you are a unilingual worker at a private sector company, you could learn French in 2 to 3 years.  You could also get an MBA and qualify for jobs that don’t require French and pay more.  What will you do?

If you are a Grade 12 student who wants to be a doctor or scientist, you could take Advanced Math in French.  But if you know you go a bit slower in your second language, and you’ll be competing in university for scholarships and med school spots, don’t you have to choose mastering the Math over polishing your French?

If you’re on social assistance and you left school in Grade 10, should you do your high school equivalency first, or learn French?

See the problem?

Many francophones underestimate the struggle for Anglophones to learn French, just as Anglophones underestimate the risk of assimilation.  One group has the second language so present in their lives they need to create spaces away from it, the other struggles to find places to use it and learn it informally.  Neither completely gets the other, which I think is why we see Don Arsenault defaulting to blaming people without jobs for not jumping all over the chance to take a French course instead of asking questions about what these people need.

If we are serious about bilingualism, we wouldn’t do it the way Minister Arsenault did it.  Instead we would:

1.       Fund universities and colleges to offer co-curricular training in French for free while students are already forgoing income to learn.  Make these opportunities free and available outside the programme.

 

2.       Offer French training when it fits an employment plan, but commit to assist learners with student aid and income support to pursue the programme for the time it takes to gain actual certification.

 

3.       Don’t limit programmes to those with the urgency of being unemployed.  The people who will actually learn French are likely those who have the comfort of a paycheque and will take the course for the long-term benefit.  Waiting until someone is unemployed to offer free French training is like waiting until someone is having a heart attack to offer them a free gym membership.

 

4.       Of course, the best time to help as many people acquire a base in French is when they are young and already free to go to school all day.  If starting immersion in Grade 1 is leading to 10% who learn a lot of French and 90% who learn almost none, see if delaying the entry point will allow a broader cross-section of people to graduate knowing enough French that they can quickly get professional certification.  Like, maybe starting in Grade 3 would lead to higher immersion enrollment …..wait, what?....someone did that?  Well, I am sure that the government would build off that, since they want more bilingual people.  That’s here to stay!

 

In all seriousness, bilingualism is not helped if it is simply a way to create an Anglophone elite and it is not available to all in programmes that match reality.  Offering programmes symbolically without asking how learners actually can learn is a waste of time and money.

And blaming unemployed people for government’s failure to act strategically is not good.  Minister, a little more thought and a little less lecturing would be welcome.

 

You Can Say It's A New Normal. I Won't.

A last thought before I swear off political talk for my vacation. I see some friends today recasting what we saw as a rejection of "elites", a cry for "change" or about "forgotten voters". I understand that urge. There are swaths of America that are hurting, and many corporations who moved for profit and cared little for communities left behind have put the system at risk.

But before we all recast this as some cry for change and inclusion, let's remember that we should not normalize that which is cruel, harsh and wrong. To speak of this as only some anti-establishment retaking of government is silly -- as if there were no Hillary supporters in her diverse coalition who haven't known poverty, pain or racism. Surely the Khan family and Trayvon Martin's parents are not to be recast as elites, or blind sheep to the status quo.  And some Trump voters seem to have no tale of woe harsher than having "Happy Holidays" on their Starbucks cup.

No, we can't sanitize this, normalize it, squeeze it into some narrative of change. People didn't just cry for change, they chose THIS change. They saw a man mock a disabled reporter with their own eyes, and were willing to accept it. They heard a man say judges of Mexican origin were biased, they heard him attack a Gold Star family in language that good people call indecent and mock soldiers who get captured, and they watched him run on a platform that involved using his office to lock up his opponent. These should be disqualifying.  People chose to make them acceptable. 

Bruce Springsteen once wrote that a flag stands for what we will do, and what we won't. And America just erased a lot of what used to be "what they won't do". Those rules of decency and humanity mattered. And rejecting them can't just be cast as a vote for "change". 

And they had so little respect for government that they granted a dangerous learning curve to a man who couldn't explain what NATO was or name a constitutional amendment without coaching. That's not snobbery -- these are understandable omissions in many people, but not for a man who applies for a job like President. 

Don't blame the media. Don't blame WikiLeaks. And don't even blame Clinton. Worse campaigns have won. (Trump's was shambolic). 

Trump's basic ignorance of policy and meanness of spirit were clear for anyone who wanted to see them. No one kept it hidden. And indeed, polls show that when his grotesqueness was active, he fell. If he shut up for three days, people forgot. And if so, they wanted to forget. They wanted something he was selling. 

