For many parents, it also means gearing up to spend a lot of time at the hockey rink, school gymnasium, soccer complex, or football field watching the play games.

I’m past all that now. My youngest will hit thirty in a few months. My oldest is – well – a bit older. If student radical Jack Weinberg was correct in 1964, you can no longer trust him. Of course, now that Weinberg himself is 86, he’s probably changed his views on the relationship between age and trustworthiness.

Anyways…

But back in the day, I spent a lot of time watching kids play sports.

A lot.

Mostly it was a cycle of baseball in the spring/summer and hockey in the winter. When the guys were in high school, fall was filled in with football. The advantage to that sport was that there was only one game a week. There was also a bit of basketball, but not much. Through a combination of good luck and good parenting, I managed to avoid soccer. I’m not sure I’d have survived the 1,346^th soccer game. I just don’t get a kick out of watching soccer.

I really enjoyed being a sports parent. For one thing, spectating was easier than playing. But there was more. Because of zoning and tiering, players for my sons’ teams were drawn from the same cluster of kids year after year. That meant the same group of parents. I became friends with a lot of people that I would never have otherwise got to know.

But the fact remains that some parents were – to use a technical term – assholes. You know what I mean. Berating either (or both) their kids and other kids. Screaming at the umpires and referees. Carping and complaining to the coaches about playing time. Snarling at evaluators at try-outs.

Seven-year-old kids were playing hockey in Winnipeg. A father from the other team was stalking up and down the boards to follow the play while screaming at the top of his lungs. One of the parents from our team started silently walking beside the guy for a few minutes. The screaming guy did not really notice. Suddenly, the hitherto silent parent started screaming. The screamer turned and stared at his new companion who said, “Sorry, I did not realize I was being such an asshole.” It worked.

There are a lot of reasons for bad parental behavior.

Some desperately want the best for their child. That puts them into conflict with coaches, referees, and officials who want the aggregate best for all the children.

Some believe that their child is destined for fame and fortune as a professional – but only if everyone smooths the path. In Saskatoon minor hockey, city-wide tiering stated with Pee Wee (I think it was 12 years of age). Before that, the city just divided into zones. Each zone held “try-outs” to sort the kids into one of three levels. This mean that a third of the kids were in “Tier 1”. It always amazed me the number of parents who believed that because their kid was in Tier 1 at the age of seven it meant he was destined for the NHL – so long as the coaches did everything right and their kid got lots of playing time.

Some parents are trying to relive their childhood the way they think it should have been. They always wanted to be an athletic superstar, so they insist their child should be one.

And some parents are just assholes. You don’t need sophisticated psychological, economic, or sociological explanations. They are just assholes.

Sports with the most asshole parents

But are all sports created equally?

Are parents in some sports more likely to be assholes than are parents in other sports.

I asked Google this question: “Which youth sports have the most obnoxious parents?”

According to Google’s AI program, the most obnoxious parents are those whose children are in travel soccer, youth tackle football, travel/select youth baseball, and hockey. These sports, said Google, “notoriously breed the most obnoxious parents”.

But links pointed to other sports as well. USA Today recently had an article ranking the youth sports with the most obnoxious parents. In order, this publication said basketball, hockey, soccer, baseball, lacrosse, and football have the worst parents.

Hmm.

According to Google AI, football parents are the worst. According to USA today, football parents rank sixth in toxic parentillity.

Obviously, this is not a precise science.

What’s more, the reasons listed for obnoxious parents are sometimes contradictory.

USA Today says baseball parents are obnoxious because most of them have played baseball and feel they know the sport. At the same time, it says lacrosse parents are obnoxious because they have never played the sport and do not understand the rules.

Baseball parents are deemed to be obnoxious because the slow pace of play and intervals between action allows them to brood about missed plays and bad umpire calls. At the same time, basketball and hockey parents are deemed to be obnoxious because the play is continuous – thereby creating an escalating mood.

You can, it appears, create a reasonably plausible explanation for anything. Consistency, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, is the hobgoblin of little minds.

So let us look past these sports-specific explanations.

The best predictor of how many obnoxious sports parents there are for a particular sport is the number of children playing the sport.

Apparently, soccer is the sport most played by children in North America. I find that shameful, but that’s just me. But it stands to reason that soccer will top most lists of having the most obnoxious parents at games. After all, the most kids playing means the most parents on the sidelines.

Why, for example, is lawn bowling not on any lists of the most commonly obnoxious parents?

The answer is simple.

How many kids are into competitive lawn bowling?

When my kids were in their teens, we knew one kid that competed in lawn bowling. He also played hockey and baseball. His dad was pretty …. Intense. He may well have been added to the tally of obnoxious hockey and baseball parents, but who was counting the hyper-competitive lawn bowling parents.

About the same time, I dated a Chinese woman whose son was into competitive table tennis. Those parents were hard core. I mean hard core. But ping pong does not appear on any lists of obnoxious parents simply because not a lot of North American kids are into competitive table tennis.

The lists of the most obnoxious parents appear to be based on sociologists call a statistical fallacy.

The simple fact is that the best predictor of how many obnoxious parents are associated with a sport is the number of kids play the sport.

The number of kids determines the number of parents. Some proportion of parents will be assholes, regardless of the sport in question.

Most of the variables used to “explain” the prevalence of asshole parents are bogus. Fast pace of play versus interrupted play. Parental knowledge of sport versus ignorance of sport. These “explanations” are irrelevant.

What matters is the number of kids playing the sport.

There are also the considerations of the rewards from the sport. Some kids (including one of mine) get college scholarships. Some become professionals.

This existence of tangible reward from sport certainly spawns some asshole parental behavior.

But not as much as one might think.

As I mentioned earlier, a third of parents of seven-year-old children playing hockey thought that their child’s making a “Tier 1” team thought this mean the kid would make the NHL. For 99 percent of them, this delusion was put to bed by the age of ten. It is profoundly unclear as to which kids have professional prospects. It is really clear which kids do not. And that is most of them.

When kids get to their mid-teens, it is pretty clear which kids “have a chance” at athletic glory on a big stage.

Most do not.

A kid playing Tier 3 hockey at the age of fourteen is not going to make the NHL. Almost every parent accepts that.

When my oldest son was eight, he tried out for a “Tier 2” hockey team in Winnipeg (successfully, says obnoxious bragging dad!) As try-outs wrapped out, a coach told parents that the kids would all be given an envelope in the dressing room. This was not to be opened until the kid was in the car with the parent. The letter in the envelope would either (a) tell the kid they had made the team and details for the first practice or (b) the contact information for their “house league” team based on where they lived.

I was sitting with a neighbor. He turned to me and said, “If my kid gets envelope A, I want to know who to tell that they have given him the wrong envelope.’

The stereotype of the horrible sports parent is that they are convinced their kid will make the pros.

In my experience, that’s not really correct. At least not always.

There are some really obnoxious parents of children who – clearly – will not play college or professional sports.

And a lot of parents of top athletes – those who are “prospects” – are as far from obnoxious as it is possible to be.

Part of this comes from differential access to information.

The parents of the top rated players spend a lot of time watching the sport. They can see the graduations. Just because their kid is “good” does not mean the kid is “really good”. And “really good” is different than “great”.

When my oldest son was going into Grade 11, he was recruited by the Vauxhall Baseball Academy in Alberta. I met with the head coach and director of the program. He explained that the program was run like a college program. Pitchers pitched. Hitters/position players hit and played in the field. My son was being recruited as a pitcher. He would not play in the field or hit.

I nodded. Then I asked, “just out of curiosity, why is he not being recruited as a corner infielder?” In Saskatchewan baseball, he was a slugger.

The answer as immediate and emphatic. “Because he is not good enough to be a prospect at those positions.”

I did not demur, but to be honest, I was skeptical.

Until I saw the team play the first time.

The beast they had at third was wwwaaayyy better than my son. The guy at first was even more so.

I did not scream at the coach to insist my son play these positions.

There are a couple of realities.

One is that the parents of players in the top tier leagues will sometimes be paying thousands of dollars for their kid to play on the team. They will be aggressive about things like playing time.

The other is that some parents of kids on Tier 2 and Tier 3 teams will be aggressive and obnoxious even though their child obviously has no chance for a college scholarship or professional contract.

The prospect of monetary/career reward can intensify aggressiveness, but in the end, some parents are just assholes because they are assholes.

My oldest son was a big name in Saskatchewan baseball. His younger brother was a good Tier 2 player – the quintessential exemplar of average.

When he was about 12, the younger guy was pitching. It was one of the horrible innings. He could not throw strikes. When he did, the ball was hit. When it was hit, the fielders could not field. Eventually, mercifully, they finally got the third out.

As the team was trotting off the field, a parent from the other team hollered, “Hey Stobbe, you are not as good of pitcher as your brother!”

Younger son stopped. He trotted over to the guy. He smiled. Then he said, “neither are you”. Which was surely true.

Asshole parents exist at all competitive levels.

Parental behavior and Children’s Enjoyment of Sport

The purpose of children’s sports should be for the kids to have fun.

Ideally, having fun should be infused with the pursuit of excellence. Sports are more fun when played well than when played badly. More pleasure comes from hitting a home run than from striking out.

This does not mean that every child should be “great.” Greatness is a limited commodity. But sports become more enjoyable for a child if they play as well as their talent permits them to play. A “good game” means different things to different kids. But – whatever the talent level, a “good game” is a lot more fun than a “bad game.”

For a few, there are extrinsic rewards from sports. Some kids get their post-secondary education paid for because they can throw a baseball or shoot a puck. A few even get stupidly rich for being able to master – really master – these athletic skills.

But for almost all kids, pursuit of these extrinsic rewards is a chimera. They enchant parents and devour children.

But the intrinsic rewards can be really important.

• - Having fun.

• - Getting physically fit.

• - Making friends.

• - Working in a team.

• - Pursuing excellence.

For parents, the intrinsic rewards come from watching your child grow and develop. Being a sports parent can also be a really great way to make friends and become part of a community.

But if you’re upset about how your child ranks in hockey, soccer, or basketball tryouts this fall, I have an observation about the tiering process.

I’ll use hockey as an example. The numbers vary for other sports, but the principle is the same.

Suppose there are tryouts for a Tier 1 hockey team. The evaluators/coaches will have to select about 20 players. Suppose there are 30 kids trying out. It will immediately be clear to any knowledgeable observer that:

• - Five kids are a lot better than all the rest. They make the team.

• - Five kids are a lot worse than all the rest. They don’t make the team.

• - Twenty kids are about indistinguishable. They are good enough to be a decent Tier 1 player, but not good enough to be a really good one. If they don’t make the Tier 1 team, they will be a star in Tier 2.

In this very typical scenario, this means that effectively the coaches/evaluators have to pick 10 players out of a pool of 20 who are – by skill and talent – indistinguishable. From the criteria of skill and talent, there are no “correct” or “incorrect” picks. Selection could be made with a random draw.

But the selection process does not happen by a lottery. Conscious choices are made. Given that skill and talent have become irrelevant because of uniformity, other criteria come into play.

Sometimes the personality of the child enters into it. What coach wants a kid who is uncoachable or petulant?

But often these final selections are based on the parents. Coaches want supportive parents who will contribute to making the team function. They don’t want parents who will scream at coaches, players, or referees. Coaches don’t want parents who will monitor playing time with stop watches in order to argue for more ice time for their child. Such parents exist. They are assholes who are also a pain in the ass to deal with.

Both player and parental reputations are made. Coaches talk to each other. They know what they know. And they act on this information. To my mind, that is fair.

Every year, I would have some parent bend my ear about the injustices done to their child. They would whine and complain that “politics” kept their child playing at a lower level. They would point to other children to complain that their child was “just as good” or “better” (The first claim was often true. The second was usually false in a meaningful way.)

As I would listen to these harangues, I would always think:

The difference is that you are an asshole and the parent of the other child is not.

Sometimes I would say the silent part out loud. That was always entertaining but generally unproductive in terms of changing behavior.

“Hmmm,” says I. “To tell you the truth, I don’t even know what they are.”

I promised to look and share some thoughts.

So here goes.

The Separation Questions

This is the one getting all the attention outside of Alberta:

Should Alberta remain a province of Canada, or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?

This one is pretty simple.

Passing this referendum to “put pressure” on the federal government for this or that change will create a period of uncertainty, which has a cost.

If the separatist plan is to join the United States, there are issues. The Yanks might not want Alberta. If they do, conditions might be onerous. Alberta would have less clout in the big, big country of the USA than in the middling country of Canada.

For a land-locked, resource-exporting region, separating to create land-locked, resource exporting country is what political scientists call: “stupid”. It ends badly.

Albertans have some genuine grievances with the federal government and the rest of Canada. Take a number. So does the rest of the country. A partnership means you don’t always get what (everything) you want. But the Canadian regional partnership has allowed us to create one of the best countries in the world – and Alberta is the best province in Canada. Only British Columbia has a reasonable counterclaim to the title. It is tough to reconcile the claims by Alberta that “We’re number one!” and “We are poor, oppressed, and downtrodden.”

So - to my Alberta friends – just say no.

Constitutional Questions

The constitutional questions are a mixed bag, but they share one weird thing in common. Read all four. They are in the block quotes below.

Do you see the problem?

The drafters of the questions seem ignorant of the actual constitutional amendment process. Or they pretend to be. For all of these questions, constitutional amendments would require:

1. Approval by the House of Commons,

2. Approval of the Senate, and

3. Approval by the Legislatures of at least seven provinces collectively accounting for at least fifty percent of Canada’s population.

These questions ignore the first two of the three steps. They presume that Alberta and “other willing provinces” can amend the constitution.

They cannot.

The federal government has to involved as well. In fact, the federal government has to initiate the process.

And there has to be at least six other willing provinces.

The constitution is difficult to amend. That was intrinsic to the design of the constitution. It can be amended, but only if there is a broad-based, national, desire for change.

If the Alberta government were serious about promoting constitutional change, it would be working to convince Canadians in all provinces of the merits of particular changes. That would be appropriate.

But the exercise of an Alberta referendum for constitutional changes without making the case more broadly is about like the members of my household holding a vote to determine whether our neighbors should cut their lawn more often. It is an irrelevant exercise.

But now to the individual measures.

Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to have provincial governments, and not the federal government, select the justices appointed to provincial King’s Bench and Appeal courts?

There’s an old joke.

Question: What’s the difference between a lawyer and a judge?

Answer: The judge was friends with a politician.

The only issue here is that a different set of politicians would get to exercise the right to dispense judicial patronage.

Would that make a substantive difference in judicial outcomes?

Probably not.

First – once appointed, most judges quickly (and rightly) come to see themselves as “independent.” Just look south of the border. Donald Trump spends a lot of time whining and complaining about how “his judges” don’t always rule the way he wants. If Premier Smith appointed King’s Bench and Appeal Court judges, she’d soon be making the same sort of whine.

Second – there is no such thing as an enduring provincial political orientation. At one time, Saskatchewan was the socialist bastion in Canada. Now it is not. If the provinces appointed King’s Court and Appeal Court judges, lots of judges appointed by Roy Romanow and Lorne Calvert would still be on the bench.

The real test of “difference” based on appointment would be to compare the rulings of provincially appointed judges (the most numerous) and federally appointed ones. I’ve not seen any serious studies of this, but I strongly suspect that there would not be a lot of difference. A judge tends to be a judge whether they are appointed by a Justice Minister’s office in Edmonton or Ottawa.

