Election 2015: What Each Leader Needs To Do To Win Debate #1

With the debates set for tonight, now is a good opportunity to think about what each leader needs to bring to the table to be successful and get a "win" if not a "knockout" that might influence the polls in the coming days. Each of the three major party leaders has their own challenges coming into this debate, and the one who is most successful could well see public opinion start to move in their favour. All of them want to say they came out on top, but it takes time after a debate to know for sure who was the "winner", and all of the parties will try and capitalize off any gaffs or good soundbites they can get from the other leaders to use in ads after the debate.

Thomas Mulcair coming into the debate has the most to lose. He is ahead in the polls.and is perceived to be the strongest debater of the three leaders. So if he does not perform well, it may hurt him more than the other two. Harper and Trudeau will zero in on Mulcair's economic credentials, and question his platform, particularly the pledge for a $15.00 minimum wage which is somewhat less than truthful. Harper will probably question Mulcair on taxes, and being weak on terrorism, and Trudeau will try to pin Mulcair down as being more similar to Harper than not. This is the biggest threat to Mulcair. He wants to be the face of change, and if Trudeau can successfully paint Mulcair as being more of the same closed off, bullying, media shy style of the past 10 years under Harper, it could be disastrous for Mulcair. The key to winning the debate for Mulcair is to not allow himself at any point to look like an uptight bully, particularly standing next to Trudeau. He needs to make sure that he keeps his composure, hits at Harper's record, and does not entirely dismiss Trudeau, because if he does it could harm him. He also needs to make sure he has all his numbers straight, and won't be caught off by economic questions. If Canadians think he can't be trusted with the money, he will see his soft support run back to the Liberals.

One of Harper's spokesmen said that Justin Trudeau would succeed in the debate "if he comes on stage with his pants on", and he isn't entirely wrong in that assessment. Trudeau is the candidate with the most to gain from the debates. After months of relentless ad campaigns trying to make Trudeau look like a fool who can't even tie his own shoelaces, if he can make it through the debate people will probably take a second look at his policies, because by and large they are the most sensible. Trudeau can also use his appearance to his benefit in this debate. He is younger, more fit, and more confident than the other two leaders in the way he carries himself. If he can contrast himself as the nice guy with decent policies who is going to answer questions and is willing to attend all the debates, as opposed to Harper and Mulcair who are more about the political play than the Canadian people, he could score some major points. Trudeau's biggest challenge will be not to give Harper or Mulcair anything to run with that confirms the attack ads. He needs to be careful not to have any obvious gaffs, and to speak clearly and confidently. He will need to hit out on both sides, but he would be wise to let Harper and Mulcair go after eachother more than him, and squeeze through the middle with a few mentions of their similarities, the way Jack Layton did in 2011.

Mr Harper is an experienced debater. He also has the weight of his record on his back, and both Trudeau and Mulcair will try to make the debate about both ethics, and the economy. Harper doesn't want to debate to turn into one about ethical concerns, particularly as they pertain to some of the criminal investigations past the present that surround his government.Harper will come out well if he can make Trudeau and Mulcair look like risky choices, which he has already started to do. What he doesn't want to do is to get caught out too much on his more obvious lies, like the budget being balanced. He needs to come up with real answers to the questions that Mulcair and Trudeau will have, because if it looks like he is outright lying about everything, the public are going to wonder how highly he rates their intelligence. Harper's biggest challenge will be to get through the debate without having to talk too much about things he doesn't like, such as the Duffy trial. If he can frame the debate to be about something like national security or making his case to stay the course on the economy. he would be happy. Harper isn't trying to win new voters, he is trying to keep the base, so he needs to tell them what they want to hear. They want to see someone tough on terrorism who will give them tax breaks. This is what he will try to deliver.

The person who wins the debate will be the one who is able to get their point across while simultaneously discrediting their opponents.This debate has the possibility of being very important in terms of the overall course of the election, so every leader will bring their their best . It's up to the public to judge the outcome.