None of this is a call to delegitimize a fair vote. He won. His voters should be engaged as citizens and not mocked or dismissed. But deep down inside, people knew he was too ignorant, too unstable, and too mean for the job. And they chose not just change, but his kind of change. That means there is something ugly they wanted, on some level. And I beg you, don't intellectually normalize things that should remain deviant. That's how stable countries fall down rabbit holes, and you can now see a rabbit hole from here. 

Higgs Wins -- What It Means, and Free Advice

Well, I called the plot twist, but got the ending wrong.  I may have predicted that there would be a surprise endorsement from a Central NB candidate for Monica Barley that would take her to a 3rd ballot win over Mel Norton. But the win, and congratulations, go to Blaine Higgs. 

When Cleveland Allaby and Margaret-Ann Blaney chose Bernard Lord over Norm Betts, they delivered nearly 70% of their delegates to a bilingual Dieppe lawyer with a fresh face. Jake Stewart and Brian MacDonald had, together, nearly 21% of the vote, and less than a fifth of it followed them to Barley, a bilingual Dieppe lawyer with a fresh face.  

"So, if Monica has 940 votes, and we have 1200 votes between us, after our endorsement she should have....860 votes? Are you sure that's right?"

I'd predicted that type of endorsement because in party contexts, it makes sense.  It is the perfect meeting of self-interest and party’s interest. Parties are broad coalitions, and they need leaders of their most divergent factions to join together. And the leader least able to speak to a given faction needs that faction’s leaders more than anyone. The establishment of the party needed Jake Stewart to embrace Monica Barley and bring their people together. And for Jake and Brian, it made sense – they might have more in common with Mike Allen, but for the same reason, Mike Allen doesn't need them as key lieutenants like Monica Barley does. 

This will be a column of threes, and let’s start with THREE REASONS THAT THIS TIME, THE PARTY ESTABLISHMENT COULDN’T PULL IT OFF – “it” being the shotgun wedding between Team Jake and Team Monica.

1. Parties should get used to grassroots rebellions.  From Trump to Corbyn, party members are less likely to follow traditional power-brokers.  Tory voters aren't immune from this global trend, and when Jake Stewart tried to turn his followers’ passion for issues to personal trust, he found out that voters don't follow so easily anymore.

2. The language divide is broader. This would be the most worrisome Tory trend. In 1997, the PC electorate was reflective of the language demographics of New Brunswick (after all, the Valcourt election results were bad, but evenly bad across NB). If the party membership has become disproportionately Anglophone, members may feel less inclined to compromise for the electoral necessity of a leader who bridges the divide.

3. No trend, just timing.  Of course, it might have all been about this particular moment. After all, in 1997 Tories had been thumped three times by McKenna and might have been more willing to consider compromise to win than now, two years removed from power and believing that Gallant may fall on his own. And Lord was a cagey political savant, and handled those divides more easily than Barley seemed to in her impromptu comments on the language commissioner. 

Before the vote, I said Blaine Higgs was like the veggie tray at a Christmas party, in that everyone thought he was good for governing but feared his baggage and dislike of kowtowing to political expediency/necessity (depending on your view). His colleagues find him smart but inflexible, and he has the brand of a smart, straight shooter who also bears scars of Irving employment, CoR membership and pension reform anger. 

Some veggie tray, Lamrock. Don't doubt me again. 

Yet, he prevailed – and he prevailed over a field that had at least two plausible versions of the Lord/Graham/Gallant floor model, a new face with a certain ideological flexibility and limited baggage. So, I might bring forward THREE THINGS THAT HIGGS’ VICTORY MEANS.

1. The experience pendulum is swinging back. A series of short-lived governments led to parties following a bad beat with a new leader who couldn't be tied to the last gang. As governments fell more quickly, that meant parties were discarding past generations of ministers very quickly and the talent pool was increasingly shallow.  Higgs reverses that trend – he managed to sell the idea that he would still represent change if he were the boss, instead of a senior minister. There are ominous signs here for Gallant – the opposition didn't think “we need to find our own Gallant”. They thought – “we need to offer up something that doesn't look at all like Gallant”. We shall see if this reflects a good read on the electorate or just PC opprobrium for the Premier.

