[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[Josephus]

So, the (female) Canadian foreign trade minister was on Bill Maher yesterday and now I gotta say that quotas in government are stupid. Because she was dumb as shit.

It did seem like the only reason she got her job was because they needed enough ministers with a clitoris...

I watched the show.  The only thing she did was disagree with your hero a couple of times.  I guess that is what you are reacting to?

My favourite part of the show is when she explained that her Government was elected on a platform which included bringing in the Syrian refugees.  The rest of the panel wasn't quite sure what to make of that.  It was foreign (forgive the pun) to their experience that bringing in the refugees could be politically popular.  The best one of them could do was make an awkward joke about the definition of a Canadian - "An unarmed North American with health insurance".

Yeah that was funny. One pundit actually said, "that was actually part of your campaign?"

[viper37]

You are overstating your case Malthus.  You posted an article where ONE guy said that HE didn't think it would be possible.  I can tell you that a number of NGO's operating around here thought, until only recently, that it was achievable.  Accusing someone of lying and being willfully blind is serious.  You and BB are making these allegations with hindsight.

there are a myriad of newspaper articles saying it was impossible, during the campaign and before the Paris attacks.

And so we now take the position that every time a government says something is possible and there are doubters that if it does not come to pass the government was necessarily lying?

If I am ever accused of perjury, I want you to defend me.

Ok, back to topic.
The Federal government roles in accepting refugees is:
a) getting them here, by boat or plane
b) making security check before or after a)
c) sending them to cities
d) Then they become the charge of the province and the cities.

So to do a), we require the military. They say it can't be done in time.
To do b), we require CSIS and RCMP, they say it can't be done in time.
To do c) and d), it requires services by the provinces and the cities.  Both say it can't be done.  NGOs in charge of helping refugees say it can't be done.  Americans say security checks can't be done in less than 12 months.
But the government insists they can do all that in 6 weeks and everyone else has no idea what they're talking about.

A lie is a intentional act folks.  You may jump to the conclusion that the Liberals made the promise with malice of forethought knowing that what they were saying was untrue.  But I need some actual evidence first.  Think of it this way.  If it was such a blatant lie why didn't anyone accuse them of lying during the election.  The answer is very simple,  its because the lot of you are using hindsight.

As Malthus said, short of a paper trail saying Trudeau would lie to the public, you will not be convinced it is a lie.
Yet, everything points that way.

First let us examine what is a lie:
A lie is a statement that is known or intended by its source to be misleading, inaccurate, or false.
Wikipedia gives 33 variants of what can be considered a lie, I will list those that apply:
Bad faith

As defined by Sartre, "bad faith" is lying to oneself. Specifically, it is failing to acknowledge one's own ability to act and determine one's possibilities, falling back on the determinations of the various historical and current totalizations which have produced one as if they relieved one of one's freedom to do so.

Big lie

A lie which attempts to trick the victim into believing something major which will likely be contradicted by some information the victim already possesses, or by their common sense. When the lie is of sufficient magnitude it may succeed, due to the victim's reluctance to believe that an untruth on such a grand scale would indeed be concocted.

Bluffing

To bluff is to pretend to have a capability or intention one does not actually possess. Bluffing is an act of deception that is rarely seen as immoral when it takes place in the context of a game, such as poker, where this kind of deception is consented to in advance by the players. For instance, a gambler who deceives other players into thinking he has different cards to those he really holds, or an athlete who hints he will move left and then dodges right is not considered to be lying (also known as a feint or juke). In these situations, deception is acceptable and is commonly expected as a tactic.