The Gender Bias of the Summer Thermostat Wars

You've heard it before. Women come to work in the summer and complain about the building being refrigerator-like. The men insist that they are too hot otherwise. Turns out that there are a number of physiological reasons  why women tend to be colder and men tend to be warmer. Because men are expected in a business environment to wear suits and jackets, and female business attire is often made of thinner material, this also contributes to the already existing disparity between men and women in the workplace A/C debate.

"Typically in an office, men want a temperature closer to 21 C while women prefer about 24 C." Yet According to a new research by Maastricht University, the standard used to determine the ideal indoor temperature is based on the body heat of the average man. Since men tend to be warmer, the temperature is often too cold for most women to work comfortably. The response from many appears to be, "get over it".

They claim that women wear less clothing to work than men do, and should just wear a sweater in the building, but it can be extremely uncomfortable to work when you have cold air blowing down on you in your workplace, no matter how many sweaters you wear. I have often found myself baffled at having to go to work when it is over 30 degrees only to go into a very cold building where I required a sweater. It has also been shown that the drastic changes in temperature from outside to inside can trigger illness when a virus is present in the body, which would in the end cut productivity for businesses.

This is part of a larger issue in which female needs, particularly in the workplace are not considered at all in the decisions being made, and the average man is used as the standard without actually checking to see if all employees will be satisfied with the temperature of the building they work in for many hours a day. It's also an ecological and economic issue, as it costs more money and uses much more energy to keep a building at a lower temperature.

But now that we know that men tend to be hotter and women tend to feel colder, it is an opportunity to adjust the work environment so everyone is satisfied.  In Japan, the Cool Biz Japan initiative saw men swap heavy business suits for more suitable summer attire in the hottest months, and they were then able to raise the temperature in the buildings, and save on costs and energy. This also provides a more comfortable environment for female employees, who prefer the building to be warmer.

We need to examine our tendency to use the average male as the standard, because it's not just about cold buildings, it's also present in medical research, surgical research, marketing, and media . Even the ridiculous example of the women in a focus group being ignored when they railed against the now universally despised Clippy function in Windows. It just goes to show that technology is not exempt from this bias either. We can do a lot to make the world more accommodating for everyone, and it may just start with something small like a dress code change, and raising up our indoor temperatures in the summer.

Election 2015: Ignore the Polls; Focus on Policy

Polling is a kind of science that is somewhat like economics. It involves a snapshot and a projection based on that snapshot, but the real world is not predictable. Things can change quickly, and considering the length of this campaign, the polls in the early stages are going to be particularly unreliable because any number of factors could change things.

There was an interesting panel I watched in the lead up to the election in which a number of pollsters discussed the shifts in the way people vote today. They explained that voters are less attached to parties than they were in the past. Because of this, the tendency for shifts, particularly in the last few days of a campaign is quite possible. Take for example, the UK election back in May. The polls right leading up to the election had a tie between the Labour Party and the Conservatives and the result was a Conservative majority.

There are a number of reasons that the polls might be off, and part of this is a tendency to underestimate Conservative parties, although this can be debated. There is also the fact that people could possibly be making up their minds very late in the campaign, or even as late as in the voting booth. So when we see the trend now with 11 weeks of campaigning to go, we should be careful how much stock we put in it.

The latest polls put the NDP ahead, but not by much, and the Conservatives have a tendency to outperform their numbers. This combined with the new ridings which overall will favour the Conservatives, it could be that the Conservatives may pick up more toward the top half of their estimated seat count than the lower. However, the trend overall appears to be the NDP with the momentum, with a slight Conservative uptick, both at the expense of the Liberals, who are lagging behind.

Now what could change the polls? The debates are going to be very important, and perhaps a better indicator of where the winds are blowing than the polls. The media also have a tendency to underestimate the impact of policy decisions in public opinion, favouring a focus on the gaff or the "knock out punch" in the debate. As we can see by what happened to the Liberal Party when they supported the controversial Bill C-51, we should not be too quick to assume that the public don't pay attention to things like this.

Another example of this is the Conservatives assuming that their decision to have an extended campaign and increase the costs won't be an election issue, but it very well could play into the narrative that the Conservatives do not play fair, and the question "why are we having an 11 week election" may not go away.