2. The bilingual test has been suspended, pending outcome. Ever since John Crosbie flamed out saying that he could deliver for francophones even if he couldn't talk to them, there has been a minimal standard of bilingualism required to be considered for the big job. It may be a sign of the times and tensions that a majority of Conservatives were willing to set that aside, buying Higgs’ argument that he could learn French faster than a bilingual neophyte could learn how to govern.

3. Parties don't just want to win once. The flip side of getting a leader without baggage to have an easier win seemed to exact a price – leaders who had no experience and promised to simply “consult and listen” arrived in office unprepared to make decisions.  When inevitably the world moved on without them, the economy and public services suffered and they grew quickly unpopular. Blaine Higgs may be a tougher sell for a first term, but if he wins, he will have a clearer mandate and be more ready to deliver. After a few weak governments, Tories seemed to be thinking of governing. 

Every new leader changes the political landscape, and so the amateur strategist in me has THREE PIECES OF POLITICAL ADVICE for the parties.  First, for our new Opposition Leader. 

1. Find something you care about beyond the bottom line. Higgs speaks passionately about the need for government to make smart business decisions, and there is an understandable hunger for managerial competence and common sense right now. But one shouldn't let arrogance set in – just as a minister of health can't take over a large company and know everything, a business leader can't assume everything is the same.  A government balance sheet isn't the end in itself – good fiscal management is what allows government to do its vital tasks like health and education well. I'd advise Blaine to not only be passionate about accounting, but to find one big public goal like literacy, senior care or poverty reduction where better management can also make a difference. Talk about this as well. If the Liberals are incompetent, but the only party that cares, that's an even fight. If they're less competent even when delivering liberal goals, then you'll have a big advantage. 

2. Build a team.  People trust you, Blaine. Some don't like you or agree with you, but they think you are smart and sincere. This will horrify you, but take a page from Jean Chrétien and Shawn Graham, two likeable, down-to-earth politicians who weren't afraid to be told their weaknesses and find lieutenants who reassured people. The presence of Paul Martin, John Manley and Marcel Masse next to Chrétien in 1993, and the presence of Mike Murphy, Roland Hache and, well, me, by Shawn Graham’s side in 2006 were not accidents. Some of Gallant’s advertising has echoes of a messiah complex – the leader handles all big announcements, the leader alone is in the ads. You have smart francophone lieutenants, some solid progressive conservatives, some emerging young people to draw from.  Trust me, when your opponent has Don Arsenault as his most visible minister, you can win the team battle.

The Liberal Team, both of them.

3. Define yourself quickly. You won't be able to use the dodge that Alward and Gallant used when their opponents began to implode. You can't just promise to consult on everything. It isn't you, and you won't be good at it because you know better. But the Liberals are already going through your public utterances, ready to describe what makes you different from them. These wedges won't be to your advantage. So you need to define yourself. You need a quick, simple answer on language questions, even if it's a shield and not a sword. If you are going to blast their deficit spending, you need to quickly find something – corporate welfare, local project pork – that you will do differently. You do have baggage, like anyone who served and tried to actually do something. They will want to frame every cut you'd make as something that people lose. Be ready to frame anything you'd cut as something that allows you to do something they haven't, such as balance the budget or fund education.

Now, three unsolicited tips for Liberals

1. Don't overplay the language card. This election may come down to a few swing ridings, likely suburban anglophone ridings. These voters will be afraid of an election that is wholly polarized on language lines, and they will notice your opponent’s unilingualism on their own. But if they see you venturing into demonizing him for it, or suggesting that no accomplishment is worthy of respect if the person doesn't know French, they may decide that you're polarizing things.  The early shots at Higgs were too strong for a government that already has a perception problem. Trust Swing voters to weigh all this. 

2. Curb your appetite for pork. You've got a federal cousin who wants to help. No doubt you've envisioned ribbon cuttings galore to help win a second term.  Just be aware that, if your MLAs give in to a natural politician’s wont to serve your own ridings first, there will be an unbecoming geographic imbalance there. Someone will be adding up roads paved, schools closed, businesses funded, cuts levied – and those already have some serious imbalances that may look like an attack you didn't intend.  You also have an opponent skilled at making an example of the first wasteful project you greenlight and using it to undercut your leader as too green and weak to say no to anyone. You may have to say yes to good projects in Tory ridings even if it ticks off a minister or two with a pet project. Remember that it may put the government at risk if you only say yes to your own. 

