Notes for Remarks to Carleton University 2017 Convocation – June 15, 2017

Mr. Chancellor, Chair of the Board, Madam President, Graduates, Honoured Guests and Proud Parents …. This is an honour…. but also a little sad for me because I can’t help but think of my father, on his deathbed, asking me … “So, when are you going to finish your Phd?”

He had good reason to ask because he knew that ever since I was 13, all I wanted to be was a University professor. At 22, I arrived at Carleton with that goal firmly in mind, but for a variety of reasons, I got sucked into the vortex of Parliament Hill, and, to my great regret, never finished my Phd.

So today, I can finally say, ‘Dad, I got my Doctorate.’ I’m sure if he’s looking down this morning, he’s feeling pretty happy right now. So, thank you for that, Carleton.

The larger reason my Dad hectored me about finishing my PhD, is that he, like most parents of his generation, believed in education – something most did not have the luxury of pursuing themselves.
(more…)

In preparing its report The Shattered Mirror, the Public Policy Forum partnered with the Canadian Journalism Foundation and engaged the Earnscliffe Strategy Group to conduct research that would provide a consumer perspective on the subject in question: news, trust and democracy in the digital age. We conducted six focus groups, two each in Montreal, Toronto and Regina in August and September 2016, and followed these up with a nationwide Internet survey of 1,509 adult Canadians between September 22 and October 2, drawn from a Leger panel. We looked at changing patterns of news consumption, trust in various delivery platforms for news, the linkage between democracy and both the presence and the consumption of news, awareness of financial difficulties facing news-gathering organizations and public reaction to various public policy options that might be considered to remedy these difficulties. Here is what we found.
(more…)

“Reason, Freedom and the War on Terrorism”
Allan R. Gregg November 3, 2015
2015 MacEachen Lecture
St. Francis Xavier University

By temperament and whatever little talent I may possess, I am a researcher. Given the vagaries of the polling industry these days and the fact that we have just gone through one of the most competitive federal elections in Canadian history, it might seem natural that I would talk about the polls and polling. Instead, I have chosen to address the subject of ‘Reason, Freedom and the War on Terrorism.’

I’ve chosen this subject for two reasons: First, because I believe this to be the single most important challenge to democracy in modern history, and second, because of what drove me to become a pollster in the first place – an abiding fascination with, and devotion to civic life.
Growing up on the Canadian prairies in a good United Church family, there wasn’t much talk of politics around the dinner table, and like most of the kids in the neighbourhood, I was more interested in hockey than health care reform.

That all changed forever one uncommonly wintery morning in October, 1970.
(more…)

Notes for Remarks to the Public Policy Forum Dinner by Allan R. Gregg
Edmonton, Alberta October 23, 2014
“To Be Partners in an Idea”

Growing up, my Father advised me that if I wanted a career that would bring with it recognition, awards and trophies, the best route was to become a professional curler. Needless-to-say, while this has never been my aspiration, I have to confess that being recognized and receiving the Peter Lougheed Leadership Award is kind of nice – so to the Public Policy Form and all of you here tonight, thank you.

Also, I would be disingenuous if I didn’t admit that being placed in the same company as Oryssia Lennue, Eric Newll and Jim Dinning is nothing short of humbling.

And I know I can also speak for the rest of the recipients when I say that to be given an award that is associated with anything that has to do with Peter Lougheed, has to be viewed as one of Alberta’s greatest honours.
(more…)

Michael Ignatieff, Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics
(Random House, 2013).

Review by Allan R. Gregg originally published in Policy Options via IRPP.org

Full disclosure: I have always liked and admired Michael Ignatieff. Before he returned to Canada in 2005 to run as the Liberal candidate in Etobicoke-Lakeshore with his not-so-secret plan to run for the party’s leadership, I felt he was probably Canada’s finest public intellectual. His book and television series Blood and Belonging was one of the most penetrating and useful analyses of the forces that precipitated the devolution of state-to-state warfare into ethnocultural conflict that have ever been penned.