Polls do matter, but the overall sentiment of the voting public on the ground, and the reaction to party and government policy is a far better indicator of outcome than the snapshots given to us by polls. Polls cannot pick up on everything, and something that may seem insignificant at first may turn out to be the deciding factor.

Election 2015: Can Fear Win Elections? Harper Hopes So

Stephen Harper dropped the writ this morning with a speech that laid out his plan for Canada and his message for the campaign. With a sombre face, he warned Canadians of the dangers of voting for the other guys, and repeated the same lines he told us all back in 2011 when he won a majority. The plan from the Conservatives for this election is clear: Stay the course, cause it could be much worse. Now, I am not an expert, but has this line of attack ever worked when there wasn't a credible threat from outside, a truly weak opposition (like the UK Labour Party or 2011 Liberals), or an ongoing war? Harper offered nothing new, but perhaps this is because he believes that appealing to his base, who are by and large happy with him, will win him the election. This may prove to be a strategic error.

The Conservative party have very little room to grow with their second choice numbers down to 6%, and they only grew their support a few points in the election that won them a majority. But this election is different. The opposition has renewed vigour, particularly the Liberals, who were very deeply down the hole last time, but will likely grow throughout the weeks if Trudeau turns out to be a good campaigner. The same can be said of the NDP. As people get to know Tom Mulcair more, his numbers may improve, and both of the opposition parties have a chance of taking votes from the Conservatives in key split ridings in BC and Ontario. Harper is counting on vote splitting to push him over the top, but if the Liberals are too strong, it will hurt his chances. This is why the Conservative ad machine is particularly fixed on Trudeau. They want to keep his numbers low so they can take those crucial Liberal-Conservative split ridings.

Harper has also chosen to play the fear card on the economy. He assured Canadians that his party is the only party that can safely navigate Canada through the current economic uncertainty. He touted a balanced budget that isn't actually balanced. He also raised fears about Liberals or the NDP getting their hands into the coffers, warning of record deficits. The message is that if you want change you must be out of your mind, and that there is no reason to change course cause we are doing so well. However, many Canadians do not agree.

The problem with this line of argument is that voters may see it as ignoring what seems to them is an obvious problem in the economy. If the Conservatives continue down this route (which undoubtedly they will) if the economy gets worse they will risk sounding foolish talking about how great things are going. What may have worked as an argument when the economy was doing fairly well will not necessarily work now when it isn't. The Conservatives also took another line that I found a little bit surprising, which was the choice to try and turn what will likely be an economy election into an election about national security.

Harper in his speech talked about the rise of ISIS and threats from Russia, and the need to protect Canadians from what his tone suggested was an imminent terror attack. He also took swipes at Trudeau and Mulcair by suggesting that it would be too risky to change to a government that would be soft on terrorism. National security as an issue that can encourage voters to stick with the incumbent (like the 2004 US election) but right now Canada is not under any particular or direct threat, and if we get more bad news about the economy in the coming weeks, Canadians are not going to vote based on security issues, they will vote for the party they believe is best suited to fix our economic situation, and after almost 10 years, they may feel it is time to give someone else a chance.

The other problem lies in the question "Why call an election now?', which Harper was unable to answer adequately. The truth is that he wants to starve his opponents and increase voter fatigue, but if voters see this as yet another partisan move from the Conservatives that is going to cost taxpayers a lot of money,  it will fit into the narrative of Harper as a bully, and it may not be a question that goes away so easily as they might hope.

What was most concerning sign for the Conservatives based on this opening speech was the rather Republican style strategy of appealing only to those who are already going to vote for them anyway, instead of trying to attract other voters. The Conservatives are hoping to pull off a David Cameron style surprise majority, praying that a silent voting majority will show up to the polls and reward them, but the UK election of this year was more similar to the 2011 Canadian campaign than the situation in 2015. The Labour party collapse is quite similar to the Liberal party collapse, but the Liberals are in a much stronger position this time, and their leader is affable and his policies will attract the former Liberal voters who stayed home last time, which will take seats away from the Conservatives.