This referendum question is just an incompetent grab for more patronage powers.

Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to abolish the unelected federal Senate?

This is kind of funny.

This has been the long-standing position of the CCF/NDP. Whatever happened to the good old, right-wing, knuckle dragging Reform Party call for a Triple-E Senate? When did Danielle Smith start to channel her inner M.J. Coldwell, Tommy Douglas, David Lewis, and Ed Broadbent?

Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to allow provinces to opt out of federal programs that intrude on provincial jurisdiction such as health care, education and social services, without a province losing any of the associated federal funding for use in its social programs?

This seems to miss the actual constitutional and fiscal reality. For the most part, the federal government does not have programs for health care, education, or social services. Those are areas within the domain of the provinces. For some of them, the federal government provides some cash (arguably not enough).

In the end, this demand seems to be that the provinces can opt out of providing a cost-shared program while not opting out of getting the cash. I helped fund my children’s post-secondary education (arguably not enough). I was less willing to fund any proposed trip to Las Vegas. This amendment would insist that I give the same amount of money to both sons even if one wanted to go to university while the other wanted to test his system to beat the slot machines.

Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to better protect provincial rights from federal interference by giving a province’s laws dealing with provincial or shared areas of constitutional jurisdiction priority over federal laws when the province’s laws and federal laws conflict?

There are two separate and distinct issues conflated in this question: laws arising from provincial powers and laws in shared area of constitutional jurisdiction. These are profoundly different situations even if the drafters of the question are (or pretend to be) oblivious. The difference is similar to the difference between a couple having two separate bank accounts or one shared account.

Let’s take them in order.

Provincial rights in areas of provincial jurisdiction are already protected from federal interference by an existing document. It is called The Constitution Act, 1982. This gives powers in defined areas to the provinces. If the federal government attempts to “interfere” with something within provincial jurisdiction, the provincial government can go to court to get the federal action declared “ultra vires.” That’s Latin terminology used by lawyers and courts. It means “beyond the powers”.

If the federal government does something within provincial jurisdiction that the provincial government does not like, all it has to do is go to court to have the action deemed ultra vires. The judges – whether appointed by Edmonton or Ottawa – will declare the federal law invalid.

In short, this part of the referendum question is calling for a constitutional change to put something into the constitution that is already there. The Latin term for this is “Hoc stultum est”. (Translation: “this is stupid”).

The part of the referendum question dealing with areas of shared jurisdiction is more complex. The basic problem is that some issues are both national in scope and local in impact.

In Canada’s constitution, issue areas such as immigration, agriculture, and old-age pensions are explicitly have shared jurisdiction. There is – or at least should be – lots of give-and-take negotiation in these areas.

There are also areas of overlapping jurisdiction. Both levels of government can pass laws. For example, both the federal and provincial government can pass laws to impose taxes.

Sigh.

It is by no means clear from the referendum question whether the drafters are aware of the distinction between shared and overlapping jurisdiction, but let’s look at taxes to see the difference. If there was shared jurisdiction for taxes, the federal and provincial governments would have to negotiate to agree on how much to pick our pockets. With overlapping jurisdiction, each can (and does) independently set tax rates. But being Canada, the two levels of government (in some) provinces have agreed that the provinces will delegate collection activity to the federal government for sales and income taxes. This turns an overlapping jurisdiction into a de-facto shared one - but not for the amount of taxes being collected.

But enough of the terminological distinctions.

The referendum does not define which areas of overlapping/shared jurisdiction the Alberta government claims should provincial priority for, so we have to assume they want all.

The province uber alles.

But here is the thing. If each and every province gets veto rights over actions and jurisdiction of the national government, you no longer have a national government.

This political theory for a federal state was advanced a couple of hundred years ago by the state legislature in South Carolina. They called it “nullification” – that a state could override (“nullify”) any law from the federal government it disagreed with.

That was the theory, anyways. Less than two decades later, there was something called the “Civil War” as a result.

Immigration Questions

My core objection to the constitutional questions is that the Alberta government is asking people to vote on things it has no power to deliver on. This just creates another turn in the perpetual cycle of stoking – but not resolving – discontent.

My core objection to the immigration questions is that the Alberta government is asking people to vote on things it does have the power to deliver on.

If Danielle Smith and her government believe these are good things to do – that they are sound policy – they should just pass the appropriate laws and implement the appropriate policies. That’s what Albertans elect governments to do in a representative democracy. If they are good policies, implement them without setting up a referendum process to blame immigrants for Alberta’s problems.

If Danielle Smith and her government believe these are bad things to do – that they are bad policies – why are they being proposed?

If these measures are bad policies, the only purpose of the referendum questions can be to stoke anger and hostility towards immigrants. If the government believes they are bad policy, they are making an implicit promise to implement policies they know are bad in order to pander politically. That’s bad.

With that observation, here are the immigration questions:

Do you support the Government of Alberta taking increased control over immigration for the purposes of decreasing immigration to more sustainable levels, prioritizing economic migration and giving Albertans first priority on new employment opportunities?

Do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law mandating that only Canadian citizens, permanent residents and individuals with an Alberta-approved immigration status will be eligible for provincially-funded programs, such as health care, education and other social services?

Assuming that all Canadian citizens and permanent residents continue to qualify for social support programs as they do now, do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law requiring all individuals with a non-permanent legal immigration status to reside in Alberta for at least 12 months before qualifying for any provincially-funded social support programs?

Assuming that all Canadian citizens and permanent residents continue to qualify for public health care and education as they do now, do you support the Government of Alberta charging a reasonable fee or premium to individuals with a non-permanent immigration status living in Alberta for their and their family’s use of the health care and education systems?

I am not going to waste my time (or yours) subjecting these to a detailed policy critique. The reality is that they could be boiled down to one straightforward question;

Do you believe immigrants are net contributors to Alberta, or do you believe they are a drain on the province?

That is all the four long-winded immigration questions are asking.

I’ll not presume to answer this question for Albertans.

But as someone from Saskatchewan, I’ll just note that immigration both international and inter-provincial transformed Alberta into what it is today.

If previous Alberta governments believed that immigrants were a net drain – something to be discouraged – the reality is that Alberta would look a lot like Saskatchewan. Whether that is good or bad, I’ll leave for you to come to a judgement on.

If you have friends or family members living in Alberta that might be interested in these arguments, please share this piece with them. It is quick. It is easy. It is free. It is important.

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The “Turing Test” stipulated that machine intelligence occurred when someone evaluating an interaction between a computer and a person is unable to determine which is the human and which is the machine.

We can now add the “Heaton Test” to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) vocabulary.

University of Pennsylvania criminologist Paul Heaton got ChatGPT to confess to a crime that it did not commit.

Heaton accused ChatGPT of hacking into his email account and sending messages to his contacts.

ChatGPT denied the accusation.

Heaton then interrogated the AI program. Using the interrogation technique most commonly used by police in North America for major crimes, Heaton got ChatGPT to confess to a crime that it did not – and lacked the capacity to – commit. That makes ChatGPT weirdly human according to the criterion of the Turing Test. It also sheds a disturbing insight into police interrogation techniques. If an inanimate computer can be convinced to confess to something it did not do, what are the prospects for us mere humans.

The REID Interrogation Technique

The most common investigative technique for major crimes used by police is not forensics or high-tech laboratory work. Police use the simple technique of asking people questions. They accumulate, record, and interpret the answers to build an evidentiary foundation to lay charges. In court, the prosecutor will re-ask many of the same questions to the same witnesses so that the judge and jury can hear the answers. If different answers are given, the witness will be cross-examined about the discrepancy between the answers they gave police and the answers they are providing in court.

The single answer that is most likely to get the accused convicted is when they respond to the question “did you do it?” with the answer “I did.” That question-and-answer sequence gets you convicted almost every time. Juries believe this answer. When you get to court, if you take the witness stand to tell the jury you lied when giving this answer to police, they will not believe you.

Sometimes the answer can be denied with the claim that “I didn’t actually give that answer.” In some cases, this denial of saying the incriminating words can have plausibility. “Jailhouse Confessions” in which a prisoner claims a cellmate confessed to a major crime are notoriously unreliable because the person claiming to hear the confession has incentive to lie about it.

If you are in a police holding cell for – let’s say a bunch of burglary charges – and your cellmate is accused of rape or murder, you’ve just drawn a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. All you have to do is tell a prosecutor that your cellmate confessed to you but your testimony comes with a price. Your freedom for your cellmates. In Canada, this mostly does not work anymore. The courts have come to understand the intrinsic unreliability of such putative confessions. In many states in the United States however, Jailhouse Confessions still people send people to prison.

But let us assume for a minute that you actually confessed to the crime. You did so to a police officer after being advised of your right to remain silent and being warned that anything you say can and will be used against you. Your interrogation and confession have been recorded both visually and audibly. The jury gets to watch the question being posed and the answer given. In these circumstances, you cannot plausibly claim you did not say the words. What’s more, you can’t claim torture, physical violence, or threats of violence unless you were.

You can only claim you lied.

And that, my friends, makes you dead meat on the witness stand when the prosecutor cross-examines. All you do with that position is annoy the jury for wasting their time with your transparently ridiculous, self-serving, claims to have lied to police. The jury’s logic will be simple and compelling. Why, they will ask, would you tell police you did something you did not do while knowing the consequence would be a long, long time in the slammer? Why lie when it was clearly against your interest? Or is it more likely that you are lying now in order to save your worthless, guilty, lying self from being convicted?

Yeah.

Juries believe the original confession rather than the denial. And, truthfully, in most cases the jury would be right. At least if defense lawyers did not understand this and put their clients on the witness stand to testify.

But not always.

Sometimes people do confess to crimes they do not commit. Paul Heaton has just demonstrated that even a computer can be induced to do so.

To understand why, we need to take a step back to draw a terminological distinction. As we saw earlier, police gather evidence by asking questions. But not all questions are created equally or have the same intent.

When police INTERVIEW someone, they are seeking information. They may interview hundreds of people in an investigation for a homicide. Almost none are suspects. The police just want to know if people know anything that might be relevant. They assemble these bits of knowledge to identify a suspect or build a case against him. Innocent people will – and should – answer police interview questions. If they don’t, the crime will not be solved and the perpetrator will remain unpunished.

It is different when police INTERROGATE someone. Let’s be clear. An interrogation is not a knowledge seeking exercise. It is a confession seeking exercise. If you are interrogated, the police have already decided that you are guilty. The point of the exercise is to get you to say the words. If you are interrogated, nothing you can say – and I mean nothing – will cause the police to conclude you are innocent. That’s why lawyers tell their clients to shut up.

In North America, the most common interrogation technique is known as the REID Interrogation Technique. It’s named after a psychologist named John Reid. The company he founded in 1947 – John E. Reid and Associates – conducts its four-day training course to about 20,000 police officers in 34 countries. Every year. Its training manual is available in five languages. Surveys of police who have taken the course report it increases their “confession rate” – often by more than 50 percent. What’s more, over 99 percent of Reid generated confessions are admitted into court as being valid. Conviction rates are unknown but as a general rule, if you’ve confessed you are convicted.

John Reid was a kind of psychological genius. He figured out a way to get people (and computers) to confess to crimes. In most cases, this has been a good thing. His interrogation technique has helped get people guilty of really vile crimes convicted. Thousands and thousands of them.

The Reid technique is really good at getting people to confess to crime.

Sometimes it is too good.

Sometimes innocent people (and computers) confess to crimes they did not commit. Then they are f****d.

How does it work?

There’s a lot of specific techniques taught by Reid, but it all can be boiled down into three words.

Maximization.

Minimization.

Persistence.

An officer conducting a Reid interrogation begins by maximizing the suspect’s feeling of doom. The interrogation generally immediately follows arrest, which in and of itself is a disorientating and doom-inspiring experience (particularly for the inexperienced and/or innocent). The interrogating officer will do as much telling as questioning. The officer will review the case with the suspect by telling them about all the evidence they have. The suspect will be told – in no uncertain terms – that they are guilty beyond a doubt and will be convicted.

When the sense of certainty of the conviction is maximized, the moral culpability is minimized. The officer will begin to empathetically bond with the suspect. “Anyone can lose their temper.” “I would have done the same thing.” “She was a bitch anyways.” All of this leads to the suggestion that some moral standing can be recovered through confession. The interrogating officer becomes a kind of priest in a confessional.

The key to maximization/minimization is persistence. Reid interrogations yield a lot of confessions both truthful and untruthful. They obtain both by wearing the suspect down. If the person is guilty, they eventually give up and confess. If the person is innocent, sometimes they just give up and confess just to get the thing over with. Sometimes, they are actually convinced they are guilty. Don’t laugh. It could happen to you.

In 2008, I was arrested and charged with murder for a crime I did not commit. As soon as the ink was dry on my fingertips, I got to know a police officer in a small room. As best as I can tell (time measurement is a bit imprecise in these circumstances), the interrogation lasted 22 hours. I didn’t know it at the time, but the officer was using the Reid technique. At the beginning, I made a “for the record, I’m innocent” declaration. This was met with a snarl of “don’t lie to me.” Then it began. I heeded my lawyer’s advice and kept my mouth shut so the officer did all the talking for 22 hours. My experience was that a feeling of profound doom set in about ten hours in. I actually briefly contemplated making a false confession just to get the thing over with. After all, if conviction was inevitable, why not just get it done? I didn’t get to the point of starting to believe the interrogator about my guilt, but I can see how this happens.

About ten hours in, I had a question of my own. If the evidence was so strong as to make a conviction inevitable, why was this guy so desperate to get me to confess?

The obvious answer to this question was that they needed a confession for a conviction. That meant the police were not as certain about their case as the guy was claiming. This made sense, since I knew I was innocent. With this, the interrogation lost its effect on me. I sat back and began to analyze what the police had and what they did not have. By the time the frustrated officer wrapped up the interrogation (not politely), I was pretty sure of eventual acquittal.

But, in addition to being innocent, I am a little weird. A Reid interrogation does not have a comforting effect on less analytical, people.

There is a kicker to the Reid technique.

During the interrogation, police can and do lie. For example, they might falsely claim that the suspect’s DNA was found at the crime scene.

“Explain that!” the interrogator will demand.

If the person is guilty, they will start to change their story. Once they start down that road, they are doomed, legally speaking. This path often leads to confession. If confession is resisted after the suspect’s story changes, it inevitably leads to a complete loss of credibility in denial.

If the suspect is innocent, they may well start to doubt themselves, their sanity, and their own innocence. They can’t explain the evidence being presented by the police because it did not actually exist. If a suspect believes the police, they are doomed – speaking both in terms of self-perception and legal position.

That’s how Heaton got ChatGPT to confess to a crime that it did not commit. He told the AI program that a person – a specific, known, named, person at Open AI had told Heaton that the program had an architectural flaw that made it possible for the program to hack his (Heaton’s) email account. Heaton demanded that ChatGPT explain this. The program tried, but could not.

Pretty soon the computer program was confessing to a crime it did not commit.

In a very real sense, ChatGPT passed the Turing Test. Its response was indistinguishable from many innocent people faced with a Reid interrogation.

Confessions and Criminal Investigations

When I was conducting research for my books on Mr. Big and No-Body Homicides, I did a deep dive into academic research on confessions.