Bullshit

Bullshit does not necessarily have to be a complete fabrication. While a lie is related by a speaker who believes what is said is false, bullshit is offered by a speaker who does not care whether what is said is true because the speaker is more concerned with giving the hearer some impression. Thus bullshit may be either true or false, but demonstrates a lack of concern for the truth which is likely to lead to falsehoods.^[2]

Dismissal

Dismissing feelings, perceptions, raw facts of a situation is a kind of lie that can do damage to a person just as much as any other lie. Many mental disorders are linked to dismissal lies because they are dismissing their reality. Psychologist R.D. Laing believes that this type of lie is common within families of schizophrenics. Many children start out with a clear sense of reality, but then slowly start to lose their grasp due to meticulous and methodical dismissal. While some may not realize that just dismissing something can be considered a lie, if you dismiss something too often you are trying to change reality into something it is not, causing your attention to be focused elsewhere and could be hurting others as much or more than a simple white lie

Economical with the truth

Economy with the truth is popularly used as a euphemism for deceit, whether by volunteering false information (i.e., lying) or by deliberately holding back relevant facts. More literally, it describes a careful use of facts so as not to reveal too much information, as in "speaking carefully".

Fabrication

A fabrication is a lie told when someone submits a statement as truth, without knowing for certain whether or not it actually is true.[citation needed] Although the statement may be possible or plausible, it is not based on fact. Rather, it is something made up, or it is a misrepresentation of the truth. Examples of fabrication: A person giving directions to a tourist when the person doesn't actually know the directions. Often propaganda is fabrication.

Half-truth

A half-truth is a deceptive statement that includes some element of truth. The statement might be partly true, the statement may be totally true but only part of the whole truth, or it may employ some deceptive element, such as improper punctuation, or double meaning, especially if the intent is to deceive, evade, blame or misrepresent the truth

Lying by omission

Also known as a continuing misrepresentation, a lie by omission occurs when an important fact is left out in order to foster a misconception. Lying by omission includes failures to correct pre-existing misconceptions. For example, when the seller of a car declares it has been serviced regularly but does not tell that a fault was reported at the last service, the seller lies by omission. It can be compared to dissimulation.

Misleading and dissembling

A misleading statement is one where there is no outright lie, but still retains the purpose of getting someone to believe in an untruth. "Dissembling" likewise describes the presentation of facts in a way that is literally true, but intentionally misleading.

Pathological lie

In psychiatry, pathological lying (also called compulsive lying, pseudologia fantastica and mythomania) is a behavior of habitual or compulsive lying.^[10][11] It was first described in the medical literature in 1891 by Anton Delbrueck.^[11] Although it is a controversial topic,^[11] pathological lying has been defined as "falsification entirely disproportionate to any discernible end in view, may be extensive and very complicated, and may manifest over a period of years or even a lifetime".^[10] The individual may be aware they are lying, or may believe they are telling the truth, being unaware that they are relating fantasies.

That covers the entire Liberal platform.





Overall, the Liberals are guilty of multiple forms of lies on the refugee subject.
[/quote]

[Barrister]

I went over the last five pages.  I never used the word "lying", and I think for good reason.  When Malthus used the word it allowed CC to go off on his tangent about we can't really know that it was a deliberate falsehood.

He's right.  We can't know it was a deliberate falsehood.  In fact what it appears to have been was the Liberals plucked a number out of thin air not caring whether it would be possible or not.  That's reckless and irresponsible, but not a lie.

Here's an Andrew Coyne piece on the topic I pretty much agree with.

Andrew Coyne: Liberals can admit they were wrong, but not that their critics were right

Andrew Coyne | November 25, 2015 7:49 PM ET

What is it to admit our errors, said Alexander Pope, but to say that we are wiser today than we were yesterday?

In that spirit, the federal Liberals are surely to be congratulated for admitting they were wrong to have promised during the recent election that they could deliver 25,000 Syrian refugees safely onto Canadian soil by the end of this year. Granted, they did not go so far as to actually say so out loud. The closest Immigration Minister John McCallum came at Tuesday's press conference was to say that "Canadians want us to do it right," and that "in order to do it right ... it is better to take that additional time." (Readers are invited to infer whether not taking that additional time, i.e., proceeding on the original schedule, would have amounted to doing it wrong.)