With Quebec in play after the collapse of the Bloc, it will prove very difficult for Harper to achieve a majority in the current situation. He needs to try and offer something new that will appeal to Canadians, but has chosen instead to be somewhat unimaginative, stick with his base, and roll the dice on the chance that people will be too afraid to vote for change. It is a risky proposition.

Attack Ads Work, But Only if They're True

With the election ratcheting up, attack ads are out from the Conservatives against Thomas Mulcair. The ad claims that Mulcair is a career politician who is only out for himself, and that Canada cannot afford his economic policy. Similarly, the Trudeau ads often attack his experience, and end with the tagline, "Just Not Ready". Now, do these kinds of personality based attacks actually work? Past campaigns would suggest that they can.

Back in the 2011 election, the Conservatives very successfully painted Michael Ignatieff as not a real Canadian, and suggested that he was just interested in power, and it worked very well in discrediting him. Also, in the previous election there were the ads about the Liberal leader of the time, Stephane Dion, being incompetent. These focused in particularly on his English ability, and this line of attack was also very effective. So what made these ads so successful? In part, they latched on to an impression that Canadians already had of these politicians. and magnified it. There was also some truth to the ads, and they did not have to be pieced together from parts of interviews out of context.

This time around the Conservative Party is using the same strategy, but it doesn't appear to be getting them the result the previous ads did. The attack ads on Trudeau are actually driving voters toward him. He also has created a pretty sharp response ad, in which he counters the rhetoric with facts about his platform.  Similarly. the attack ad on Thomas Mulcair lacks some credibility, especially since Stephen Harper himself is a career politician. An attack ad only really works if the people watching it can't smell the hypocrisy from a mile away. The negative Mulcair ads will in all likelihood not be all that effective in putting a dent in his lead for this reason.

There is also the issue of fatigue over attack ads. If the public feel that the ads are not true, overly distasteful,  or think that the airwaves are oversaturated with them, it can cause genuine annoyance which will hurt the party who puts them out. If this becomes the case with these ads, they may well hurt the Conservatives rather than help. Just because you have the money to spend on ads, doesn't mean you have to use it all, because it can backfire.

There is also the issue of familiarity. Attack ads don't work as well on opponents who are already familiar to the public, and this can be seen with the way the attack ads on Justin Trudeau seem to fall flat. The Canadian public, especially in Quebec, are all quite familiar with Justin Trudeau. Many older Canadians watched him grow up. People have an opinion of him already, whether positive or negative, and it is hard to influence that. Mulcair on the other hand, is not as well known outside of Quebec, so it may prove easier to influence voter opinion on him, but it remains to be seen if the Conservative attacks will be successful. However, they will have to come up with something more substantive than the ad they just released.

The best political attack ads are the ones that are true, or confirm something people already think, instead of telling people what you want them to think. That seems to be the biggest misstep with the recent Conservative attack ads. They are trying to build a sentiment instead of latching onto one that is already there. The Conservatives also run the risk of looking like bullies, or even childish, especially with their choice of ads on Trudeau, when contrasted with his high road response.  In this election, a more positive campaign might be seen by the public as a refreshing alternative after 10 years of attack ads, and that could be dangerous for the Conservatives.

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Why Election 2015 will be the Best and Worst of Canadian Politics.

With the writ about to be dropped this weekend, it is a good opportunity to look both backward and ahead before heading to the polls after the longest election in Canadian history.  Going into the campaign what is clear is that we have a three way race on our hands in Canada.

Although the shine has worn off of Justin Trudeau and the Liberals over the last few months, it is too early to count him out. The biggest error he made was to support Bill C-51, which saw an immediate defection of Liberals on the left of the spectrum to the NDP. Yet he appears to be making some very middle of the road, reasonable, and potentially very popular campaign moves, such as the changes to child care and the pledge to increase accountability and change the voting system to be more proportional. The most critical moment for Trudeau will be the debates. He is not known to be particularly gifted in this arena, but if he performs respectably, voters will probably take another look at him. If he performs poorly, it could be end game. He will undoubtedly be the target during the debates, as both Mulcair and Harper will seek to take advantage and get some good soundbites for negative ads out of Trudeau.