3. Get ready to choose. Somewhere, there's an old memo from me to the 2010 Liberal campaign team urging the party to embrace a left-right campaign. The thinking was, if two-thirds of people want your leader gone, issue divides are your friend. David Alward did this in 2010 – having won power as a guy who would consult and find consensus, he ran as a premier taking a tough-if-divisive stand on fracking. It was smart – fracking was a 50/50 issue, which was a better focus for the PCs than just asking voters to re-elect a premier with a 29% approval rating. 

2010 was "Say Maybe". 2014 was "Say Yes". 29% approval ratings do that. 

The Liberals have tried to indulge the dream of being beloved by all.  In a time when people generally don't like their governments, incumbents need to embrace the fact that elections will be 60-40 fights, and to choose to focus on issues where they have the 60%. If there's a weakness right now, it's that the Liberals haven't defined themselves enough to give people something they'll fear losing if they turf the  government – at a time when voters love to turf governments. 

Finally, it bears repeating that New Brunswick had a record-high third party vote last time, and polls still show that holding (if not growing) right now. I have pointers for third parties too, but you'll have to guess what those are by what lies ahead. 

PC Leadership -- What'll Happen and Why

The speeches are over at the PC leadership convention. It looks like a good, well-run convention. The numbers are excellent and they have drawn a field of strong candidates, each with a resume that warrants consideration. 

The focus today will be on the speeches. I love that part, and I've even written a few of those for various leadership candidates. But they matter least of all at a typical convention – just ask Prime Ministers John Crosbie, Jean Charest, and Ken Dryden, all of whom gave epic speeches at the end only to find that there weren't enough undecided delegates to matter. That said, in a seven-way race, a great speech can change someone’s second-ballot plans, and a few votes could decide which long shot breaks out of the pack and gets to a final ballot (like Stephane Dion beating Gerard Kennedy by two votes to get to third place and ride their pact to an upset win). 

The speeches also show the rest of us what Tories have been seeing, hearing, and thinking about. They will also be dissected in Liberal back rooms for clues about where the new leader is strong, where they are weak, and what internal pressures will make certain issues uncomfortable straddles for them. Today will make the ballot question between the two old-line parties a bit clearer. What will the Tories say the next election is about, and which leader best exemplifies that message. 

The elephant in the room is the language divide, of course.  Both 2010 and 2014 were change elections, but they were very different along language lines. Unlike the language-balanced caucuses that emerged from two close Lord-Graham elections, we moved to polarized caucuses. The NB Power fallout meant that the Liberals were competitive in francophone NB, but 2010 was a killing field in anglophone ridings that saw the proposed sale as not just a mistake, but a betrayal. The result was a PC government that didn't have a lot of voices to explain French NB to their leadership, and it showed – the 2014 election was two elections.  In English NB, Brian Gallant’s rookie mistakes led to an unpopular premier roaring back to win most seats. In French NB, it was never even close, and only Mado Dube’s status as a political Loki in Edmundston saved the Tories from a wipeout. 

Now the Liberals have a caucus that seems tone deaf to anglophones. Just by reversing the close losses in English seats the Tories can win a slim majority. This leads to an internal tension – PCs in the south see the challenge as scooping up anti-Liberal voters in a few ridings, and avoiding a split of anti-government votes with the “good government” appeal of Dominic Cardy’s NDP in the cities and the blunter language appeal of Kris Austin in the rural areas. They want a race focused on jobs with attacks on Liberal spending, debt and bailouts, and aren't anxious to water down that message to lose Tracadie by 3000 votes instead of 5000. Other delegates see ridings they held not long ago and want desperately to return them to the competitive ridings they were under Bernard Lord, fearing that accepting two consecutive blowouts will restore the old Liberal hegemony. 

That's the real split – those who fear the lesson of 1991 because the Anglo PC coalition shattered versus those who fear the lesson of 1991 is that you can't spot the Liberals an 19-1 lead and win. Behind this are a few issues, such as spending, corporate welfare, which economic sectors are priorities, etc – that also draw sharp regional differences. 