His defence of the decision to invade Iraq — while discredited as time passed — was elegant and provided a sweeping historical and geopolitical context that was never present in the triumphalist exhortations of other supporters. And while it was often cited out of context, his parsing of concepts such as a “moral war” and the lines between justifiable and illegal state use of force in his book The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror made it absolutely clear that you were reading the works of a superior mind.

He had held academic postings at Cambridge, Harvard and Oxford. He had been on the cover of GQ magazine. The British press had labelled him “the thinking woman’s crumpet.”

In sum, he was the total package. It was small wonder then that the three so-called “men in black” who came to visit him in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October 2004 would see him as the ideal candidate to lead Canada’s natural governing party past its sponsorship-scandal muddle back to glory. Given his pedigree, his accomplishments and the accolades he had received throughout his career, the man himself could be forgiven for agreeing with them.
(more…)

Revised Notes for the University Of Winnipeg’s Knowles-Woodsworth Lecture October 23, 2013
“Reason, Religion and the Public Good”
By Allan R. Gregg

“A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion” – Gandhi

Last fall, I delivered a lecture at Carleton’s School of Public Affairs entitled “1984 in 2012: The Assault on Reason”.
In it, I documented some troubling trends which demonstrated our government’s use of evidence and facts as the bases of policy was declining, and in their place, dogma, whim and political expediency was on the rise.

Starting with the cancellation of the mandatory long-form census and continuing through the 2012 Budget and to this day, a clear pattern emerged that indicated a deliberate attempt to obliterate certain activities that were previously viewed as a legitimate part of government decision-making – namely, using research, science and evidence as the basis to make policy decisions. It also amounted to an attempt to eliminate anyone who might use science, facts and evidence to challenge government policies.

As a researcher who had dedicated a better part of my life to understanding Canadian culture and the political process, I had also come to believe that our nation’s progress has been advanced by enlightened public policy that marshals our collective resources towards a larger public good … and conversely, that that public good is threaten by regressive public policy. And in the end, it has been reason and scientific evidence that has delineated effective from ineffective policy. And this relationship exists for a very straight-forward reason – namely, that effective solutions can only be generated when they correspond to an accurate understanding of the problems they are designed to solve. Evidence, facts and reason, for me, therefore form the sine qua non of not only good policy, but good government.

So I felt I had a personal stake in the game and should speak out. But the more I researched and studied for that lecture, the more it also became clear that there were other larger reasons, beyond the personal, to remind ourselves why we value reason and why we should be very concerned when it comes under assault.
(more…)

Notes for the University Of Winnipeg’s Knowles-Woodsworth Lecture October 23, 2013
By Allan R. Gregg

“A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion” – Gandhi

Last fall, I delivered a lecture at Carleton’s School of Public Affairs entitled “1984 in 2012: The Assault on Reason”.
I had spent my entire professional life as a researcher, dedicated to understanding the relationship between cause and effect. Yet, I began to see some troubling trends. It seemed as though our government’s use of evidence and facts as the bases of policy was declining, and in their place, dogma, whim and political expediency was on the rise. And even more troubling …. Canadians seemed to be buying it.

My concern was first piqued in July 2010, when the federal cabinet announced its decision to cut the mandatory long form census and replace it with a voluntary one. The rationale for this curious decision was that asking citizens for information about things like how many bathrooms were in their homes was a needless intrusion on their privacy and liberty. One might reasonably wonder how knowledge about the number of toilets you have could enable the government to invade your privacy, but that aside, it became clear that virtually no toilet owners had ever voiced concerns that the long form census, and its toilet questions, posed this kind of threat.

Again, as someone who had used the census – both as a commercial researcher and when I worked on Parliament Hill – I knew how important these data were in identifying not just toilet counts, but shifting population trends and the changes in the quality and quantity of life of Canadians. How could you determine how many units of affordable housing were needed unless you knew the change in the number of people who qualified for affordable housing? How could you assess the appropriate costs of affordable housing unless you knew the change in the amount of disposable income available to eligible recipients?