It seemed to me the research produced by university professors (as opposed to police officers) was one-sided. The vast bulk of it was aimed at exploring “false” confessions and how to avoid them. There was very little academic research on how to obtain “true” confessions. Indeed, the most substantive body of research on this (conducted by John Reid) is older than I am.

And I am retired.

To a degree, this research priority seems misplaced.

Don’t get me wrong. “False confessions” are a real problem. Innocent people go to prison for very long periods of time if they confess to something they did not do. What’s more, the people who actually commit these crimes avoid punishment. When a suspect confesses, that’s basically the end of investigation. Any further work by police will just be devoted to firming up and verifying the confession. Other suspects are off the hook. Perpetrators who have not been identified as suspects remain invisible.

But “false denials” are a real problem as well. Guilty people usually want to avoid punishment. A key element in a punishment avoidance strategy is to deny culpability. Some guilty people are amazingly persuasive and persistent in their denials. When I researched my book on No-Body Homicides, I looked at about a thousand cases in which the killer destroyed or hid the body of their victim. Many killers were steadfast in denial for years – or even decades. Denial would continue through investigation, trial, and post-conviction. But confession sometimes come – belatedly - to some of these killers. After years or decades of denial, they would confess and tell where the body was buried in exchange for something like parole eligibility. A lot of murderers think only of their own best interests. Go figure.

The solution proposed – implicitly or explicitly – by a lot of academics in the field of confessions is to abandon the vigorous pursuit of confessions. The logic is that some confessions are false, so all are suspect.

The problem is that this can be said of every form of evidence presented at criminal trials. Eyewitness testimony can – in some circumstances – be profoundly unreliable. Forensic evidence can be flawed in either collection or analysis.

The only way to ensure – with 100 percent certainty – that there will be no false convictions is to abandon the quest to convict and punish the guilty.

This seems unsatisfying.

The realistic solution is both to work to improve techniques AND to be aware of the potential for every form of evidence to go astray. Some humility is an important investigative tool although I am not at all sure it is a common attribute of police or prosecutors. I am sure it is uncommon amongst academics.

If we apply some caution and humility to the evaluation of confessions, some operational conclusions can be drawn:

• Torture and physical violence are not a good way to get reliable confessions. This has been recognized in both Canada and the United States. I’m not saying it never happens, but it is gone institutionally.

• “Confessions” to Jailhouse Informants are probably even more unreliable than confessions obtained through torture. They’ve mostly been flushed out of the Canadian legal system but still appear in the courts of some American states.

• Reid-technique interrogations are good at extracting confessions from the guilty, but need to be treated with caution because they’ve been proven to be a little too effective in obtaining confessions from the innocents. Ask ChatGPT about it. Some modifications rather than outright elimination are probably in order. For example, I’d be inclined to prohibit police from lying about the evidence they possess. This would likely eliminate more false confessions than true ones.

• An exception to my queasiness about police deception is Mr. Big operations. In these operations, undercover police officers convince a suspect they are about to be recruited into an imaginary criminal gang. As part of the job application process, the suspect is encouraged to tell Mr. Big about past criminal acts so that things can be “cleaned up”. Needless to say, there is a lot of deceit in this exercise. However… a good, well-run Mr. Big operation is amazingly successful at both generating true confessions AND (as long as the police do not become too fixated on pre-conceived results) in clearing suspects who are innocent.

One difference between Reid and Mr. Big is in the role of corroborating evidence. In a Reid interrogation, the interrogation is designed to provide corroboration for existing evidence. In a Mr. Big operation, the disclosure comes first. It is then verified by gathering corroborating evidence.

But there is a similarity between the two that can lead either astray. When someone is interrogated or becomes the object of a Mr. Big sting, the police have already decided they are guilty. In most cases, interrogation follows arrest. This decision must be justified. A Mr. Big operation lacks the prior arrest but are time-consuming and expensive. If the suspect does not disclose guilt, there is a temptation for the police to view it as a “failure”. Sometimes they try too hard to get the person to say, “I did it.” Canadian courts have become fairly good at spotting these problematic cases (if the Mr. Big disclosure is not accepted as valid evidence the charges are almost always stayed) but the legal process is lengthy, unpleasant, expensive, and reputation damaging for an innocent person.

Anyway…

If you ever find yourself in the unfortunate position of being in an interrogation room with a glowering cop and a video camera being accused of something you did not do – don’t be like ChatGPT. Don’t bother to deny. Don’t attempt to argue your innocence. Just keep your mouth shut.

And it ChatGPT has learned this, it will be one more step closer to passing the Turing Test for real intelligence.

For more on confessions, Mr. Big, and No-Body Homicides consider buying The 'Mr. Big' Sting: The Cases. The Killers, The Controversial Confessions or No-Body Homicides: The Evolution of Investigation and Prosecution. I’ll confess that these are the best books on homicide investigation around. Of course, I would say that.

My wife is not.

But like in any good marriage, we found a way to productively resolve our differences. When she has trouble getting to sleep, I start talking about some aspect of 1800s railway construction. It might not be the most romantic pillow talk in the world, but it gets the job done. Within five minutes of me beginning to pontificate on the merits and demerits of different railway gauges, she is snoring. Such are the understandings reached after ten years of marriage.

A few weeks ago, I realized my bedtime patter about railways was starting to put me to sleep. I needed fresh material. As a result, I went on a railroad binge by reading an account of the construction of the Central Pacific/Union Pacific in the United States (Nothing Like It in the World by Stephen Ambrose. I then re-read some classics on Canadian railroad construction:

· The National Dream by Pierre Burton,

· The Last Spike by Pierre Burton,

· Canadian National Railways (Vol.1): Sixty years of trial and error (1836 to 1896) by G.R. Stevens,

· Canadian National Railways (Vol 2): Towards the inevitable by G.R. Stevens.

For those keeping score, that’s 2,410 pages of railroad construction reading. I really tied into it. Now I’ll gauge your interest. Now I’ll get to rail on for a while. (Sorry about the railroad puns – I’m getting giddy).

Anyways – I’ll give you the comic book version of the construction of these railroads – and then stroke my chin and offer a few brilliant insights that have relevance today.

Sleep tight.

Spoiler Alert

When railroads were built in “the west” – either Canada or the United States – there was a timing issue. Agricultural settlement and the creation of towns/cities could not occur without a railroad. That meant railroads had to be built first. But when railroads were built into “empty” areas, there was no traffic or revenue. And railroads were incredibly expensive to build.

As a result of these circumstances, a railroad entrepreneur had to win two races.

First, he had to raise enough money to get the thing built. Completion was always a race against exhaustion of funds. And building was always more expensive than anticipated.

Second, enough settlers had to be attracted quickly enough that the railroad did not go broke before the area was settled enough to generate traffic and revenue.

Sometimes those building railroads won these two races. Sometimes they lost. Those who won got very rich. Those who lost died broke.

As you read further, keep these two races in mind. These two races also explain the ubiquitous nature of government involvement. Building a railroad through country before agricultural settlement was not “economic”. For the vast sums to be raised, someone had to be willing to put in money – somehow – for reasons other than the immediate profitability of the enterprise. That meant government, which meant politics.

First American “Transcontinental” Railroad

In 1862, the US Congress passed legislation to charter two railways. The Union Pacific (UP) would start building at Council Bluffs, Iowa and head west. The Central Pacific (CP) would start in Sacramento, California and start building east. The first “transcontinental” did not cross the continent at all. Instead, it was two distinct railways joined both to each other and to existing railway networks at each end.

The Civil War kept things from proceeding for a few years, but construction really took off after the war ended. The “Last Spike” joining the two railroads was driven at Promontory Summit, Utah in 1869.

Construction of both the UP and the CP were funded by (a) huge grants of government land to the railway (10 square miles for every mile of railroad construction) and (b) government issued and backed bonds to be issued at a rate of $16,000 per mile construction in the flatlands and $48,000 per mile in the mountains. The legislation created a race between the two railroads to build. Despite these similarities, there were real differences between the two railroads:

• The Central Pacific was controlled by four successful Sacramento businessmen. They were interested in operating a railroad. They drove hard bargains, but kept them. They worked their workers hard, but paid them on time. They built well.

• The Union Pacific was controlled by a conman. He created an associated construction company (Credit Mobilier) that was awarded contracts at inflated prices and did shoddy work. The route was meandering – laid out to INCREASE the mileage to maximize bond revenue and land grants. Politicians were bribed with gifts of Credit Mobilier shares. Commitments were often unmet and workers often unpaid – to the point that company officials returning East after the ceremonies marking the completion of the railroad were kidnapped and held for ransom by angry workers. The ransom demand? Payment of wages.

There were other differences. The CP employed a lot of Chinese laborers. Its work camps were orderly and peaceful. The UP employed a lot of Irish immigrants and Civil War veterans. Its main work camp was known as “Hell on Wheels.”

The four principles behind the CP all died incredibly wealthy and respected. The conman behind the UP was evicted from the company, flirted with jail, and died broke.

Meanwhile in Canada Pre-Confederation

The first railroad boom in the 1840s and 1850s produced a plethora of weird little railroads going from the middle of nowhere to nowhere in particular.

Two major companies emerged.

The Great Western Railroad dominated the southern tip of the southern Ontario peninsula. A lot of its revenue came from operating a shortcut for American shippers hauling stuff from New England/upstate New York to Michigan and Illinois.

The Grand Trunk Railroad operated the main line initially from Montreal to Toronto. As time went on, it extended east to Quebec City and west and south into southern Ontario.

Both the Great Western and the Grand Trunk were owned and controlled by British investors. After a few decades of cut-through competition, the Grand Trunk swallowed up the Great Western in 1881. By this time, about a third of the company’s trackage was in the United States. Montreal was linked to Portland, Main and Ontario was linked to Chicago.

Both companies had a reputation for being good operators, well connected politically (reliably delivering both votes and money to the Conservative party), and not particularly profitable.

Confederation and Railroads

A few years after Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario came together to begin the formation of a country we call Canada, the government launched railroad construction as nation construction.

The Conservative government led by Sir. John A. MacDonald bought “Rupertsland” from the Hudson Bay Company and began to negotiate treaties with indigenous people in Northern Ontario and the prairies. He then convinced the colony of British Columbia (basically, the town of Victoria and a few mining camps in the interior) to join Canada as a province.

There was a major problem with these acquisitions. You couldn’t get to either the prairies or British Columbia. At least not quickly. Or if you had lots of stuff to haul. Or if you wanted to stay in Canada.

As part of his deal with British Columbia, MacDonald promised a railroad within 10 years. Since the prairies were between BC and the rest of Canada, they’d get linked in as well.

MacDonald’s overwhelming imperative was to get linked with the west and fill it in with settlers before the Americans did so. American railroads had reached Minneapolis/St. Paul so access to Manitoba would be cheap and easy. The UP/CP railroad ended in San Francisco. From there, sea access to British Columbia was cheap and easy.

MacDonald had, on behalf of Canada, acquired millions of square miles of territory. At that time, there were about 10,000 white people in British Columbia and about 1,500 in all of what is now Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Quite simply, MacDonald had to use it or lose it to the Americans.

And the only way to use it was with railroads.

That was the basis for MacDonald’s promise to built a railroad to British Columbia within ten years.

Quite frankly, everyone thought MacDonald was nuts.

The Inter-Colonial Railroad

As soon as MacDonald promised British Columbia a railroad, the essential nature of Canadian politics asserted itself.

That’s right.

Self-interested parochialism.

Nova Scotia and New Brunswick immediately demanded a railroad to link with the rest of Canada as well.

Macdonald sighed and promised them a railroad.

The resulting Inter-Colonial Railroad was built as a government enterprise. It was a slow-moving train wreck. All decisions – from route selection to awarding of contracts to hiring/firing decisions to allocating free passes and setting rates – were made on the basis of politics.

It was no way to run a railroad.

For half a century, the Inter-Colonial Road was a kind of joke. Service was terrible. It always lost money.

I won’t get into the weeds on this one. Suffice it to say – in the late 1910s when the government was merging other bankrupt railroads into what became the Canadian National Railway, the Inter-Colonial got tossed in.

The Canadian Pacific

The big game was the railroad to British Columbia.

MacDonald shopped around for a group of businessmen capable of building/operating the thing. He fell in with a guy called Sir. Hugh Allen – reputed to be the richest man in Canada. Allen was a steamship guy based in Montreal. For the railroad, he was serving as a frontman for a group of American railway promoters. This was a bit problematic for a railroad whose public policy purpose was to keep out the Americans.

Anyways, as this railroad venture was being put together, there was a federal election in 1872. Elections at that time were fought by bribing voters – which was expensive. Allen got about $300,000 from his American backers and funneled the money to Conservative campaigns. It helped win the election, but afterwards the government told Allen that the railroad had to be, actually, you know, Canadian. This made the Americans more than a little pissy. The whole thing got very ugly. Both the rail company and the government collapsed.

In came the Liberals under Alexander MacKenzie.

MacKenzie decided – not unreasonably – that choosing a private sector company to build and operate the railroad led to corruption and bribery. He set out to build the Pacific railroad as a government enterprise.

You remember how I briefly described the government-run Inter-Colonial Railroad as a patronage infested, politicized, badly run, money-losing, disaster.

Yeah.

That’s right.

In 1878, the Liberals were thrown out. In large part, this was because lots of money was being spent on the railroad, but not much railroad was being built. Much of the money was being spent on redundant surveys to convince different parts of the countryside that the railroad might come in their direction.

But not a lot was built.

When MacDonald returned to office in 1878, he initially puttered along with government construction.

The government began to build from what is now Thunder Bay to Winnipeg. This would allow farmers in Manitoba to ship grain east via an all-Canadian route of rail and water.

The government also started building up the Fraser Canyon in British Columbia. In theory, this was supposed to keep British Columbia happy because it was a tangible sign that the long-promised railroad was actually being built. In actual fact, it just annoyed people in British Columbia. Most people lived in Victoria. They wanted to railroad to end there. You might now be saying, “But Victoria is on an island.” Indeed, it is. And was. The good folk of British Columbia saw no reason why the railroad should not go to Bute Inlet (about 70 miles north of Vancouver) and cross over to Nanaimo on a bridge. From there, it was supposed to go south to Victoria. Building south through the Fraser Canyon signified that Victoria was being “bypassed.”

Oh.

One other thing.

By 1880, the contractor needed to hire 10,000 workers. To get them, he hired in China. And let’s be clear. Pretty much everyone was a racist back then. The people of BC shocked other Canadians with how racist they tended to be.

So, the Fraser Canyon section was not what you’d call popular in British Columbia.

But MacDonald’s goal was to get the railroad built without the government building it.

MacDonald tried to find a consortium of capitalists willing and able to take on the project. The government basically put out a request for proposals. It let it be known that the government would give $25 million cash and 25 million acres of land to anyone who would build it a railroad.

You remember how I mentioned that people thought MacDonald was insane for promising British Columbia a railroad?

Yeah.

That’s right.

They still did.

MacDonald beat the bushes in Canada. He tried New York. He went to London.

Nobody wanted any part of this venture.

The most obvious partner was the Grand Trunk. It was established in Canada and had a good operating record. It was kind of a Siamese Twin the Conservative party.

MacDonald went to London to pitch the railroad to the President of the Grand Trunk. The guy threw the proposal into the garbage. Literally. While the Prime Minister was sitting there.