Few candidates have broken out of their local silos. That isn't necessarily fatal – the supporters of Mike Allen and Blaine Higgs aren't divided by any unsolveable breach as much as simple friendships and familiarity – but they do show there is no obvious saviour figure for them. Also, I've spoken with a lot of Tory friends who are also weighing not just who can win, but who can govern well. After all, we have seen a lot of one-term governments because the baggage-free face that can win has become the experience-free premier who can't win twice. Tories would like to win twice, this time 

There appear, from my many chats with Tories and my wild-ass guesses from experience, to be three possible winners. Monica Barley and Mel Norton seem to have the most support beyond their natural constituency.  The third, unknowable choice, is whichever guy emerges from the Higgs-Allen-MacDonald-Stewart knife fight/alchemy contest to assemble that central NB vote. If it grows enough to get a final ballot showdown with Barley, there is a path. 

There was a lot of similarity in the speeches. They all believe in hard work, team work, public service, and presumably good hygiene and keeping your desk tidy. But there were moments in the cliches that speak to the deeper choice. Having seen the speeches, here's how the pitches go.

Jean Dube is a thoughtful, experienced politician. He entered late and seems to lack the resources to break out. He is running to give the party a northern voice, which is a public service we should all thank him for. He has done well enough to give himself an ongoing presence in that role, if he wants it. That is a win for him.

Mike Allen is attempting something difficult – to become a leader after being part of an unpopular, defeated government. His weapons are deep roots in the party, a highly likeable personality, and a record of occasional dissent from Harper that would be modest in many governments but heroic in that government. His leadership would be a personality contrast with Gallant – a likeable, human face on traditional NB government instead of the packaged, distant Gallant. He would focus on Gallant’s record. Gallant might mention Harper now and then. There would be few surprises. 

Jake Stewart has added a lot to the race. Because he wasn't a front-runner, he has been willing to speak to policy and values beyond the cliches.  No one’s supporters seem more passionate about their choice than Jake’s, and I suspect he could deliver more of his supporters to someone else if that moment came. His “OneNB” pitch, with echoes of Dief, speaks at a frequency many traditional Tories love to hear. He can excite a base. His speech needed to show he can also build a winning coalition.  He's grown impressively as a speaker, but that is the question that was less clear. If he wins, there is an opportunity book of inflammatory quotes you will likely hear in Liberal ads a lot before he gets time to introduce himself. 

Brian MacDonald showed why he is the most polished political performer of the pack, and the stagecraft of his introductions and Lord-throwback jacket removal show he has watched the game well, to his advantage. He's sneaky-good on policy, and there were some moments of insight in his speech. In an era where people distrust government, he may simply repeat some of Gallant’s strengths and weaknesses – a bit too smooth, a bit inscrutable.  But if Tories are simply looking for someone who can stay as smooth as Gallant and scoop up some southern seats, he made a strong pitch. My Liberal  friends tell me the government takes him seriously, but they have a deep oppo folder on him.  His fight with Gallant would likely involve two smooth pols trying to shatter the other’s image in what could become negative, quickly. 

Blaine Higgs is like the veggie tray at the office Christmas party. Everyone knows they should like it. People are proud of the fact it's there, because it shows they considered good choices. But somehow, the meatballs and sweets, with their short-term rush, go first. There's often this kind of candidate in New Brunswick. Bernard Richard came third in a hall of delegates all whispering that he probably deserved it. Every crowded field has a Higgs, a guy everyone says is smart and honest and would be fine but….he doesn't really get politics. Higgs speech showed a hidden strength -- he's a great orator when he speaks about what he believes. The downside is that he's a lousy orator when he has to play politics. That makes most normal people like him a lot, and many local fixers convinced he can't win. He also makes enemies, in that unfair way politics makes honest people polarizing – because he sincerely believed in pension reform, he defended it passionately enough that opponents remember him more than the many career pols who just mumbled party talking points. This is called “baggage”. For all that, there has been a late surge towards him, and if he can assemble second ballot votes and squeeze Norton for the final ballot, he has a path. Liberals will attack his past as a COR member (which he has disavowed, but still) and record in the Alward government. But if he rope-a-dopes Gallant into packaged attacks on the past while he speaks bluntly about the future, it could get fun. This is a high-risk, high-reward pick. He reminds me of what one Tory strategist said of Bob Stanfield – “I don't know how the hell we get him in there, but if we do they'll never get him out of there”

Mel Norton is from Saint John. Next to Fredericton, that's been the hardest place for a guy to win the leadership from, because they both stir up a bit of resentment (and are the hardest places to get re-elected). As mayor, he made municipal politics more like C-SPAN and less like Big Brother. He's calm, competent and the kind of candidate urban Tories like. He makes Liberals in urban areas anxious, and Liberals don't have a lot on him. His campaign has been a bit safe and traditional, mostly taking stands on reversing things in safe Tory ridings that Liberals did because they were only unpopular in safe Tory ridings. His campaign would likely be professional, smooth, and pick a few more things to change that impact a bigger variety of swing ridings, including some in the North. He has spoken with passion and depth about some issues like poverty that will allow him to get centrist votes in the urban seats they need. Watching him and Gallant square off will likely be a chess match – no passion and big themes, but a strategic battle for the fifteen seats that will settle the election. There's a reason the Liberals tried to hand him tough files at the end in Saint John – they don't want to face him. 