But the changes in the Liberal plan amount to a tacit admission. Where the Liberals originally promised they would bring in 25,000 refugees by Dec. 31, the plan is now to accept 10,000 by that date, with a further 15,000 to come by the end of February. Where the Liberals originally promised all 25,000 would be funded by the government, they now say 10,000 will be privately sponsored (though the government says it will sponsor a further 10,000 refugees sometime before the end of 2016).

Rather than screen at least some of them for health and security concerns in Canada, they will now all be screened overseas. And while the Liberal platform put the cost of the program at $250 million, it now admits it will cost as much as $678 million (not counting the costs to private sponsors). Still, aside from the number of refugees, the schedule on which they'll be brought in, the process by which they'll be screened, how much it will cost and who will be paying for it, it's pretty much the same plan.

It would be churlish to demand that the Liberals stick to their original promise, now that they have been persuaded the promise was unworkable. True, the promise was a key part of the party's effort to persuade voters that they, and not the New Democrats, were the party of "change," offered up at a critical moment in the campaign on an issue that was at the time dominant. That they have now, weeks after vanquishing the NDP, effectively delivered on the NDP promise — 10,000 refugees by the end of the year — may be counted as one of life's little ironies, especially if you are not a New Democrat.

But there is no reason to suspect — or at any rate no evidence to prove — that the promise was made in bad faith. The Liberals can plausibly claim that, at the time they made it, they had no idea what it would cost or how they would deliver on it. It wasn't dishonest, just spectacularly uninformed. That it was a promise they should never have made is now at least tacitly acknowledged; that original error would not be remedied, but compounded, by insisting they follow through on it.

Again, admitting errors is good. But not making such egregious errors in the first place would be even better. Or at the very least, admitting them at some point before the last possible minute, after weeks of denying that any change was required and chastising their critics as fearmongers and worse. The Liberals' initial haste and overreach, in the heat of the election campaign, might be forgiven; less so their refusal to reconsider, in the face of repeated suggestions that the Dec. 31 deadline was impossible, not just from their political opponents, but from experts and refugee advocates.

For a party that likes to advertise its fondness for "evidence-based" decision-making, it is already showing a distressing tendency to prefer the evidence that supports its preconceptions. The deficits that were to fight the "recession" that isn't on; the tax increases to fight the "growing inequality" that is, in fact, receding (the share of income going to the top one per cent has been falling for the past decade); the whole myth about stagnating middle-class incomes (they have been rising steadily for two decades) — there's an unsettling pattern emerging.

It's no use protesting that its heart is in the right place. Though it is surely admirable that it is inclined to bring in more refugees, rather than fewer, those good intentions would have come to naught had a botched process led to tragedy. This is a party, under its current leadership, that is very enamoured of symbolism, of the grand gesture. But substance — not only doing the right thing, but doing it right — matters, too.

Of course, the whole thing is symbolic, in a way. The 25,000 Syrian refugees we will admit in the next three months are but a tiny fraction of the millions that have been displaced just in that one wretched country, let alone the world at large. There's no special significance to that 25,000 figure: like the Dec. 31 deadline, it was essentially picked out of the air. Its chief virtue was that it enabled the Liberals to promise to do more than the other parties, faster.

The confession that they will, in fact, do much the same as the other parties is being greeted in some quarters as a masterstroke: the Liberals have wrong-footed their opponents, it is said, by the clever ruse of accepting their criticisms and adopting their policies. If these be Liberal masterstrokes, let us have more of them. "Canadians want us to do it right," the Liberal finance minister might declare, "so we have concluded that in order to do it right, it is better not to go into deficit."

But you will say I am being uncharitable. The Liberals, after all, have admitted that they were wrong, in a sort of a way. But if the Liberals really want to seize the high ground, they might admit not only that they were wrong, but that their critics were right.

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne-liberals-can-admit-they-were-wrong-but-not-that-their-critics-were-right

[Josephus]

To be fair, the recent Paris attacks changed public opinion a lot and the Liberals are now forced to react to that. In fact, in a democracy, it is key that the government respects public opinion and should be elastic when necessary.