The fact that almost nobody lived on the prairies was one problem. Another was the fact that nobody really knew whether agriculture would be viable on the prairies. Opinions were mixed, but mostly negative. Then there were the mountains in British Columbia.

But the big problem was the area north of Lake Superior. It was over 700 miles from Thunder Bay to Lake Nipissing (where the new railroad could be linked with existing networks). As far as anyone knew, these 700 miles contained nothing but granite hills, bottomless muskeg, and mosquitos. And black flies. Construction would be hellishly expensive.

How expensive, you ask?

The average cost of a mile of railroad built by the CPR – averaging prairie and mountain – was just over $68,000 per mile.

There was a single mile north of Superior that cost $700,000. That’s in 1880s currency when an ordinary worker got paid a dollar a day. An affluent middle-class professional lifestyle cost $1,200.

And when it was finished, the line North of Superior would cost a fortune to operate trains over. And it would generate no traffic. Zilch. Nada.

Everyone involved agreed that building a railroad north of Lake Superior was economically insane. That’s why nobody was willing to do it. That’s why the President of the Grand Trunk threw the proposal into the garbage. He said if the government dropped the requirement for that section, Grand Trunk would build the railroad.

But this would mean that all of the traffic in the west would go through the United States.

On American railroads.

MacDonald believed this would mean the west would become part of the United States. His belief was shared by the Americans.

They were all probably right.

At the last minute, a group of four individuals came forward as a syndicate. They had made a shitload of money building a railroad into Manitoba from Minneapolis/St. Paul. Now they were willing to go double or nothing.

Two were Canadians. One was an ex-fur trader and now major shareholder in the Hudson Bay Company. He was also hated by MacDonald and the Conservatives. In 1873, he’d been an MP from Manitoba and cast the deciding vote to bring down MacDonald’s government. This guy’s cousin and business partner was the President of the Bank of Montreal.

Of the two Americans, one was another ex-fur trader who’d made his money in shipping on the Red River. The fourth guy was an ex-Canadian living in St. Paul who’d made his initial fortune selling coal. He’d then been the driving force behind the railroad from Minneapolis/St. Paul into Manitoba.

This group got the deal to build the Canadian Pacific Railroad because nobody else was willing to attempt it. Even with the offer of $25 million cash and 25 million acres of land, everyone else thought the venture was not viable. Actually, they thought it was insane.

It is that simple. The members of the CPR syndicate were the only ones willing to give it a try.

Of course, as soon as the deal was reached, the political shit hit the fan. The deal was attacked as a giveaway to evil capitalists – some of whom were American. Opposition politicians and the newspapers simultaneously proclaimed that the deal was a giveaway (probably as a result of bribes) and that the railroad would be impossible to finance and build. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

In truth, there was a basis for the inconsistency of the critiques.

Mistrust.

People were suspicious that the CPR syndicate would take the money and land, build in the prairies (and maybe British Columbia) but leave the construction of the Lake Superior section until “later”.

“Later” as in “when hell freezes over.”

These suspicions were not groundless. That appears to have been the plan of the two American partners. When the Canadian partners insisted on building the Lake Superior section, the American partners pulled out.

To make a long, long story short, construction proceeded. The CPR syndicate ran out of money. Nobody would lend them more. The two principal partners pledged everything they owned – up to and including their family bibles – to raise money. It was not enough. Workers and suppliers were unpaid and getting ugly. Construction was grinding to a halt. Bankruptcy loomed.

Then a savior appeared.

A guy called Louis Riel.

The 1885 Northwest Rebellion was the savior of the CPR. Troops were rushed – through Canada – over the unfinished railroad (hundreds of horsedrawn sleds were used to bridge the unfinished portions). The Rebellion was put down. The CPR was – very briefly – popular. The government guaranteed the loans needed to finish construction.

Years later, the President of the CPR proposed putting up a statue of Louis Riel in front of the CPR’s Montreal head office. It did not happen, but probably should have.

The CPR struggled on the brink of bankruptcy for a few decades before becoming profitable.

Very profitable.

And very unpopular.

We’ll get into that below.

Canadian National Railroad

The CPR was more or less completed in 1885. For about a dozen years, nothing much happened. The CPR limped along. Not very many people wanted to move to the prairies. Those that were there had more crop failures than harvests. They cursed the CPR for being slow to build branch lines and for “high” freight rates. In time, the railroad came to be blamed for the bad weather and grasshoppers. If that seems a bit unfair to our modern eyes, there was some basis. Those who had moved to the prairies had usually been enticed by CPR advertising that was – shall we say – more optimistic than realistic. There were no August frosts or grasshoppers in the CPR’s advertisements to recruit settlers.

Things began to change in the late 1890s. MacDonald died in 1893 and his Conservatives were defeated in 1896. The new Liberal government began to aggressively recruit settlers from cold, treeless parts of Eastern Europe. To these folks, the Canadian prairies seemed familiar. Two other developments were probably more important. The world economy improved (in large part because of the effect of the Yukon gold rush) AND the United States ran out of “empty” frontier land for settlement. The Canadian prairies were advertised as “The Last, Best, West.” This passed for honest advertising since these four words contained only one lie.

The final piece of building block for a boom came in 1907 with the introduction of Marquis wheat. It grew more quickly, was rust resistant, and produced great flour.

During this period, the CPR remained unpopular. The lack of branch lines and “high” freight rates were central to the complaints, although there were many others.

Two railroad construction contractors set out to build branch lines. Their company – Canadian Northern – built branch lines anywhere on the prairies that they were asked to.

The only condition was that governments – usually provincial – guarantee the bonds needed to finance construction. Revenue from completed lines would pay the interest for new ones under construction. It was a kind of branch line perpetual motion machine. In 1901, Canadian Northern completed a railroad from Winnipeg to Port Aurthur (now Thunder Bay). This created competition to the CPR for grain shipments. Canadian Northern celebrated its accomplishment by cutting the freight rate for grain shipments by 15 percent.

Everyone on the prairies loved the Canadian Northern. Everyone except the CPR.

Canadian Northern built well and operated well. It also accumulated astonishing levels of debt. The money was borrowed in London on the basis of the government loan guarantees.

If Canadian Northern stuck to this business plan, things would have likely worked out. But the ancient Greeks had a word.

Hubris.

The two owners of the Canadian Northern decided to go transcontinental. From the north end of the prairies along the valley of North Saskatchewan River, they headed west through the Yellowstone pass. Just past Jasper, they turned south to Kamloops. From there, it was down to Vancouver on the other side of the Thompson and Fraser Rivers from the main CPR lines. The Canadian Northern also headed east towards Ontario taking a route about a hundred miles north of the CPR line hugging the shore of Lake Superior.

Things seemed to be going okay for Canadian Northern until some Serbian nationalist shot the heir to the throne of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.

This was bad.

In the resulting little squabble, world trade patterns were disrupted. More importantly for Canadian National, the London financial markets stopped lending money for things like railroads in Canada. Canadian National was stranded with massive debts and a partially completed transcontinental railroad.

Meanwhile…

Going back to about 1905, the Laurier Liberal government announced it was going to build a second transcontinental railroad. (Canadian Northern had not quite yet succumbed to its fatal bout of hubris).

Laurier partnered with Grand Trunk.

It was a strange arrangement.

The government agreed to construct a main line from Ottawa to Winnipeg. When the thing was finished, Grand Trunk would rent the line for 50 years for an annual rent of 3 percent of final construction costs. Meanwhile, Grand Trunk itself would build from Winnipeg through the Yellowhead Pass and on to Prince Rupert. The government would guarantee debt of $13,000 per mile built AND pay the interest for the first seven years after the completion of the line.

A couple of things happened.

First, the government proved itself – once again – incompetent at building railroads. The Ottawa to Winnipeg section came in 300 percent over budget. This meant that when the Grand Trunk took over operating this section of line, it would have to pay 300 percent more in rental charges than budgeted. A snowball in hell had a better chance than did this rail line had of generating this much income.

Second, in the west, construction costs also soared. This was partly the result of Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk building through the mountains at the same time (sometimes less than a mile apart). The resulting construction boom drove up wages and material costs.

Finally, that damned assassin’s bullet again. Like Canadian Northern, the Grand Trunk transcontinental was being built with money being borrowed in London. When this tap suddenly was turned off, Canada was left with two uncompleted transcontinental railroads.

It was a mess.

To make a long story short (if that is possible after 3,931 words so far), the Canadian government ended up owning both the Canadian National and Grand Trunk systems. It merged them (along with the Inter-Colonial and various other pieces of railway flotsam) into the Crown corporation of Canadian National. Canadian taxpayers were on the hook for about a billion and a half dollars of railroad debt.

To put that in perspective, that was almost two hundred dollars of railroad debt for every man woman and child in Canada. That was at a time when a decent annual wage was $800.

And one other thing to consider.

You’ll remember how I’ve stressed that the line north of Lake Superior had been judged uneconomical when the CPR was being built?

Thirty-five years later, when Canada had three such lines, the President of the CPR proposed that two of them be shut down. The CPR proposed GIVING the government its line north of the lake. Any railway could then pay a usage fee to cover maintenance costs.

The government turned down the offer. It thought the CPR was just trying to dump a money-losing burden onto taxpayers.

Lessons from Canada’s Railroad

As a nation, Canada has some serious transportation challenges. There are regions of economic activity – separated by things such as the Canadian shield and numerous mountain ranges.

What’s more, Canada’s ports are icebound much of the year. As the prairies were settled with wheat farmers, much of their crop needed to be exported to Europe. This involved the following steps:

• Harvest the crop in late August through September. Put it on trains to be taken to Port Arthur on Lake Superior.

• Transport the grain by ship through the Great Lakes. But Lake Superior would freeze over by mid-December and remain frozen till mid-May.

• Load the grain on ocean going ships in Montreal and ship to Europe. But the St. Lawrence also froze over in December and was impassible through till mid-April.

Every farmer wanted (and needed) their grain shipped NOW. And they wanted it done “cheaply.” As you can see from this path, shipping grain through Canada was both expensive and had very tight time frames. When the railroads attempted to explain all this, farmers just heard excuses and smelled railroad greed. They ignored the fact that for decades, the CPR operated on the verge of bankruptcy – and that both the Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk did go broke.

In one of the stupidest, but longest lasting, exercises in Canadian magical thinking, prairie farmers decided that the greedy railroads could be bypassed by building a railroad to Hudson Bay and shipping through the north. This western/northern route would effectively bypass Canada.

The Hudson Bay route was a constant feature of prairie politics for decades. It even got built. But it was insane. The shipping season from Churchill ran from August to October. There were other problems as well. The shipping lanes were so close to the magnetic north pole that compasses did not work. A century ago – before things like GPS navigation systems – this was really bad news for ship navigators.

The obvious answer for shipping grain from the prairies was through the United States. It is less than 500 miles form Winnipeg to Minneapolis (with traffic generating farmland along the way). From there, the Mississippi offered cheap, year-round water shipping.

Even when it came to getting to an ice-free port from Montreal, going through Canada made no economic sense. By Canadian rail, it was 780 miles from Montreal to Halifax – but only 275 to Portland, Maine.

If Canada had been developed according to economic logic, there would be no Canada. Or, at the very least, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta would be called something like North North Dakota.

Sir John A. MacDonald made the political decision to override economics in order to create something resembling Canada as we know it. His successors made the decision to maintain this economically artificial country. Personally, I’m kind of glad they did. There is more to life than cheaper freight rates.

But we should acknowledge the costs of these policy decisions.

If there was to be a Canada stretching from sea to sea to sea, there needed to be railroads. And these railroads would be economically uncompetitive with the American ones for geographic reasons.

Railroads and Wealth

In the 1800s, railroads in North American were an incredibly speculative and risky investment (with Canada being even worse than the United States). For long periods of time, most railroads did not make money. Most railroads went bankrupt. Most investors lost their money.

Fun fact: There are only two railroads in North America built in the 1800s that did not go bankrupt at some point. They were the CPR and the Great Northern from Minneapolis to Seattle.

All of that being said, there was money to be made in railroads.

Most contractors went broke, but some got rich. Those that got the richest quickest were the crooked ones made out like bandits on construction contracts while the railroad itself was being bled into bankruptcy. The Union Pacific/Credit Mobilier arrangement in the United States was the paradigm example of this, but there were lots more.

Lots of politicians made lots of money from railroads. You’ll have noticed that cash grants, land grants, and loan guarantees were what railroads were actually made from. The politicians who controlled these resources found that all they had to do was stick out their hand to fill their pockets. Lots succumbed to the temptation. Indeed, that’s why lots of politicians entered politics.

Some people made unfathomable amounts of money by risking all and persevering. The four principles of the Central Pacific staked their reputations, every nickel they had, and a decade of toil to get the thing built at a time when nobody else thought it was possible. The two Canadian partners of the Canadian Pacific syndicate did the same thing. So did Minnesota’s James Hill (originally from Ontario) with the Great Northern. These people attempted the impossible and succeeded. And when they died, they had more money than they could count.

But lots and lots of people made money from railroads without committing fraud, taking a bribe, swinging a hammer, or investing a nickel.

Railways created wealth through proximity.

Before the internal combustion engine made cars and trucks possible, the effective limit to commercially orientated agriculture limited to ten miles from a railroad or navigable water. Ten miles. After that, land transportation costs made farming unviable.

As the Canadian prairies were largely cleared of indigenous people and potential farmland became available, the going price was about a dollar an acre. Most went unsold. Without a railroad, the federal government could not even give the stuff away.

But…

If a railroad came within that magic 10-mile zone, average farmland suddenly was worth five dollars an acre.

That’s a good return for acquiring some land and having the good fortune to have a railroad come near.

This sudden windfall was even more pronounced if you were fortunate enough to have land near where a train station was plunked down. A building lot near a train station was worth $500. An acre of land contained 14 standard sized building lots. One day land could be worth a dollar. The next it could be worth $7,000. If you owned land where the railroad established a division center (think Brandon, Moosomin, Moose Jaw, Medicine Hat, Melville, Biggar, etc.) that acre of land could be worth as much as ten or fifteen thousand. In Winnipeg, in 1882 when construction of the CPR across the prairies really kicked off, land near the train station was selling for as much as $1,900 per frontage FOOT.

The reality was that the first time a train whistle was heard somewhere, it meant that some people had made money. Often a lot of money.

This wealth creation from proximity to the railroad set off a lot of bitter fights.

Speculators would stake out land along the route they thought the railroad would go. Sites believed to be future stations or divisional points were particularly sought after.

But the railroads – all of them – saw no reason to give others these windfall profits. Land sales were one key component to funding construction. When the CPR was being built, the General Manager believed (insisted) that station and divisional facilities should be paid for by land sales from the adjacent land. If speculators had staked out one spot, the railroad would just locate somewhere else. Speculators would be bitter. They accused the railroads of being “greedy”. This was true, but was more than a bit self-serving.

The first time I visited Regina, my first question was “what kind of a moron would put a city – a capital city – in this place?”

Regina is the quintessential example of the result of the tug-of-war to seize the wealth created by railroad proximity.

Through the 1870s, the route for the proposed transcontinental railroad went from west from Winnipeg angling north. It was to follow the North Saskatchewan river valley through Battleford and Edmonton through the Yellowhead Pass west of Jasper. Then it was supposed to turn south to follow the Thompson River Valley through to Kamloops. From there, off to what is now Vancouver.