Monica Barley – A fluently bilingual Moncton lawyer known in the party back rooms but with no political experience, backed by numerous veteran operators?  Have we seen it before? Sure. Of course, you're seeing it again because it worked for the PCs in 1999 and the Liberals in 2014. Her speech showed that there is a long way to go in political skills, as she was scripted and stilted. But she can hit her marks, and her appeal to put every seat in play is at the heart of her candidacy. She is the candidate most likely to battle Gallant everywhere, within appeal that could be provincial. She has also scooped up a lot of former Liberals in Moncton, and those who are still on the Gallant/LeBlanc enemies list have found a home with her. She is known as a formidable court presence as a lawyer, and her one-on-one meetings are widely seen as impressive, which is why many believe that the policy and political communications lessons will be learned quickly if she wins. Her strength is that she reminds people of 1998 Bernard Lord. Her weakness is that she reminds people of 2012 Brian Gallant. If she wins, expect Liberals to look at the Alward playbook against Gallant—take a few key stands, make her choose a side or get hit for straddling, try to communicate that whatever Galllant’s early struggles, she represents nothing but a restart of the learning curve. The interesting thing about that strategy is that it all comes down to her – if she performs more like Lord than Gallant, the results could look more like 1999 than 2014. So,yes, you've seen this movie – but it always comes down to the lead actor. 

My prediction: There's always a bias toward the least interesting outcome. MacDonald and Higgs will fight for third, but at least one of the also-rans is going to see an opportunity by helping Barley grow.  This will be because she has an opening for southern lieutenants, and because there is a LOT of pressure from party sages on the guys in the middle of the pack to avoid a southern coalition ganging up to stop Barley. There's real fear about the optics of Mike Allen and Blaine Higgs teaming up to stop Barley (that isn't fair, but I can tell you it has been said often these last 2 weeks). Someone will surprise with a Barley endorsement, and it will mean she and Norton head into a third ballot already knowing what the math says – Monica Barley over Mel Norton on the third ballot.

EFI : Just The Facts, Ma'am. I Promise.

So after all that, what do we know?

As you know, I've been pretty quiet since 2010 on the French Immersion issue. That's because I had my say when I was Education Minister, and I thought it was best that the debate happen with other voices. Plus, frankly, there are many other issues. 

Now that the decision has been made, I'm going to dedicate three blog posts this week to the issue. Not in debating it, but hopefully adding a couple of dimensions to the public debate from someone who got a crash course in it when that report hit my desk in 2008.

Later, I will look at where it fits in the broader language debate, and what issues the government will have to look at in the transition back to Grade 1.  This post will look at what we know after ten years worth of students starting EFI in Grade 3, and what we don't know yet. I thought it might be helpful because the government hasn't really explained the thinking behind the change – what they thought wasn't working, what they hope to achieve. I think we are in a post-persuasion era in politics, where our ministers minimize appearances so as not to antagonize us with arguments. Still, there is a void in reviewing facts, and as much as anyone I was interested in what we found out. 

ISSUE ONE: PARTICPATION IN EFI

One issue is the availability of immersion programming. If too few people have access to immersion, then it becomes a source of tension and inequality. These numbers surprised me – with Grade 1 immersion, there was a consistent rate of about 29-31% of anglophone students taking EFI. That's been steadily growing, hitting a high of 42% of students taking the new Grade 3 immersion programme.

Why? Well, literacy experts did tell us that they thought that many students were struggling in unequal classrooms – since very few students with special needs or from poor families took EFI, we were basically skimming off the top third of learners and leaving behind non-immersion classes where a very high percentage of students had learning challenges.  The theory was that leaving classes unstreamed until Grade 3 would help more learners get individual help and be more comfortable taking EFI in Grade 3. 