And even creepier, why would anyone forsake these valuable insights – and the chance to make good public policy – under the pretence that rights were violated, when no one ever voiced the concern that this was happening? Was this a one-off move, however misguided? Or, the canary in the mineshaft?
And the more I looked at what was going on – in the 2012 Budget and on the legislative agenda of Parliament – the clearer it became that a pattern was emerging that demonstrated a deliberate attempt to obliterate certain activities that were previously viewed as a legitimate part of government decision-making – namely, using research, science and evidence as the basis to make policy decisions. It also amounted to an attempt to eliminate anyone who might use science, facts and evidence to challenge government policies.
(more…)

(more…)

Thanks to The Walrus Magazine who have reprinted this article in ebook format. For more info on format see their FAQ.

200 years ago today, in what is now called Moraviantown, Ontario, the great Shawnee warrior, Tecumseh was killed defending Canada against invading American troops during the War of 1812. After waging a fearsome battle with the encroaching American militia for over five years, Tecumseh had struck terror in the hearts of American settlers, soldiers and commanders alike. His alliance with the British General, Isaac Brock, and their victory at Detroit, decisively shifted the early momentum in the War to Canada’s favour. No longer could the Americans boast that victory would be (as Thomas Jefferson promised then President James Madison) “a mere matter of marching.” Indeed, it can be said that it was Tecumseh – as much as any other single individual – who saved Canada in the War of 1812.
(more…)

Since Lyndon Johnson launched “the daisy ad” – accusing Barry Goldwater of capriciously threatening nuclear war – negative advertising has become common place in politics.

So common place in fact that, almost half a century later, on the heels of yet another volley of Conservative attack ads against another new Liberal leader, Canada’s “national” newspaper, The Globe and Mail, is now exhorting Justin Trudeau to counter attack and “fight fire with fire or look weak”.

For decades, political operatives have defended the practice of focusing on your opponent’s weaknesses, rather than your strengths, as a legitimate part of democratic choice. The Globe echoes this sentiment … “Isn’t politics about showing why you’re a better choice that your opponent? That implies both the positive and the negative”. But the Globe goes even farther than the practitioners, with the claim that “…. the notion of rising above negativity feels false to what politics are really about …”. This view of “what politics is really about” and the role that negative advertising plays in it, is not only callow, it is dangerous and wrong.

Not just part of democratic choice, attack ads are also justified for the simple reason that they work. Of course they work. They play to – and I believe feed – the public’s general cynicism towards the political system and distrust of politicians. Sad but true, a message that states … “politician A is a crook” is far more likely to be believed than one that claims “politician B is a paragon of virtue”. But using this justification implies that the only practice of politics and role for politicians is to secure short-term electoral gain over your opponent.

If negative advertising is so effective, maybe the media and politicians should ask themselves why other big advertisers (who are far more experienced and savvy) do not employ these same tactics. Just like the electoral process, it is safe to assume that McDonald’s wants to take market share from Burger King. They also know that the quickest and most immediate way of doing this would be to launch an ad campaign that claimed their competitor’s product contained botulism. Burger King could neutralize McDonald’s advantage by countering that Big Macs are rife with e-coli. This attack and counterattack might “work” to the extent that it would affect market share but it is not employed by McDonald’s and Burger King because they know it will destroy the category and pretty soon no one would ever buy a hamburger again. In other words, they are smart enough to know that the business they are in is not just about taking market share from the other guy … it’s about making consumers believe in eating hamburgers.

So while focusing on your opponent’s weakness rather than your own virtues might lead to a short term electoral advantage, over time, it will create a cascade of political cynicism. If you say “politician A is a crook” often enough, it is only a matter of time before the public comes to believe that all politicians are crooks. That is what is happening now and these are the seeds that defenders of negative advertising are sewing.

We would be wise to remember that politics is not a blood sport and that “what politics are really about” is not bludgeoning your opponent until they cannot stand.

For good or ill, politics is the process by which we organize civil, democratic society. It is used to allocate a nation’s scare resources. Through it, we confer a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Because of it, we are able to represent the wishes of the majority and at the same time protect the rights of minority. And at bottom, politics creates a state that has the potential to do immense good or infinite harm and as such, we all have a vested interest that the best and brightest and only those who are motivated by the public good are encouraged to enter public life.

In the very same way, those who believe that this is “what politics are really about” have a responsibility to draw attention to its virtues and not just its shortcomings.