When the CPR was about to start building, its partners saw that this route had people on it waiting for the railroad so they could get rich. The CPR decided to head straight west to bypass all the people waiting for their windfall.

The owners then discovered that their head surveyor was buying land along the new route. At the last minute, the CPR moved the line six miles south to avoid the speculators expectantly for the rail. This took the main line through what is now Regina.

At the same time, the shift from the northern to the southern route meant that the territorial capital at the Battlefords was stranded. Edgar Dewdney, the Territorial Governor, was entrusted with the task of choosing a site for a new capital. Everyone thought it would be at Fort Qu’Appelle – but both Dewdney and the CPR saw that this river valley was filled with speculators. Using a straw buyer, Dewdney bought a section of land just north of where the RCMP training depot now is. He then proclaimed that Regina would be the capital. Dewdney thought he would soon be rich.

But the CPR had other ideas. It saw no reason to enrich Dewdney. The CPR located the train station two miles from Dewdney’s land and started selling lots. The federal government followed by putting the post office beside the train station (makes sense, right!). Dewdney was screwed. His land did not become a suburban subdivision for over half a century. Before that happened, Dewdney died bitter – one more person who cursed the CPR for being greedy.

And that is why Regina is where it is.

Make no mistake about it. The railroad companies were ruthless in ensuring they were the ones to benefit from proximity – particularly when it came to stations and division centers. This contributed to the hostility towards them. As I look at the historical record, I have no sympathy for the speculators who got screwed by a more powerful adversary. I have lots for some homesteader who spent years toiling to clear land and build a home based on the promise that “this is where the railroad is coming” – only to discover that the railroad had other ideas. In most cases, it was not the railroad who had lied to the poor farmer. But it was the railroad who the poor farmer blamed.

In the prairies, the railroads could go where the pleased and locate where they pleased. In British Columbia, it was tougher. The mountain passes were narrow and the provincial government backed the locals (who voted there) against the railroads (who did not). Grand Trunk’s reward for pushing a railroad through to Prince Rupert was to be blocked from building a terminal by local speculators. In the end, this meant they all went broke together.

Railways and Greed

The peculiar ability of railways to generate wealth from proximity meant that when there was no railroad, communities were desperate to get one.

But once the railroad arrived, it was the exploitative enemy.

I actually sympathize with one of the principals of the Central Pacific Railway in the United States. Before the railway was built to California, the quickest and cheapest way to get from New York City to San Francisco (or vice versa) was to take a steamship to Panama, cross the Ismith on a mule, and then take a ship to their destination. The trip took four months and cost $300. What’s more, about one in ten died of a horrible fever while crossing Panama. When the UP/CP line opened, the trip took a week and cost $100. Nobody died enroute. The CP President bitterly observed that by the time the third train completing the route, all the passengers were complaining the fares were “too high.”

The bottom line was that railroad companies were greedy. Most of them also went bankrupt. There you have it.

The Trinity of Trade-Offs

Civil engineers have a joke.

They say that something can be built fast, cheap, or well.

“Pick two,” say the engineers.

Fast, cheap, and well all have consequences. There are tradeoffs. Both fast and well cost money. Building cheap means sacrificing one or the other.

Most railroads in western North America picked fast and cheap. They were building into country that – before the railroad came – generated no traffic. As a result, the railroads would build as cheaply and quickly as possible. If the line generated traffic and income, it would be improved later. If it didn’t – well, do the math.

The one exception to this general practice was Grand Trunk’s transcontinental line. It built well (low grades, heavier tracks, etc.) and quickly. It went broke before completion.

There was also another trinity of trade-offs:

• Politics (how well the railroad generate votes for the party in power),

• Profits (how much money investors made), and

• Productivity (how well the railroad operated and served its customers).

Pick two.

Sometimes the choice was at a grand scale. From the point of view of both profits and productivity, building north of Lake Superior made no sense at all. But politically, it meant that the west north of the 49^th parallel became part of Canada rather than the United States. Politics on a grand scale.

Most of the time, picking politics was not as noble. Hire my nephew. Enrich me as a speculator. Build the division point in my riding.

One absolute rule of the late 1800s and early 1900s is that too much politics destroyed both profits and productivity.

Likewise, too much emphasis on profits – especially short-term profits – could be disastrous. The results included track so badly built as to be non-functional and rates so high as to provoke rebellion.

The worst combination was the choice of politics and profit. A railway could be successful if it combined politics and good operations. It could be successful if it combined profit and good operations. If it attempted to combine politics and profits without good service, it was doomed. Bankruptcy was inevitable. Prison terms for promoters were possible.

If you are still reading

According to Word, I’ve now reached 6,207 words.

That is way too long.

On the other hand, I’ve just summarized 2,410 pages.

If you are still reading, you owe me about 30 hours of your life.

What can we learn from all this?

1. Canada does not exist by accident. We would be part of the United States if people like Sir. John A. had not said, “no”.

2. Trade-offs, trade-offs, trade-offs. There is no unity of good or bad. Decisions have to be made. They have both “good” and “bad” consequences.

3. Our well-being, prosperity, and comfort is the product of remarkable people who gambled everything for a vision. Some succeeded. Some became incredibly wealthy. More died or went broke in the effort. But nowadays we treat them all the same because…

4. We are a whining, complaining and ungrateful lot. Always have been. Not unique to Canadians, but no good deed goes un-slandered. People demanded railroads be built to serve them. When the railroad was built, people hated it.

My wife and I were driving from Edmonton to Regina today. We stopped at an A and W in Lloydminster. It’s on the Saskatchewan side of the border – north side of Highway 16. This is smack dab in the middle of the highest crime part of the Lloydminster.

When we needed to use the restroom, we just went. No locks. No permissions. No hassle.

An hour and a half later, we stopped at the A and W in North Battleford (cue up the “Stobbe and his hamburgers” jokes here). When we needed to use the restroom, in was locked. A sign told us to ask for a key at the counter. A nice young woman let us into the washrooms.

In Lloydminster, you could just go to the john. In North Battleford, you needed to ask for permission. Someone then had to unlock the door.

Same fast-food chain, different policies.

The reason?

Differential crime rates.

Statistics Canada reports that in 2025 Lloydminster had a Crime Severity Index (CSI) rating of 189.69. That’s actually pretty high by both Alberta (90.62) and Saskatchewan (146.64) standards.

But it is a lot lower than in North Battleford. That city had a CSI of 477.10 in 2025. More than twice as much crime.

This impacts something as simple as going to the bathroom. I’m assuming that experience (bad experiences) has caused the A and W in North Battleford to lock their washrooms and screen those permitted to use them. It results in a cost to the restaurant and a petty indignity to customers.

Most of the media coverage focuses on the year-over-year numbers or on the “rankings” between provinces or cities.

Most of the coverage focusses on the Crime Severity Index (CSI) which is a single number measure that is based on the volume of reported criminal acts and their severity. For example, murder gets 8,200 points and a simple theft under $5,000 gets 29 points. The totals are added up and converted to a rate based on the population of the province or municipality. Four CSI indexes are created – Total CSI, Violent Crime CSI, Non-Violent Crime CSI, and Youth Crime CSI.

In my hometown of Regina, the Leader-Post reported that Saskatchewan had the highest CSI of any province, that Saskatchewan’s CSI dropped a bit from 2024, that crime is worst in the north (a lot worse!!!), and crime dropped in both Saskatoon and Regina. CBC national news did a general “crime down a bit” report while CBC Saskatchewan failed to report on Saskatchewan results. CJME focused on the 12 percent drop in Regina’s CS! compared to 2024 and the fact that Regina now ranks 13^th of 41 Census metropolitan areas. The radio station failed to specify whether Regina was 13^th best or 13^th worst but did report that the police chief is pleased with the results.

All that is pretty typical of the reporting when Statistics Canada releases each year’s official crime statistics. If the CSI has gone up a bit, opposition politicians blame the government. If it goes down a bit, governments and police chiefs’ express satisfaction. There is a ranking of provinces and municipalities.

When the Crime numbers were released on July 22, I took a quick glance at them and decided that that there was nothing really significant to report. By and large, 2025 was almost the same as 2024. The CSI was up in a few places and down in a few more places. Overall, there was a little “less crime” but nothing outside the normal year-over-year expected wobble.

But when one gets in the habit of pontificating about something every week, one must always look for things to pontificate about.

I decided to take a run at the crime numbers by looking at a longer period of time.

Crime in Canada over Three Decades

Statistics Canada reports on the CSI going back to 1998. The numbers wobble around every year, but if we want to attach trends to Prime Minister’s terms in office, the trend lines are:

• The CSI came down about ten percent during Jean Chretien’s term from 1998 onwards,

• The CSI went up a bit during Paul Martin’s tenure,

• The CSI dropped quite a bit – about 35 percent – while Stephen Harper was Prime Minister,

• The CSI increased about 15 percent while Justin Trudeau was Prime Minister, and

• It’s dropped a bit so far during Mark Carney’s term.

Let me be clear. I’m not saying Prime Ministers are responsible for increases or decreases in the crime rate. I’m just reporting on the trend correlation with national political regime. There are a lot of things that go into causation. The Prime Minister controls a few of them – but most factors are beyond his reach.

But if we add up the results of the almost three decades of CSI reporting by comparing 1998 to 2025, we get the following:

• Overall CSI was 118.84 in 1998 and 75.01 in 2025 for a drop of 36.9 percent.

• The Violent Crime CSI was 97.80 in 1998 and 97.19 in 2025 for a drop of 0.6 percent.

• The Non-Violent Crime CSI was 126.93 in 1998 and 66.78 in 2025 for a drop of 47.4 percent.

• The Youth Crime CSI was 110.24 in 1998 and 51.0 in 2025 for a drop of 53.7 percent. This drop in youth (under the age of 18) crime results from a 5.3 percent drop in Youth Violent Crime CSA and a 77.1 percent drop in the Youth Non-Violent Crime CSA.

To sum it up, violent crime (both amongst adults and the young’uns) has remained stable while reported non-violent crimes have dropped. Most non-violent crimes are “offences against property” – theft, fraud, and vandalism.

This accounts for a some of the cognitive dissonance that Canadians often feel. We are told “crime is down” but we don’t feel any safer. That’s because – by and large – we are not safer. Reported violent crime rates have been pretty stable.

Explaining Canada’s “drop in crime”

There are a lot of possible explanations for the drop in crime over the last three decades as measured by the CSI. I’ll provide a few. Each of these explanations is contributory rather than fully explanatory. There is a combination of causes rather than something stupidly simple minded such as “Justin Trudeau was soft on crime”. I mean, he was, but that probably did not matter as much as the things I’m going to talk about.

Explanation #1: Crime has not actually dropped

We don’t know how much crime actually occurs. We just know how much is reported to police. The thing is that people need a reason to report. They want to get their stuff back, have the perpetrator get caught/punished, or be able to file an insurance claim. For property crime, if the police will not/cannot catch the person – and the amount is too small to bother with an insurance claim, the crime will not likely be reported.

The “weighted clearance rate” for reported non-violent crime is only 26.28 percent. That means that three quarters of reported non-violent “crime” will not result in the perpetrator getting caught (let alone punished – the majority of charges are stayed by prosecutors).

Let’s look at theft under $5,000. In 1998, there were 336,464 such thefts reported to police. Of these, 23,288 were “cleared” by charges being filed. That means only 6.9 percent of thefts reported to police resulted in a charge.

Now let’s fast forward to 2025. There were 222,516 such thefts reported to police. Of these, 14,308 resulted in charges (6.4 percent).

This will be described as “less crime”, but it is entirely possible that it is just a matter of fewer people bothering to file police reports. In a very real sense, what is the point?

The bottom line is that at least some of the “drop” in non-violent crime is likely simply a statistical artifact arising from people giving up on the idea of getting redress from the criminal justice system.

Explanation #2: Technological Changes

In 1998, there were 165,920 motor vehicles reported stolen in Canada. In 2025, this was down to 83,562. This drop is both real (people need to report thefts to police to claim insurance) and understated. There 18 million motor vehicles registered in Canada in 1998. This was up to 26.8 million in 2025.

There’s been a huge drop in the crime rate for motor vehicle thefts.

The main reason for this is two technological changes.

The first technological change was the creation and legislative mandate for ignition immobilizer devices. Car keys are now worth about $300 – but the system they embody means that cars are too difficult for dysfunctional teenagers to steal.

The second technological change was the invention of video games such as Grand Theft Auto. Dysfunctional teenagers (as well as functional ones) can get the thrill of stealing a car without getting off their couch.

Explanation #3: An Older Population

I don’t want to sound like a grumpy old man (even though that is what I am), but the fact is that most crime is committed by young’uns. This was true when I was a young’un and it is true when I am a grumpy old man.

In 2023/24, 54,780 Canadians between the ages of 18 and 30 heard jail doors clang shut behind them compared to only 20,631 aged 50 or older.

As a percentage of Canada’s population, there are fewer young’uns and more old fogies than there used to be.

In 1998, 14.7 percent of Canada’s population was between 15 and 24. Only 12.9 percent were over the age of 65.

In 2025, 12.1 percent of Canada’s population was between 15 and 24. The percentage of grumpy (but relatively non-criminogenic) old folks over the age of 65 was 19.5 percent.

This change in the ratio of young and old probably explains a lot of the drop in Canada’s non-violent crime rate. In making this statement, I am not saying today’s young folks are “worse” than people of my generation were when we were young. in fact, there is a lot of evidence that today’s youth get into a lot less trouble than did previous generations. All I’m saying is that us baby boomers have had the chance to grow up, but whatever the generational term is for today’s older teenagers and young adults is, its members have not.

The bottom Line

If you hear some politician or pointy-headed academic proclaiming that “crime is down” in Canada, keep two thoughts in mind.

1. We actually don’t know whether the incidence “crime” is up or down.

2. If it is down, the reasons have very little to do with the activities of government. The only truly, definitively, successful crime-fighting initiative of our governments in the last three decades was legislation mandating to changes to motor vehicle ignition systems. All the rest has mostly been posturing.

Fifty years ago today, you could murder someone in Canada and not face the death penalty. The House of Commons voted to abolish the Death Penalty on July 14, 1975. The legislation received Royal Assent on July 16 and was proclaimed on July 26. That means that the morning of July 27^th, 1976, was the first day you could murder someone without any fear of getting hanged.

In theory, you could still get executed in Canada fifty years ago. If you were a soldier and Canada was at war. The National Defense Act prescribed the death penalty for cowardice, desertion, unlawful surrender, or spying for the enemy in times of war. But Canada was not at war. Even in wartime, such executions were rare. None of the 26,791 Canadian soldiers in the Korean War had been executed. Only one of the 1.1 million Canadian soldiers, sailors, or airmen who served in World War II had been executed. A guy named Harold Pringle managed to get himself in front of a firing squad on July 5, 1945. Pringle had deserted to join a black-marketeering gang smuggling contraband into Rome. Pringle shot a fellow gang member several times and so was convicted of both desertion and murder. Twenty-five Canadian soldiers were executed by firing squad in World War 1.

The National Defense Act was amended in 1998 to formally eliminate capital punishment completely in Canada, but in practical terms, it had been abolished fifty years ago today.

But even that is not quite true.

While the law abolished capital punishment in 1976, it had been a long time since anyone was hanged in Canada. On December 11,1962, Arthur Lucas and Arnold Turpin were hanged in Toronto’s Don Jail. They were the last.

