Perplexities

Today I don't feel like blogging. Which is too bad. There is a wealth of material. It makes for a set of perplexities. Some of which I should deal with in the coming days.

1. Susan Eng complains about being spied on by a renegade cop and Fantino the guy who can't seem to hold a job other than his part time work of stroking the fur of any politician and fondling the balls of the media. Spying on Susan Eng. She's pretty good looking. I grasp that. Juli stepped up a level to human in my eyes.

2. Harper's secret manual for screwing everyone... is published. I am paraphrasing his response. No big deal.... this is usual stuff... Oh yeah. Hey... manual part one... index this.

3. Black claims that he will be set free. He may be right. But when Conrad's trial ends I am stringing a fresh clove of garlic around my neck nightly before bed. One can never be too safe.

4. Still working on that Part IV. The Globe will not be heated by this brain.

5. Greyhound is on strike. I can't believe the abysmal ignorance indulging the media in Toronto. For the economy of much of Western Canada suffers far more than normal. There is not only an environmental downside but a cultural hardship. If this was GO or the TTC governments would have stepped in by now. A double standard.

6. The southern Ontario government continues its rapacious economic rape of Northern Ontario's resources and increases the extraction tax. Southern Ontario screwed up its car manufacturing and other manufacturing so bad that now these blood suckers will bite into the back of the poorest and largest region in Ontario.

7. The federal government caught supreme hell for giving Ontario an additional 22 ridings. Not enough says the puffing MacGuinty. By the way, those few new ridings or MPs that Ontario is supposed to be getting to you an FYI. Not a single one would be formed in Northern Ontario. Indeed the federal government may still reduce Northern Ontario another riding.

7. Related to this. The southern Ontario government decides to go to proportional representation. This will be a disaster for Northern Ontario. Do the Math and look at the people in charge of the parties. Has a single provincial political party delivered on any promise, I mean name any election promise given to the noncommercial sector of Northern Ontario. So there is no guarantee that any additional MPs will be mandated to Northern Ontario representation.

So effectively the rump seats of 11 will shink in proportion to the whole. Using present numbers, there are 103 seats in the legislature. That means Northern Ontario has slightly more than 10% political horse power. An additional 39 seats will severely diminish that percentage. Southern Ontario minority governments will no longer have to rely on Northern Ontario reps for it will have less than 6% of the total seats.

And that latter number is important. Lets say an independence movement does finally form in Northern Ontario. It would lose official party status in the provincial parliament because to be recognized as an official party you need 10 percent of the seats. Registered parties in the House qualify for extra funding. To win that status one hundred percent of all the seats in Northern Ontario must be won. And that is not likely.

That separatist party could not benefit from proportional representation. Do the Math. There are about 13million people in the province of Ontario which means about 4.55 million people actually vote at a good rate of 70% voter turnout.

In Northern Ontario with the population near the unlikely level of about 800,000 people ( more likely 700,000 or even less) 400,000 people are registered to vote of which 70% the usual voter turnout or 280,000.

There is a rule of thumb that says that one third of voters are obtusely resistant to change. It doesn't matter what it is this is the percentage of resistors. In theory the independence party can win all of the seats if forty percent of the voters side with any party.

To win the eleven seats the new political party which should be called Northern Ontario Political Empowerment (NOPE) will only need 112,000 votes to achieve 40 percent per riding to get all eleven seats but this is not good enough to qualify it as a political party qualified to get proportional seats. Under the new law Nope would have to get better than 136000... or 50% of the voting electorate.

What also really hurts Northern Ontario is that all of the votes including muncipal elections are always scheduled for the fall. Has anyone scheduled outdoor events in October in Northern Ontario? Any adverse weather will dampen the voting.

So you can see. All the government's ballyhooed electoral reform will only hurt Northern Ontario. There will be a referendum on proportional representation in the next election. I hope everyone in Northern Ontario votes against it. But most of these people obviously do not care. Lesser nations have gone to the political battlements on issues far more trifling than these perplexes.

9. All perplexities mix into a bowl and stirred by a perplexitor.