[crazy canuck]

If I am ever accused of perjury, I want you to defend me.

[Barrister]

To be fair, the recent Paris attacks changed public opinion a lot and the Liberals are now forced to react to that. In fact, in a democracy, it is key that the government respects public opinion and should be elastic when necessary.

That would possibly be an explanation for their reversal.  Pity it's not the explanation the Liberals are using.

[Grey Fox]

To be fair, the recent Paris attacks changed public opinion a lot and the Liberals are now forced to react to that. In fact, in a democracy, it is key that the government respects public opinion and should be elastic when necessary.

That would possibly be an explanation for their reversal.  Pity it's not the explanation the Liberals are using.

It's a catch-22 situation. Their current explanation is better politically than the actual explanation.

[Malthus]

I went over the last five pages.  I never used the word "lying", and I think for good reason.  When Malthus used the word it allowed CC to go off on his tangent about we can't really know that it was a deliberate falsehood.

He's right.  We can't know it was a deliberate falsehood.  In fact what it appears to have been was the Liberals plucked a number out of thin air not caring whether it would be possible or not.  That's reckless and irresponsible, but not a lie.

Here's an Andrew Coyne piece on the topic I pretty much agree with.

Andrew Coyne: Liberals can admit they were wrong, but not that their critics were right

Andrew Coyne | November 25, 2015 7:49 PM ET

What is it to admit our errors, said Alexander Pope, but to say that we are wiser today than we were yesterday?

In that spirit, the federal Liberals are surely to be congratulated for admitting they were wrong to have promised during the recent election that they could deliver 25,000 Syrian refugees safely onto Canadian soil by the end of this year. Granted, they did not go so far as to actually say so out loud. The closest Immigration Minister John McCallum came at Tuesday's press conference was to say that "Canadians want us to do it right," and that "in order to do it right ... it is better to take that additional time." (Readers are invited to infer whether not taking that additional time, i.e., proceeding on the original schedule, would have amounted to doing it wrong.)

But the changes in the Liberal plan amount to a tacit admission. Where the Liberals originally promised they would bring in 25,000 refugees by Dec. 31, the plan is now to accept 10,000 by that date, with a further 15,000 to come by the end of February. Where the Liberals originally promised all 25,000 would be funded by the government, they now say 10,000 will be privately sponsored (though the government says it will sponsor a further 10,000 refugees sometime before the end of 2016).

Rather than screen at least some of them for health and security concerns in Canada, they will now all be screened overseas. And while the Liberal platform put the cost of the program at $250 million, it now admits it will cost as much as $678 million (not counting the costs to private sponsors). Still, aside from the number of refugees, the schedule on which they'll be brought in, the process by which they'll be screened, how much it will cost and who will be paying for it, it's pretty much the same plan.

It would be churlish to demand that the Liberals stick to their original promise, now that they have been persuaded the promise was unworkable. True, the promise was a key part of the party's effort to persuade voters that they, and not the New Democrats, were the party of "change," offered up at a critical moment in the campaign on an issue that was at the time dominant. That they have now, weeks after vanquishing the NDP, effectively delivered on the NDP promise — 10,000 refugees by the end of the year — may be counted as one of life's little ironies, especially if you are not a New Democrat.

But there is no reason to suspect — or at any rate no evidence to prove — that the promise was made in bad faith. The Liberals can plausibly claim that, at the time they made it, they had no idea what it would cost or how they would deliver on it. It wasn't dishonest, just spectacularly uninformed. That it was a promise they should never have made is now at least tacitly acknowledged; that original error would not be remedied, but compounded, by insisting they follow through on it.

Again, admitting errors is good. But not making such egregious errors in the first place would be even better. Or at the very least, admitting them at some point before the last possible minute, after weeks of denying that any change was required and chastising their critics as fearmongers and worse. The Liberals' initial haste and overreach, in the heat of the election campaign, might be forgiven; less so their refusal to reconsider, in the face of repeated suggestions that the Dec. 31 deadline was impossible, not just from their political opponents, but from experts and refugee advocates.