Lucas was a pimp and drug dealer from Detroit convicted of killing a drug dealer turned informant. The victim’s common-law wife had been murdered at the same time, but Lucas (or anyone else) was never charged with this killing.

Turpin had been convicted of killing a police officer after being pulled over for a traffic stop just after committing a burglary. At the time of the murder, Turpin was in hiding because he was the primary suspect in another murder – and was wanted for two non-fatal shootings as well as a laundry list of other crimes.

When Lucas and Turpin were hanged, the mandatory minimum sentence for first degree murder in Canada was death. However, John Diefenbaker had commuted 52 of the 66 death sentences imposed while he was Prime Minister. In general, Diefenbaker did not believe in the death penalty although – as the cases of Lucas and Turpin showed – he was willing to make exceptions. Diefenbaker’s successor as Prime Minister followed the example of commuting death sentences but did not make exceptions.

In 1967, legislation imposed a trial five-year moratorium on the death penalty except for the killing of police officers and prison guards. When this partial ban expired, the government kept it in force as a matter of policy rather than of legislation. In 1976, capital punishment for murder was abolished after a “free vote” (i.e. no party discipline) in the House of Commons. 130 MPs voted to abolish the death penalty while 124 voted to retain it. When the death penalty legislation passed, there were ten people on death row in Canada. Their sentences were changed to life. Five were eventually paroled (two subsequently went back to prison for this or that). Of the remaining five, two were murdered in prison by other inmates.

In 1987, there was another free vote in Parliament on legislation providing for the reinstatement of capital punishment. It was defeated on a vote of 148 to 127 with Prime Minister Mulroney opposing the bill – along with Justice Minister Ray Hnatishyn.

With that, the issue of capital punishment appears to have been politically put to bed in Canada. No political party has called for its reinstatement of the noose since then.

From Canada becoming a country in 1867 to the official abolition of capital punishment in 1976, a total of 1,481 people had been sentenced to death. Of these, 710 were actually executed. 697 were men and 13 were women.

Results of the end of capital punishment

Let’s look at the abolition of capital punishment from three perspectives:

• The crime prevention effect,

• The morality of capital punishment, and

• Practical effects of ending captial punishment.

Capital Punishment and Murder Rates

There two main arguments that capital punishment keeps other people safer by lowering the murder rate. The first is that the prospect of capital punishment deters potential murderers because they want to avoid the consequences. The second is that capital punishment is known in criminological circles as incapacitation. If you hang someone, they will not kill again.

The deterrence argument is nonsense. The incapacitation argument has some validity.

Deterrence theory is based on the premise that people will modify their behavior to avoid bad consequences. That is often true. We slow down if we often see police beside the road with a radar gun. Our foot gets heavier if we never see a cop around. But the deterrence effect is based on three things:

• The first and most important is certainty of punishment. Potential punishments have no effect if people have no fear of getting caught.

• The second is timeliness. We are future discounters. Quick punishment deters. Slow punishment does not.

• The final component of deterrence is severity of punishment. Those who claim capital punishment deters are making a judgement that someone will be more afraid of the noose than of a long time in prison. This may be their relative weighting of undesirable consequences, but it may not be the case for potential murderers.

Capital punishment as deterrence fails for a number of reasons.

First, it assumes that potential murderers are rational actors doing a sophisticated risk/reward calculation in their brains. This does not reflect reality when it comes to most killings. The typical murderer is either drunk/stoned, in the heat of some passionate impulse, or caught up in some chain of circumstances. There is usually very little calculation going on.

Second, the murderers who are calculating are optimists. The more the calculate, the more they plan. They believe that the penalty will not apply to them because they do not believe they will be caught. And the chances of getting away with killing someone in Canada are not negligible. In 2025, there were 672 identified homicides in Canada. Of these, 458 were “cleared” by police charging someone. Another 29 were “cleared” without charge – usually because the suspect also committed suicide. That means, so far, 185 (28 percent) killers have “gotten away” with their crime. A few of these will get arrested and charged down the road – but remember that timeliness is one of the key components to deterrence.

And getting charged is different than getting convicted. In 2023/24 (our most recent available statistics), 55 percent of all homicide charges were stayed or withdrawn by prosecutors. That’s up from 40 percent a decade earlier.

The bottom line is that there are around 700 homicides per year in Canada – but there are usually only about 150 convictions for murder or manslaughter.

It’s not entirely irrational for a calculating killer to believe they could avoid the noose if capital punishment was reinstated.

And there’s more.

Let’s look south of the Campbell/Hawkins line (49^th parallel). In jurisdictions with capital punishment, a sentence of death activates a bizarrely lengthy torturous appeal process as capital punishment opponents have (quite successfully) discouraged prosecutors from seeking the death penalty by making it slow and expensive to actually execute anyone. The average time between conviction and execution is now just under 25 years. More people die on death row from natural causes/old age than are actually executed.

So much for certainty and timeliness of punishment.

Put all this together and there is no observable deterrence effect for capital punishment.

There is, however, an incapacitation effect. It is undeniable that if you hang someone, they will not commit any more murders.

About 80 percent of murderers only kill once. For them, it is a one-time affair involving alcohol, rage, or circumstances. Executing these people prevents no future murders.

But the 20 percent who kill more than once can create a lot of corpses.

Let’s go to Texas to look at incapacitation.

In 1966, a guy named Kenneth Allen McDuff murdered three teenagers. It was pretty gruesome. The two guys were just shot. The girl was viciously raped and mutilated. McDuff became labelled as the “broomstick killer.” I’ll leave the details to your imagination.

Yeah.

You got it.

Anyways, McDuff was sentenced to death. A month before his scheduled execution date in 1972 the US Supreme Court struck down death penalty laws in the United States on the grounds that they did not provide enough legal protection to the accused. Some states then passed new laws. Some did not.

In any event, McDuff’s sentence was changed to “life” in prison. In 1989, McDuff received parole. He promptly went on a killing spree. He murdered at least six women (McDuff was a ‘body disposer’. There were also about a dozen unsolved “disappearances” in the area that he was likely responsible for.) McDuff was convicted of murder in 1992 and executed in 1998. Things moved a bit quicker back then.

In any event, one observation is incontestable. McDuff killed again after receiving “life” imprisonment. He did not after receiving a lethal injection.

Capital Punishment and Morality

There is a moral case both for and against capital punishment. It’s basically the difference between the theology of the old and new testaments.

The moral case for capital punishment is one of just deserts. The punishment needs to fit the crime. Equivalency. An eye for an eye. A life for a life.

The moral case against capital punishment is that killing is wrong. Full stop. There is no moral justification for killing someone.

Capital Punishment and Practicality

Prior to 1976, about half of all death sentences imposed since had been commuted to “life” sentences. Since 1962, all of them had been.

But “life” did not mean stay in prison until you die. Under the parole laws of the time, someone serving as life sentence could be released from prison in as little as seven years.

As part of the tradeoff in the abolitionist debate, Parliament decided that “life” should mean life. Or at least a really long time. The mandatory minimum sentence for murder is life. There is no parole eligibility for second degree murder convictions for at least ten years. For first degree, there is no parole eligibility for twenty-five. Since 1976, the law has gone back and forth a bit on the 25-year period of indelibility. Sometimes a “faint hope” provision providing for parole eligibility after 15 years has been in place. For a time, multiple convictions for first degree murder meant that the 25-year period of ineligibility was consecutive rather than concurrent. (i.e. two convictions meant 50 years, three meant 75, and so on.)

One result of the 1976 abolition of capital punishment has been that murderers – on average – are staying in prison longer than they did previously. As a result, we have some very old inmates. Corrections Canada now has to worry about accessibility standards and geriatric care while running prisons.

Let’s go back to the basic fact that most murderers only kill once. After a period of incarceration, they can usually be released without a lot of worry that they will kill again.

But some are deadly on an ongoing basis. These include those who kill for pleasure (i.e. sexually motivated serial killers), those who are comfortable using murder as a commercial strategy, and some whose impulse control/anger profiles make them dangerously volatile. Corrections Canada does a reasonably good job of sorting the one-timers from the ongoing dangerous offenders, but it is impossible to be infallible when predicting future behavior.

But let’s just look at a few of the killers that no sane person should ever consider releasing from prison.

• Robert Pickton was convicted of killing six women. As many as 56 possible victims have been identified. Pickton told an undercover police officer that he’d killed 49. Pickton was convicted on December 9, 2007. He died in prison on May 31, 2024 after being attacked by another inmate with a broken broomstick. That means Pickton served 6,018 days before another inmate ended his prison stay.

• Clifford Olson pleaded guilty to 11 counts of first-degree murder on January 4, 1982. He died of cancer on September 30, 2011. That means Olson served 10,861 days after being convicted. He unsuccessfully applied for parole eligibility under the “Faint Hope” clause in 1997 and was rejected for parole in 2006 and 2010.

Pickton was murdered before he was eligible for parole. Nobody was ever stupid enough to grant Clifford Olson parole. But never say never. After all, Texas – law and order Texas – granted parole to McDuff. People who could conceivably get parole in Canada (unlikely, but never say never) include:

• Paul Bernardo kidnapped, raped, and murdered two teenage girls. He is known to have committed (a lot of) rapes in Toronto and “accidently” killed his sister-in-law while raping her. Bernardo is a suspect in several other murders. Bernardo was convicted of two counts of murder on September 1, 1995. As of today, he will have served 11,287 days. Bernardo has unsuccessfully applied for parole three times. It’s unlikely that parole will ever be granted but never say never. After all, his co-killer Karla Homolka did get released.

• Cody Legebokoff raped and murdered four women in Prince George. He was convicted on September 16, 2014. As of today, Legebokoff has served 4,332 days. Legebokoff will be eligible for parole in 2039. He’ll be 49 years old.

The Canadian justice system was not stupid enough to release Robert Pickton or Clifford Olson. The tale has yet to be told for Bernardo and Legebokoff. They’ll be released sometime or they won’t be.

But let’s assume they won’t be – that the nature of their crimes and personalities means life means life.

Here’s something to consider.

In 2023/23 (our most recent data from Statistics Canada), the average cost per day of keeping someone locked up by Corrections Canada was $428. Because of the extra security needed for the likes of Pickton, Olson, Bernardo, and Legebokoff (other inmates have their own views on capital punishment) the cost for these guys will be higher. But assuming the average cost, that means in today’s dollars we’ve spent:

• $2,575,704 to keep Robert Pickton locked up till he died,

• $4,648,508 to keep Clifford Olson locked up till he died,

• $4,830,836 and counting to keep Paul Bernardo locked up, and

• $1,854,096 and counting to keep Cody Legebokoff locked up.

I hate to sound like an accountant but given that these people will likely (hopefully) never be released, ten feet of rope would be cheaper.

For lots of writing about homicide and homicide investigations, I’d recommend No-Body Homicides: The Evolution of Investigation and Prosecution and The 'Mr. Big' Sting: The Cases, the killers, the controversial confessions. Two very fine books indeed.

It starts with seeing an anomaly. A car is approaching an intersection too quickly. A pedestrian is looking at their cell phone rather as the approach the curb a busy road. A car begins to drift towards the adjoining lane on a busy highway. We catch a glimpse of movement where there should be none.

These early indications ping something in our brains. Our attention focusses. We hold our breath. We might mutter some sort of incantation to the gods.

Then we wait.

Will there be a crash or won’t there be?

Often, the anticipatory shiver of dread dissipates. We see the brake lights come on. We see the pedestrian raise their eyes from the call phone. We see the wandering car jerk back to its lane. The flicker of movement turns still.

When these things happen, we just carry on. We might mutter to ourselves something about a “close call”, but nothing happens when nothing happens.

But sometimes there is no last-second reprieve. We watch with a morbid fascination as the accident unfolds. We slow down to gawk. We savor every detail.

Then the moment passes. We have to keep going in order to avoid becoming a participant in the accident. As we drive on, run through the incident to fix it in our minds. If we are with someone, there is a mutual debrief. “Did you see…?” If the accident seemed like a major one, we begin to monitor the local radio, television news, and newspaper. Witnessing the accident gives us a sense of proprietary ownership. We want to tell others that, “I saw it – it is a miracle nobody was killed.” Or “I saw it – I knew it was really bad.”

There’s nothing more compelling than witnessing a car crash.

There really is not.

Which brings us to the Democratic Party campaign for the Senate seat in Maine.

The State of the State of Maine

By American political standards, Maine is a funny place. It has a claim to be the birthplace of the Republican Party and – with the exception of a brief hiccup around the time of World War 1 – was solidly and reliably Republican for a century after the Civil War. In the 1960s, Maine became a “swing state” (sometimes called “purple”) through to the end of the 20^th Century.

Then Maine became kind of independent and contrarian. In 1995, an independent (no partisan affiliation) named Angus King was elected governor. He served two terms as the only “Independent” governor in the United States. In 2012, King got himself elected to the US Senate as an independent. He hangs around a lot with the Democrats and mostly supports them. But he’s never accepted the label.

Then there is Susan Collins. She’s a pro-choice Republican Senator who’s survived three decades by proclaiming her independence. She voted to acquit Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial and voted to convict Donald Trump in his second impeachment. Collins was the only Republican Senator to vote against confirming Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court – and one of only three to vote to confirm Biden nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. Collins has refused to support Trump’s demands to end the “filibuster” so that Republicans can pass legislation much more easily.

In the age of Trump, Collins is in the running to be the Republican Senator most willing to tell Trump to take a hike. This independence has made Collins popular in Maine. In 2020, the last time Collins was up for re-election, she won by nine percentage points – just as Joe Biden was carrying the state for the same margin in the Presidential race. Collins is now the only Republican Senator representing a state won by Kamela Harris in 2024.

This fall, Susan Collins’ term is up. She has to try for her sixth straight election win.

Despite her independence and status as a “good Republican” in the age of Trump (i.e. someone who will stand up to Trump from time to time), Democrats want to beat Susan Collins.

Let me rephrase that. Democrats, really, really, really want to beat Susan Collins. They are desperate to beat Susan Collins.

It is nothing personal. It is just a matter of numbers. One third of seats in the US Senate are up for election every two years. In order to win control of the Senate, Democrats have to re-elect all their incumbents (tough but doable) and take four Senate seats away from the Republicans (much, much, tougher).

And you know what?

By the numbers, Maine represents the Democrats best chance to take a seat away from the Republicans. There are 1.23 registered Democrats for every registered Republican in Maine. In Presidential elections, Maine has gone Democrat in every election since Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush.

If the Democrats don’t knock off Susan Collins, they don’t win control of the Senate.

It is kind of that simple.

So, the Democrats really, really, want (and need) to beat Susan Collins.

They yearn for the Maine Senate seat the way Sauron wanted the Ring of Power and Wimpy wanted another hamburger.

Given all this, you would expect the Democrats to make a unified, intelligent, concerted push to win this election. You’d expect them to start with choosing the best candidate – the Democrat in the state of Maine most able to beat Susan Collins.

It shouldn’t be that tough to get a good candidate. According to the state agency that runs Maine’s elections, 343,488 are registered as Democrats in the state. Surely one of them could be a competent challenger to Susan Collins.

But if you expected Maine Democrats to get their act together to nominate a strong Democrat as a candidate, you’d be wrong.

They nominated someone who was not even a Democrat when the campaign began a year ago. Someone who … well, we’ll get into that in a second.