Of course, this has a spiral effect – the more marginal learners choose EFI, the more numbers go up, and with higher numbers comes more communities where the number of students taking immersion is high enough to offer EFI. So this may not just be individuals – we may be seeing more communities get Grade 3 EFI than got Grade 1.  This will be a statistic worth tracking when we change back.

ISSUE 2: Sticking with EFI

The biggest surprise was here. Before, we always saw some big declines as students struggle in EFI and drop into the non-immersion stream. There are some reasons for this.  While many argue persuasively that struggles in literacy can be dealt with just as well in the immersion setting, many parents respond to struggles by removing the child from EFI. This isn't totally irrational – there are few trained intervention workers in EFI, and unilingual parents feel sidelined from helping at home if instruction isn't in English. 

As we can see, the old Grade 1 programme lost about 16% of students after two years, and about 21% of kids by Grade 5. The new programme, starting in Grade 3, had that attrition rate down to 8.93% in the last measured year, 2015.

Why? Assuming students leave EFI if they struggle, it may be that giving teachers two unstreamed years to work with students made them more ready to learn a second language, or just more confident in general. I'd love to learn more about why this is happening from experts. 

So we can say that delaying the entry point to Grade 3 meant more students taking EFI and staying with it. Of course, that leads us to the big question….

ISSUE 3: FRENCH LANGUAGE ACQUiSITION

This was the big tradeoff. The thinking in waiting to Grade 3 was that we could get more students learning to read and write their first language and thus ready to learn, and this would compensate for the delay in starting immersion. There were smart people who were skeptical. Because the first Grade 3 immersion class hasn't been tested yet, we simply don't know how their French skills stacked up to their Grade 1-starting peers. 

You can debate whether or not government should change without testing how the current system was working. I'm sticking with facts, and we just don't know. But of course, over time, we will have ten cohorts of Grade 3 immersion students and we will know. 

ISSUE 4: Teacher Support

You know this one. When the change was made, an NBTA survey showed 67% of teachers supported the move to Grade 3. Then-President Brent Shaw explained that, in deference to the strong contrary sentiment among EFI teachers, the Association stayed publicly neutral. And we all know that the NBTA has not been neutral this year – the Teachers’ Association supported staying at Grade 3 having been the ones to implement it for eight years. 

ISSUE 5: Impact on English Literacy

The biggest reason for the change was that eliminating streaming might help our low literacy rates. In a system where up to 40% of kids enter school with learning challenges and 98% of them don't take EFI, that meant non-immersion classes where over half the room struggled. 

This still is misunderstood, which you can blame on the minister who was explaining it. People asked why we thought waiting to Grade 3 would help improve the results of learning French. We thought it would help most with English, because struggling learners wouldn't get lost in classrooms where teachers had too many students with high needs. 

So, I had a look at the Grade 2 literacy results before and after. And, the results were interesting but unclear. Sorry about the self-serving table.  I'm not a detached observer, but the numbers are the Department’s and not mine. 

So what do we get from this? First of all, Bernard Lord was underrated – big improvements happened under the Quality Learning Agenda. I'm even happier we kept his testing regime instead of tearing it up to be partisan. 

On EFI?  It's inconclusive. Supporters of the Grade 3 point can indeed note that the best literacy score in NB history was the first class to not be streamed. There is a jump there. 

Supporters of the Grade 1 point will note that things have gone down again to where they were back in the days of Grade 1 EFI and early streaming. Now, there are a lot of other changes – government also began cutting in 2011 and has been cutting since, and other things like literacy mentors and teacher innovation funds were specifically cut. You could argue that not streaming helped and is still making it better than it would be, but programme cuts are bringing the rate down. Of course, you could also argue that in 2008 there were good programmes and more money, and these “good Kelly” programmes caused the rise, not the “bad Kelly” change to the EFI entry point.  Or maybe kids learn better when education ministers are over 6’4”. (Doubt it). 

We will likely know more by tracking these after the change. That will tell us a lot more about what caused the rise from 2007-10. Governments haven't been reporting these with as much fanfare, so I hope citizens and journalists will ask. 

CONCLUSION

Obviously, I have a dog in this fight, and I've tried to avoid argument here. Like all of you, I want the system to work, and that is most likely when we start by acknowledging the facts we know and the ones we need to find out. I've hoped every day that the decision of 2008 served kids well, at least as many as possible. And I hope the new policy does, too.  This is too important to worry about ego. Let's all try to get it right.