For a party that likes to advertise its fondness for "evidence-based" decision-making, it is already showing a distressing tendency to prefer the evidence that supports its preconceptions. The deficits that were to fight the "recession" that isn't on; the tax increases to fight the "growing inequality" that is, in fact, receding (the share of income going to the top one per cent has been falling for the past decade); the whole myth about stagnating middle-class incomes (they have been rising steadily for two decades) — there's an unsettling pattern emerging.

It's no use protesting that its heart is in the right place. Though it is surely admirable that it is inclined to bring in more refugees, rather than fewer, those good intentions would have come to naught had a botched process led to tragedy. This is a party, under its current leadership, that is very enamoured of symbolism, of the grand gesture. But substance — not only doing the right thing, but doing it right — matters, too.

Of course, the whole thing is symbolic, in a way. The 25,000 Syrian refugees we will admit in the next three months are but a tiny fraction of the millions that have been displaced just in that one wretched country, let alone the world at large. There's no special significance to that 25,000 figure: like the Dec. 31 deadline, it was essentially picked out of the air. Its chief virtue was that it enabled the Liberals to promise to do more than the other parties, faster.

The confession that they will, in fact, do much the same as the other parties is being greeted in some quarters as a masterstroke: the Liberals have wrong-footed their opponents, it is said, by the clever ruse of accepting their criticisms and adopting their policies. If these be Liberal masterstrokes, let us have more of them. "Canadians want us to do it right," the Liberal finance minister might declare, "so we have concluded that in order to do it right, it is better not to go into deficit."

But you will say I am being uncharitable. The Liberals, after all, have admitted that they were wrong, in a sort of a way. But if the Liberals really want to seize the high ground, they might admit not only that they were wrong, but that their critics were right.

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne-liberals-can-admit-they-were-wrong-but-not-that-their-critics-were-right

Here's where I disagree: "willful blindness" isn't really any different, in this context, from "lying". The Liberals are, I assume, as capable of reading as I am, and so had access to plenty of evidence at the time, and not "in hindsight", from people who knew the field that their promise was not possible, to put them "on inquiry". As it turns out, their promise was not possible. That doesn't make the analysis "all hindsight", it just demonstrates that the obvious was, in fact, obvious. There was no way that Canada could, without drastic measures, import 25,000 refugees in such a short time, and the Liberals, assuming they were acting reasonably, deliberately chose not to acknowledge that.   

Sure there is no hard evidence that they knowingly lied - short of a memo turning up, there can't be. This falls into the category of Lord Nelson putting his blind eye to his telescope and saying "I can't see the order to withdraw".  Deliberate failure to acknowledge the obvious (when to do so would conflict with your plans) = willful blindness = lying.

Or, if you want to get all legal about it, from  R. v. Sansregret:

"Wilful blindness is distinct from recklessness because, while recklessness involves knowledge of a danger or risk and persistence in a course of conduct which creates a risk that the prohibited result will occur, wilful blindness arises where a person who has become aware of the need for some inquiry declines to make the inquiry because he does not wish to know the truth. He would prefer to remain ignorant. The culpability in recklessness is justified by consciousness of the risk and by proceeding in the face of it, while in wilful blindness it is justified by the accused's fault in deliberately failing to inquire when he knows there is reason for inquiry." [Emphasis added]

This aptly describes the Liberals in this situation.

In this case, there is no doubt whatsoever that the Liberals were put "on inquiry" as to whether their plan was possible - by the multiple well-informed contemporaneous sources telling them it wasn't possible. Assuming that the possibility of their plan was important to them, they ought, acting reasonably, to have acknowledged that, and qualified their promise. They did not, because they chose not to - presumably because a significant point of the promise was to wrong-foot their political opponents, who had more "conservative" plans. 

[Martinus]

So, the (female) Canadian foreign trade minister was on Bill Maher yesterday and now I gotta say that quotas in government are stupid. Because she was dumb as shit.