Thomas Mulcair has another, perhaps greater challenge: convincing Canadians that the NDP can balance the books, and that he is not going to spend the country into oblivion. This will be something that both Trudeau and Harper will focus in on, so the NDP would be wise to come up with a fully costed plan that is verified to add up before the first debate. So far it seems that Mulcair has been somewhat weak and vague on the economic file, and even though he is a strong debater, and is particularly adept at taking Harper to task in the House of Commons, if he can't get the numbers right, people will start looking elsewhere.

Stephen Harper has the baggage of almost 10 years of incumbency and all the scandal that comes with it hanging over his head. With the economy looking as if we are headed toward a downturn, the Conservatives will have to do better than just say they are the doing a great job and there is no need to switch gears. The constant stream of attack ads, particularly aimed at Trudeau, are not as effective as they have been in the past, and it is going to be an uphill battle for the Prime Minister to convince Canadians that he deserves yet another kick at the can, even when his "balanced budget" is not as balanced as he claims. But Harper is counting on voters to stick with him because he is a steady hand, and that the other guys cannot be trusted. Will that be enough? It is hard to say.

With this campaign being a marathon of 11 weeks, and taxpayers picking up a lot of extra expense, we will get both the benefits and the downfalls of the long march. The benefit of having a longer political engagement is obvious. It gives time for more debates, and more discussion. But it also leads to fatigue, which might play into the hands of the Conservatives, who benefit when people don't show up. However, the longer campaign gives more time for a shift in momentum toward one party or another. This may prove to make the campaign all the more exciting. The first debate will set the tone, and tell the story of the direction of the campaign as well as what the ballot question might be. My expectation is that it will be both about the record of Stephen Harper, and who would be the best choice to turn the economy around. It will undoubtedly be a fascinating campaign to watch.

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Cecil the Lion is a Tragedy, But Where is the Outrage for Brutalized People?

An American dentist decided to go on a hunt to a Zimbabwe; a country with lax wildlife protections, and trusted that his guides were taking him on a legitimate hunt. He ended up killing a protected lion and also the cubs of that lion, which will be eaten by the next dominant
male to come around. The animal suffered for hours from the bow shot went wrong, and was eventually shot and beheaded so this man could have a trophy.  What he did was illegal, and reprehensible, His guides have been charged with crimes, yet he was able to leave the country unhindered.

The internet exploded with outrage. We must avenge the Lion! But where was this level of outrage for the human toll that the War on Terror, police brutality, corporate exploitation, and sex trafficking have had on the human population? Why do we care more about this particular lion than other human beings?

Of course, these are very different things, and it is certainly possible to find Cecil the Lion's death horrifying, and also find injustice and exploitation around the word equally horrible. But it is a part of human nature to see animals as helpless bystanders in the world, so often high profile cases of animal slaughter such as this garner a lot of sympathy and anger. Yet we somehow fail to see other humans in the same way, especially when they are from poor countries, or of different ethnic backgrounds.

In the West we have dehumanized suffering to such an extent that the deaths of countless people every day from gun violence and police brutality in the US,  the abuse and exploitation of workers in Bangladesh to make our clothing, or the plight of the children who pick the cocoa for our chocolate doesn't seem to connect with us in the same way.

Right now there are thousands of migrants trying to get into UK  through the Chanel tunnel. These are people fleeing war and poverty in countries effected by the Western War on Terror and the rise of ISIS, which was created by it. The UK Prime Minister Cameron called them "hoards". The UK is not a "safe haven" he said, yet he seems to want to do little to make the countries where these people come from safer. It is not unlike the waves of austerity governments around the world that are punishing the poorest and most vulnerable in order to pay back banks with billions in profits, while failing to do anything about the richest of the rich who hoard their riches in tax havens.

We see the poor as somehow less human, and the new age of austerity further punishes the poor for simply existing, or heaven forbid, having children. It appears as though we have regressed as a caring society. What we have today in 2015 is a  return to the Victorian attitude, where the poor were put into institutions while the rich lived in guarded estates with huge amounts of private property, and people continue to fail to see it.

Yes, the death of Cecil the Lion is a tragedy, and maybe we can all learn something from it. But when will we start having sympathy for other human beings again?

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