What we got was a car crash. I don’t usually write a lot about American politics, but I can’t help myself in this case. Like I said, car crashes are compelling.

The Maine Democratic Car Crash

The first flicker of unusual movement that caught my eye was when the Democratic Party establishment settled on Janet Mills as their preferred candidate.

At first glance, that seemed like a good choice. Mills is finishing up her second term as Maine’s governor. She’s been competent and well regarded. When she ran for re-election in 2022, Mills broke her own record for votes received by a candidate in a Maine gubernatorial race.

Good choice, thinks I.

Then I saw Mill’s birthday.

December 30, 1947.

That means Mills would be 28,798 days old on election day. Put another way, 78 years, 10 months, and 4 days.

If elected, Mills would have been the oldest person – ever – to take Senate office for the first time. Hell. She was in in Grade 4 when I was born. And I’m old. I still have most of my own teeth, but I’m old.

This offering up of someone born while Harry Truman was in his first term as President came at a time when Democrats have been criticized (rightly) for being a gerontocracy. People still remember the sad and disastrous attempt by Democrats to foist an 82-year-old Joe Biden off on the public for a second term. Two thirds of Democratic Senators are over the age of 60. The Democrats’ highest profile Senators are Bernie Saunders (85), Chuck Schumer (75), and Elizabeth Warren (77). Angus King – the quasi-Democrat independent who is Maine’s other Senator – is 82.

Experience is great, but any virtue becomes a vice without a limiting principle.

Despite her record – or rather because of the length of her record – Janet Mills was a flawed candidate.

I started to see a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye and wondered if a car crash might be coming.

Then another flicker of movement caught my eye.

Almost a year ago (September 25, 2025) the algorithms that help guide my reading served me up a fawning profile article titled, “Can a Oyster Farmer Defeat a Five-Term Republican Senator?” published in the New Yorker magazine.

That’s weird, thinks I. When did the New Yorker suddenly become interested in obscure long-shot candidates for nominations in obscure states such as Maine?

Twenty-one days later, it got weirder. Bon Appétit magazine ran a feature piece titled “How Graham Platner went from Working Class Oysterman to Maine’s Zohran Mamdani.”

Bon Appétit.

I wondered when this magazine for gobbling gourmets started covering politics, so I did an archival search and discovered it usually does not. The Platner profile was only the fourth article about a politician published in the previous decade – and all the others were people who had some foodie connection AND had already been elected to something.

Something was going on.

Within a few months, publications such as Politico were hyping Platner as a potential Presidential candidate – in 2028.

All of this before the guy had been nominated for anything – let alone elected. It reminded me of the time when I heard a parent of a six-year-old bragging that their kid was going to make the NHL – about ten minutes before the kid put on skates for the first time.

No.

That’s wrong.

It was as if Sports Illustrated was doing a profile on the kid.

Anyways…

Platner was being hyped as a working-class hero. A gruff, tough, tattooed, working-class guy who’d gone into the Marines instead of going to college. According to the narrative, he’d served three rotations with the Marines in Iraq before being posted to Afghanistan. After serving his country, he’d returned to Maine to start farming oysters while living in a modest home bought with a Veterans Administration loan. And he was an intellectual of sorts – claiming to be an expert in military history. Platner cursed billionaires and oligarchs with the enthusiasm of Bernie Saunders and condemned Susan Collins for voting to send him to war.

Well then.

Just the kind of guy that could make honest, hard-working, non-college educated men forget their infatuation with Donald Trump and return to the Democratic Party.

At least that’s what the media hype was saying. And not just the media. Platner got endorsements from a whose who of the American left.

As for myself, I sensed an impending car crash and started to pay attention.

It turns out that if Platner seemed to be engineered in a lab to create a left-wing candidate with working-class street cred, it was because he had been.

More or less.

Actually, more more than more less.

We’ve since learned that two leftie political consultants created a profile of their “perfect” candidate. They decided Maine working-class voters yearned for a white, male, non-college educated, military veteran who wore ratty clothing, had tattoos, swore a lot, got his hands dirty at work, and cursed the rich.

Then these two consultants looked around to find such a person.

They found Graham Platner. Then they dropped by his house for a beer and a proposal that he run for the Senate. According to recent media reports, Platner’s initial response to the suggestion was to say “That’s the craziest idea I’ve ever heard.”

But he quickly changed his mind and launched a campaign. And immediately generated the kind of fawning media coverage noted above.

A couple of political hacks had become Hollywood casting directors. In Maine as in Hollywood, flexibility with facts was convenient.

Problems and inconsistencies emerged. The less charitable (i.e. the Mills campaign and Republicans) called these inconsistencies lies.

It turns out that Platner was not of working-class origins. His father was/is a corporate lawyer. His mother – amongst other things – owns one of Maine’s tushiest seafood restaurants. And Maine has a lot of tushie seafood restaurants.

Platner’s high schooling came in a series of very expensive private schools. Platner hadn’t gone to college largely because he kept getting expelled from these private high schools.

Despite his claims, Susan Collins had not voted to send him to war. He volunteered two years after the Iraq war authorization vote – posting on social media that he joined because “I wanted to have an adventure and kill some people.”

Platner’s father had paid for his house – not a Veterans Administration loan.

The only customer for Platner’s “oyster farm” was his mother’s restaurant.

And so it went.

Then the ugly stuff started to come out.

There were a series of social media posts that demonstrated – how shall we say – poor judgement and bad taste. Or, put less charitably, sexism, racism, and a fondness for violence.

Then came the “Nazi Tattoo” on his chest. Not just a Nazi tattoo. It was a skull insignia called a “Totenkopf” – most notoriously the symbol of SS concentration camp guards/murderers. Platner – the self-described military expert – claimed he did not know the meaning of the tattoo. Friends said he liked to refer to it as “my Totenkopf.”

So that was bad.

Self-identification with Nazi SS concentration camp guards/murderers is generally disqualifying for public office in the United States.

But Democrats – especially left-wing Democrats – rallied to Platner’s defense. His fundraising actually spiked when the story about the Totenkopf tattoo broke. Platner’s supporters claimed it demonstrated his working-class authenticity. It would show the guys in the backwoods that Platner was truly one of them even if he had gone to private high schools.

Then came the revelations that Platner had been sexting “up to six” women on a social media site notorious for being a happy hunting ground for people looking for sex with people too young to have sex with.

Platner’s wife had tipped off his campaign team about the sexting. She was worried that it might present a political problem. A few campaign workers quit. The rest swept it under the rug. In due course, news of the sexts leaked out. Few of Platner’s Democrat endorsers or media fans seemed to care.

Then came the stories in the New York Times about Platner’s dating behavior.

By his own admission, he’d been a terrible boyfriend. The woman most prominently featured in the article happened to be a Republican, so the violence she reported was dismissed as a political smear. “Believe all women” got the addendum of “except if they are Republican.” Besides, said Platner’s supporters, the woman “admitted” that Platner had never hit her. Dragged her around and left bruises – sure. But no hitting. Hey - no problem. Just how any red-blooded working-class guy would treat a girlfriend.

Another ex-girlfriend told the New York Times reporters that Platner told her that if someone broke into Platner’s apartment, he would rape the burglar. It wouldn’t “be in a sexual way” – just to establish who was boss. This approach to criminal justice kind of freaked out the girlfriend (she became an “ex”) but didn’t seem to bother the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Bernie Saunders, or Elizabeth Warren – or Platner’s acolytes in the media. The penis as a home-security device. Now that’s a clever, working-class kind of idea.

In truth, Democrats were getting a little nervous. Platner met with prominent endorsers and party leaders to assure them there were no other shoes to drop. Some began muttering that allegations of sexual assault or rape would be a “red line.”

Full disclosure here:

When I did my normal, cursory proofreading of this article I discovered that about here I’d stopped calling Platner by his name. Instead, I’d switched to “Paxton.”

My subconscious had obviously confused Platner with the vile and reprehensible Republican nominee for the Senate in Texas.

The psychologists call this a “Freudian slip”. I call it being unable to distinguish between two similar looking reptiles.

It was at this point that Platner won the primary for the Democratic nomination for the vital Maine Senate seat with 72.3 percent of the vote. In fact, he got more votes than any candidate for a Senate nomination in Maine’s history.

And wouldn’t you know it.

A few days ago, the crash occurred.

Let’s use the words of the New York Times.

An ex-girlfriend of Platner said “he arrived at her house drunk after she had asked him not to come over” and then “let himself into her home, climbed on top of her and kept grabbing her — even after she repeatedly told him to stop. He ignored her protests and followed her into the bedroom, where, she said, he had sex with her against her will.”

The newspaper avoided the R-word. It was described as “non-consensual sex.”

Gotta love those euphemisms.

The woman said she had not pressed charges because she just wanted to forget about the incident.

There was a key difference between this woman and the woman who reported getting dragged around by Platner.

The first woman was a Republican.

The second was a Democrat.

A left-wing Democrat.

And that, my friends, was the moment of collision.

The car had finally crashed.

Most of Platner’s high-profile endorsers and supporters scurried away like rats leaving the Auschwitz gas chambers.

After a few days of dithering, Platner issued a whining video withdrawing from the race. “Establishment” Democrats had done him dirt. In Platner’s opinion, he’d been stabbed in the back.

His version went with the tattoo, I guess.

Now the Democrats are scrambling for a candidate and point fingers. The highly entertaining finger-pointing stories are rolling off the presses.

The Platner clown car has crashed indeed.

How did Platner become seen as the Democratic Party hope?

When there is a serious car crash, there is an investigation. Was it a mechanical failure? Was the road badly designed? What was the role of the weather? Was there driver error? Which driver?

Part of the purpose of these investigations is to find ways to prevent future accidents.

Another is to determine legal liability.

Then we have the desire for moral inculpability – the desire to say “it was not my fault.”

And the best way to avoid blame (including self-blame) is to blame someone else. Finger pointing is intrinsic to the investigative autopsy.

We see a lot of this going on in American Democratic Party circles and in the more leftie segments of the media. Not only do those who climbed aboard the Platner bandwagon have to jump off, they have to avoid blame for having been in the clown car in the first place. That’s what is going on now. Quite frankly, I find it all hilarious. That may speak to the shallowness of my soul, but there you have it.

I’m going to offer two mutually reinforcing theories about what happened. Car crashes are often “overdetermined”. That is, there are lots of reasons for the crash. So is with political car crashes such as the Platner campaign. But since I’ve already gone on for 3,121 words, I’m going to limit my analysis to two reasons.

The trap of binary thinking

As flawed politicians are fond of pointing out, the choice is not between them and some ideal of perfection. The choice is between them and the other people on the ballot. When you go to MacDonalds, you don’t get to order a ribeye steak with lobster tails.

This argument is correct, even if sometimes self-serving. What’s more, in a two-party system (which the United States structurally is), your choice is between THE DEMOCRAT and THE REPUBLICAN. If both suck, pick your poison.

In the summer of 2016, my oldest son came home from College in the United States. I asked him who would win the Presidential election.

He didn’t hesitate: Donald Trump.

I was a bit surprised at his certainty. His explanation was that “people in Canada have no idea how unpopular Hillary Clinton is.

At one level, the logic of binary choice just is what it is. I can accept the fact that people will vote for the despicable to avoid the reprehensible. In fact, it makes sense to do so.

But there are two problems that emerge from binary choice logic.

The first is emotional. There is no emotional satisfaction is voting for the despicable even if it is a reasonable thing to do. On an ongoing basis, we don’t like to admit (to ourselves) that we voted for someone we despise. This causes us to convince ourselves that our choice was better than we originally thought. We look – desperately – for justifications. The “best available option” transforms itself into “pretty good” into “the return of the messiah”.

At the same time, we magnify the flaws of the binary choice we rejected. The compulsion to justify the choice we made by denigrating the one we rejected becomes more intense as doubts start to (or should start to) creep in about our choice. In the case of Platner, the more problematic issues emerged with him, the more his supporter’s expressed hatred of Susan Collins. In a few weeks, she went from being a normal, centrist Republican into the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. When Platner finally walked the plank, the hysterical Democratic attacks on her suddenly subsided.

The other problem with binary choice logic is that it gets applied in situations where the choice is not binary. The rare Platner supporters who acknowledged his flaws began to claim supporting him had to be justified because of the binary choice between him and Collins. The trouble was – they were making this argument BEFORE the primary when other options were still available. Mills, despite being “too old”, was only a few years older than Collins (there are almost no young five-term Senators). We saw the same logic when the Democrats allowed Joe Biden to run essentially unopposed for the nomination in 2024. It was billed as Biden or Trump. But this choice only became binary when there was no real challenge to Biden’s nomination.

Phooey on binary logic – or at least its misapplication.

The Contemptuous Logic of “Authenticity

While I was watching the Graham Platner car crash unfold, I was also reading a book by a guy called Colin Asher on the relationship between prisons and music in the United States. It’s called The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music.

Asher profiles five musicians whose life and careers were shaped by their relationship with prison. Four are black guys who spent a lot of time in the slammer. The fifth – Johnny Cash – revived his career by recording concerts in prison. Asher argues – pretty convincingly – that if Cash had not been both white and famous before getting addicted to drugs, he would have spent a lot of time in prison himself instead of just having people think he had.

For the purposes of analyzing Graham Platner, I want to focus on Asher’s chapter about Huddie William Ledbetter. If you google him, try the name of “Lead Belly” first. It’s how Ledbetter came to be known. His most famous song is probably “Goodnight Irene.”

Here’s the comic book version.

Ledbetter was born in 1888 in Louisiana. When he was five, his family moved to Texas and bought a small farm. Ledbetter liked music more than picking cotton. This seems fair. He became as successful as a black musician could be in the Jim Crow south.

But Ledbetter also probably had anger management issues. Asher reports that as a teenager, Ledbetter had scrapes with the law after shooting at people. Twice. Once to assist a woman from an abusive husband. Once because he was in a “jealous rage.”

In any event, in 1918 Ledbetter was with a group of people when shooting started. One died, one was wounded. Rightly or wrongly, Ledbetter was convicted of murder (it is murky). He got sentenced to 30 years. Half a dozen years later, the Texas governor visited the prison. The warden assembled convict musicians to put on a show. The governor was impressed by Ledbetter and called him over to share a few shots of whiskey. After a few snorts, Ledbetter grabbed his guitar and sang:

If I had you, Governor

Where you got me

First thing I’d do

Be to set you free.

Be damned if it did not work. Ledbetter got a pardon.

But a few years later, in 1930, Ledbetter got into another one of the murky, violent confrontations that seemed to mark his life. He got convicted of attempted murder and ended up in Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison farm.

Three years later, a guy called John Lomax showed up at the prison farm. Lomax was a banker who’d gone broke after the 1929 crash. He managed to get a government grant to preserve, record, and catalogue “authentic” black music. Lomax filled his car with recording equipment and – on the government generous dime – set out to find authentic, traditional black music.

Where did Lomax go to find “authentic” black music?

To the jails and prison farms of the south, naturally. Everyone knew that’s where you found “authentic” blacks.

To make a long story a bit shorter, Lomax found Ledbetter at the Angola prison farm. He recorded the song that had once won a pardon. He sent it to the governor of Louisiana.

Damn.

Ledbetter got pardoned again.