It did seem like the only reason she got her job was because they needed enough ministers with a clitoris...

I watched the show.  The only thing she did was disagree with your hero a couple of times.  I guess that is what you are reacting to?

My favourite part of the show is when she explained that her Government was elected on a platform which included bringing in the Syrian refugees.  The rest of the panel wasn't quite sure what to make of that.  It was foreign (forgive the pun) to their experience that bringing in the refugees could be politically popular.  The best one of them could do was make an awkward joke about the definition of a Canadian - "An unarmed North American with health insurance".

She acted like a shrill idiot, claimed that all cultures are equally valid and at one point argued that there is no qualitative difference between Islamic culture and American culture because there are idiots in America that Maher ridicules...

[Martinus]

You said it was a dumb promise to make.  Far from it.

The timeline was dumb, and the Libs have essentially admitted it.

The timeline was aspirational and made all the difference in the world.

That's such a beautiful piece of rhetoric!  You shouldn't take promises seriously - they're merely aspirational.

Christmas in CC's household must be a hoot. "No, you are not getting a pony this year. Daddy was merely aspirational."

[viper37]

Again, admitting errors is good. But not making such egregious errors in the first place would be even better.

For a party that likes to advertise its fondness for "evidence-based" decision-making, it is already showing a distressing tendency to prefer the evidence that supports its preconceptions. The deficits that were to fight the "recession" that isn't on; the tax increases to fight the "growing inequality" that is, in fact, receding (the share of income going to the top one per cent has been falling for the past decade); the whole myth about stagnating middle-class incomes (they have been rising steadily for two decades) — there's an unsettling pattern emerging.

This is a party, under its current leadership, that is very enamoured of symbolism, of the grand gesture. But substance — not only doing the right thing, but doing it right — matters, too.

this is the most important part to me, especially the last paragraph.  Excep it ain't only under current leadership, it's been like that since the late 60s.

[viper37]

To be fair, the recent Paris attacks changed public opinion a lot and the Liberals are now forced to react to that. In fact, in a democracy, it is key that the government respects public opinion and should be elastic when necessary.

it changed nothing to the facts.  and besides, public opinion was against the wearing of a veil during citizenship ceremony, yet, it did not stop the Libs from adopting a contrary position.

[Malthus]

To be fair, the recent Paris attacks changed public opinion a lot and the Liberals are now forced to react to that. In fact, in a democracy, it is key that the government respects public opinion and should be elastic when necessary.

I disagree - the government should not respect public opinion when it is based on irrational fears. That's exactly why I disliked the Con position on Islamic symbols. Assume Viper was right and the suppression of the same was genuinely popular - I would prefer a government to run contrary to public opinion, and have the courage of its convictions.

If I thought the Libs were merely reacting in chicken-little fashion to the Paris attack, I'd think less of them than I do - in my opinion, as you know, the Libs knew or ought to have known their promise could not be kept when they made it, so the Paris attack isn't relevant.

[viper37]

Last week, a Liberal criticed Quebec city for not doing enough on the refugee side.  Accepting 7-800 was insufficient while other cities like Ottawa granted access to 3000 refugees.  Never mind that Ottawa is twice as populous as Quebec city and has more budget from the Fed gov than Quebec city has, that is not the kind of things that really matters to a Liberal, impervious to facts as they are.

So, Quebec city has asked for more help from the government to grant space to a little more refugees and worked frantically to find some more room for them, scattered over the city, close to the services.

Now the Federal government has announced its targets:  230 refugees for Quebec city.

Bloody morons.

[crazy canuck]

Christmas in CC's household must be a hoot. "No, you are not getting a pony this year. Daddy was merely aspirational."

Actually growing up my parents wanted to give me a lot of things that they just couldn't afford in the end.  That is perhaps why I know the difference between a well intentioned statement and a lie. 

So yes, most of the discussion in the CC household when I was growing up was aspirational.  And I benefitted greatly from that.