Lomax took Ledbetter to New York City and pitched him to high society as the n****r who had - twice – sung his way out of jail. Lomax joked that every morning he would wonder whether Ledbetter would sing to him or murder him. Before anyone in New York City ever heard the guy sing, Ledbetter had become famous – a star of sorts. A news syndicate even did a theatre newsreel about him.

When Ledbetter actually got a chance to sing in front of New York audiences, Lomax had him dressed in prison clothing.

It all came to an acrimonious ending. Ledbetter got fed up with Lomax. They parted ways. Lomax stole all of Ledbetter’s earnings. Ledbetter carved out a modest living in New York’s folk/blues music scene for a decade. Once he was no longer being pitched as an “authentic” black, he was no longer a star. But enough people liked his music for him to make a modest living. Then he died of Lou Gehrig’s disease.

At this point, you are probably wondering what the hell all of this has to do with explaining Graham Platner?

I’ll keep the answer shorter than the preamble.

When John Lomax got a government grant to record, preserve, and catalogue “authentic” black folk music, he knew nothing of what it meant to be black. He was a white (bankrupt) banker.

But Lomax set out to find “authentic” black music.

Where did he look?

Prisons.

Think about that for a minute.

In one of these prisons, he found Huddie William Ledbetter. By all accounts, Ledbetter was a helluva musician. I’ve heard a few of his recordings and they are great. “Goodnight Irene” is a classic.

But here’s the thing.

Ledbetter’s relatively brief rise to fame was based on his “authenticity” as defined by Lomax.

Authenticity was defined as being a murderer.

If you do an online search and download some of Ledbetter’s songs, understand that they were not recorded because people discovered him as a musician. He was being pitched as an “authentic” black person because he had been convicted of murder. That’s what made him “authentic.”

Graham Platner was pitched as an “authentic” representative of the white working class. His backers assumed that this “authenticity” combined with a “fuck-the-rich” line of jive would cause the Maine working class to abandon their misguided infatuation with Donald Trump.

When the actual facts of Platner’s life began to emerge – that he was the no-good pampered son of rich parents – it might have wobbled this narrative.

But it did not.

Why?

Because at the same time, stories about the Totenkopf tattoo, the sexist/racist social media posts, the sexting to (probably) teenagers, and the violence endured by former girlfriends started to come out.

In the eyes of the lefties in the Democratic Party and much of the media, this litany of bad behavior was not disqualifying. In fact, it was the reverse. It validated Platner’s candidacy. It cemented Platner’s credentials as “authentic” a working-class guy.

It was a 21^st century version of Ledbetter’s murder convictions cementing his status as being an “authentic” black.

There is no question but that this bogus “authenticity” had an appeal. Even as Platner’s campaign crashed and burned, tears were wept by many on the left.

Platner was hugely popular amongst college-educated people. The more education, the more they liked Platner as a working-class hero. The more prestigious the college attended, the more they liked Platner as a working-class hero. It is fair to say that Platner was – almost unanimously – deemed to be an “authentic” working class hero to graduates of Ivy League colleges.

Just as Huddie William Ledbetter was deemed to be the “authentic” voice of southern blacks by New York’s intelligentsia.

But here is what is interesting.

The polling data shows that there was one group that was not taken in by Platner’s “authenticity” as a working-class guy.

This group of skeptics was working-class guys in Maine.

These are the guys who are actual oyster farmers and fishermen. Or they are logger. Or construction workers.

Those guys – the actual white male working class – overwhelmingly told pollsters they would vote for Susan Collins over Graham Platner in a binary choice election.

These guys- the actual white male working class – clearly understood that Graham Platner was the kind of scumbag asshole they had to protect their sisters from rather than being some sort of “authentic” voice of the working class.

Last November, I posted a column titled How Crazy are Canada’s MP’s?

It was a look at the private members bills introduced up to that point in Canada’s 45^th Parliament. In the 73 Parliamentary sitting days up until that point, 56 Private Members Bills had been introduced. That was one for every 1.3 sitting days. Many of them were – how shall we put it – idiosyncratic. That’s it. Idiosyncratic. A nice neutral word. Probably fairer than crazy.

Parliament recently broke for the summer. In the 77 sitting days since my last post on the subject, only 35 Private Members Bills have been introduced. That’s only one Private Members Bill for every 2.2 sitting days.

Damn. Progress. They listened to me.

Canada’s back benchers are tapering off on the …. Idiosyncrasy. It is like they read my November post and are like a smoker who belatedly discovered tobacco causes cancer. You know. Good intentions to quit, but it is tough.

The party appears to have most heeded my gentle suggestion that there were too many Private Members Bills were the NDP. In the first 73 sitting days of the session, the small but plucky band introduced 20 Private Members Bills. After my November post, in the last 77 sitting days before the summer break, they held themselves down to five. A special shout-out goes to Gord Johns, the MP from Courtney-Alberni. He introduced seven Private Members Bills in the first half of the session. In the last half, he held himself to just one. By word count, it was the longest Bill – but hey, the guy is trying to show restraint.

Anyways, by party, the totals for the session were:

• Conservatives: 40.

• NDP: 25.

• Liberals: 17.

• Bloc: 8.

• Green: 1.

Conservatives

The Conservative’s bills were short and action orientated. Some called for reversal of particular Trudeau era legislation (i.e. the ban on tankers on some parts of the West Coast).

Most of the Conservative measures called for throwing people into jail. For a long time. Richmond Centre-Marple MP Chak Au called for life sentences for some drug dealers. Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan MP Garnett Genuis called for ten years in the slammer for stealing an object of religious significance. You’d have a long time to study it if you walked off with a Gideon from a hotel room.

When the Conservatives strayed into policy areas such as health care, things got a little odd. For example, in dealing with mental health issues, Leeds-Grenville-Thousands Islands-Rideau Lakes (do the names of ridings need to be quite this long?) MP Michael Bennett wants to provide free service dogs to veterans suffering from PTSD while Saskatoon-University MP Corey Tocher wants to legalize hallucinogenic drugs (psylocibin in particular) for mental health treatment. That’s not your grandfather’s Conservative Party – Magic Mushroom prescriptions. Or maybe Peyote. What’s that I see over there?

New Democrat

The NDP tended to focus on labour law. Make unions stronger. Edmonton Strathcona MP and defeated leadership contender Heather McPherson had one banning unions “influenced” by the employer. This bill got to Second Reading speeches so we could see what her thinking is. It is really clear that McPherson has a special hatred for the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC). She was silent on whether she would be opposed to Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or Sikh unions.

And NDP MPs could get sulky. After an NDP MP crossed the floor to the Liberals, Vancouver Kingsway MP Don Davies introduced a bill calling for by-elections before someone could cross the floor. The timing is revealing. He exhibited no such commitment to respecting the partisan will of voters when it was Conservative MPs making the walk of shame. Or maybe Davies is just pissy because it has been four decades since a sitting MP crossed the floor to join the NDP – and Robert Toupin only joined the NDP after the Liberals rejected the Conservative turncoat. And then the guy left the NDP after ten months. He had discovered to his horror that the NDP was left-wing. Anyways, it is easy to have a policy against crossing the floor when nobody ever knocks on your caucus room door.

Liberal

Liberals were big into legislatively mandating the creation of frameworks and consultative processes with resulting report back mechanisms to Parliament. It seems we need national frameworks for everything from Silver Alerts to the use of cash. And reports to Parliaments. Liberals clearly want to rectify Canada’s acute shortage of consultative processes and reports that nobody reads. Jobs creation, Liberal style, I guess.

Bloc Quebecois

The Bloc Private Members Bills alternated between demanding more federal money for Quebec and demanding that the federal government butt out of Quebec affairs.

Green

The one Green Private Members Bill was interesting. Elizabeth May had a long and detailed Bill extolling the job-creation virtues of small businesses and calling for a small business impact review process to be conducted before the federal government does anything. I don’t know whether to smile or weep. On the one hand, I am gratified that the Greens are paying some attention economic growth and prosperity. On the other hand, it makes me weep to think their proposed solution is another open-ended, complicated impact assessment process before anything gets done.

Bi-Partisan

There was bi-partisan unity in wanting to punish people for the criminal activities of others. From the Conservatives, Thornhill MP Melissa Landsman wants to criminalize folks at social media companies if someone else uses their services to commit fraud. From the Liberals, Scarborough-Woburn MP Michael Couteau wanted to criminalize people at social media coverage who let “deep-fake” images of people slip by their screening processes to get published. Apparently both Landsman and Couteau believe punishing the fraudsters and deep-fakers themselves might be too much work. Or something. It’s kind of like throwing an employee at Ford in jail because someone used a Ford for a getaway car after robbing a bank.

Award-Winning Private Members Bills

I’ve got two Stobbe awards for the Private Members Bills this term.

The Stobbe award for the Weirdest Private Members Bill.

The Stobbe Award for the most shameless political pandering with Private Members Bills.

The Weird

My award for weird goes to the Conservative MP Doug Shipley (Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte) for Bill C-281, An Act to amend the Textile Labelling Act and the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act. This legislation would amend Section 3 of the Textile Labelling Act and Section 4 of the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act to require that any Canadian flag larger than “20 centimetres in width and 30 centimetres in length” that is imported, sold, or advertised have a country-of-origin label on the flag itself.

Bill C-281 never got to second reading so it is impossible – from a distance – to discern what problem Shipley is attempting to solve with this legislation. Is it unpatriotic flags? Illegal immigrant flags?

Why the exemption for small flags? Is Mr. Shipley sizeist?

Who asked for this law? Is there a lobby group for Canadian flag makers? Or is it that Mr. Shipley believes we are being unpatriotic if we put up a Canadian flag made in China or Bangladesh? Is this his way of fighting foreign interference in our elections?

So many questions remain unanswered. If Mr. Shipley reads this column, he’s welcome to explain himself in the comment section. If he actually has good reasons for this proposed law, I’ll happily take the “Stobbe Award for the Weirdest Private Members Bill” away from him. There are other deserving candidates.

The Pandering

The Stobbe Award for Shameless Political Pandering goes to Liberal Yvan Baker from Etobicoke Centre.

I have to admit, I’m impressed.

Mr. Baker is a machine for the creation of Heritage Months. In one (still-incomplete) session of Parliament, he introduced Bills to create Heritage months for Somalis, Albanians, and Ukrainians. He accounted for 17.647 percent of all Liberal Private Members Bills. The guy is a beast. Indefatigable. Tireless. Energetic. Unflagging. Incessant. Vigorous.

You need a thesaurus to properly describe Mr. Baker’s commitment to ethnic group pandering.

Here’s what really impresses me in addition to his proclivity for political pandering:

Mr. Baker does his homework.

Ukrainians, Albanians, and Somali’s are all “over-represented” in his riding compared with the Canadian national average.

Using data from the 2021 census:

• Etobicoke Centre had 8,274 people who self-declared as having a Ukrainian ethnic identity. That accounted for 6.59 percent of the Mr. Baker’s constituents – almost twice the national rate (3.46 percent) identifying as Ukrainian.

• Etobicoke Centre had 2,165 people identifying ethnically as Albanian. This was 1.72 percent of the riding’s population which was 15.64 times greater than the national share of 0.11 percent.

• Etobicoke Centre had 1,920 people identifying as Somali. This was 1.53 percent of the riding’s population – 8.5 times higher than the national share of 0.18 percent.

Mr. Baker is clearly doing his Private Members Bill political pandering based which ethnic groups are “over-represented” in his constituency.

But he is falling prey to a statistical fallacy. He is confusing rate with volume. Of the ethnic groups he is pandering to, Ukrainians are the most numerous in his riding. But in Etobicoke Centre, in the 2021 census the following outnumbered Ukrainians but don’t have a Heritage month:

• English (11,670).

• Scottish (10,055)

• Canadian (8,575)

Surely if any ethnic group deserves a Heritage Month in Canada, it should be Canadians.

In one way, I feel bad for Mr. Baker. Politicians in the past have beaten him to the punch by formally declaring months for members of other ethnic groups he represents including Italian (16,515 living in his riding), Irish (10,655), Polish (6,720), Portuguese (5,395), German, (5,125), Filipino (3,255), Lebanese (530), and Tamil (400). At least he can console himself with a regular free meal as an honoured guest at these banquets.

There are some obvious ethnic oversights for the tireless Mr. Baker to correct. His 4,080 Serbians don’t have a month. Or the 2,095 Russians. Nor do the 1,880 Croatians.

If Mr. Baker gets down to proposing a Norman Heritage Month, I’ll be truly awed. What with the 1066 conquest of England and all that, Normans certainly have some Heritage Moments that could be turned into Heritage Months. And there are 10 self-identified Normans in Etobicoke Centre. Go get them, Mr. Baker. Normans turn their lonely eyes to you.

Then we have the question of Orientalism that Mr. Baker needs to address in Canada’s Heritage months. The 4,835 Chinese, the 6,030 Indians, the 2,715 Koreans, the 1,475 Pakistanis, 1,165 Vietnamese, 375 Punjabis, 225 Bengalis, 65 Thais, and 675 Japanese (along with some other ethnic groups) are lumped together in “Asian Month”. Something for Mr. Baker to get right onto. If you are going to do ethnic group pandering, at least pander to ethnic groups - not some pseudo-scientific division of the world’s people based on 19^th Century European imperialism.

There is another obvious injustice for Mr. Baker to attend to.

The Dutch. That’s right. The Dutch. All these named ethnic groups get a month in honour of their heritage. The Dutch only get a stinking rotten day (May 5). What’s with that? Why the discrimination against the Dutch? There are 1,485 people with a self-identified Dutch ethnic identity in Etobicoke Centre. They deserve an upgrade to a full month. Or at least a week. While Mr. Baker is at it, he can do something for the 195 people in his riding declaring a Belgian ethnicity. Maybe if he introduces legislation to upgrade the Dutch to the full month they obviously deserve, he can throw in a sub-clause to give the Belgiums a day. Or a weekend – that would be about the right recognition based on numbers relative to the Dutch. But then what to do with the Luxembourgers?

My advice to Mr. Baker is that if you are going to base your political future on pointless symbolic pandering to ethnic identities in your riding, do it right.

Or better yet, not do it at all. Focus your time and attention on real issues.

Unless everything is so good in Etobicoke Centre that no real issues exist.

But I doubt that is true.

Private Members Bills in Canada’s Parliament

Back a long time ago, Private Member’s Bills were an important part of our democratic process. Very few even get debated. Fewer still get passed. When Stephen Harper was Prime Minister, there was a small uptick in Private Member’s Bills that were passed. Harper sometimes allowed members of his caucus to sponsor and take ownership of bills that might otherwise have been government bills. It was not a bad idea or practice.

But for the most part, Private Member’s Bills are introduced. That is about it as far the Parliamentary process.

Which raises the question: why do (some) MPs like them so much?

To be fair, sometimes Private Member’s Bills are used to raise important issues and create debate about ideas. Sometimes they can be used effectively.

But these cases are rare.

Much more common are two types of Private Member’s Bills.

The first – exemplified in this article by Mr. Shipley’s Bill demanding country-of-origin labels on Canadian flags – simply speak to the idiosyncratic obsessions of some MPs. These are useful only if the provide an insight – sometimes disturbing – into the minds of our elected officials. My own personal all-time favourite comes from 1949 when newbie MP David Fulton managed to get a Private Members Bill passed that made possession of a Batman or Superman comic a criminal code offence. A sexual offence, no less. It sounds odd, but it is true. Fulton went on to become the Justice Minister in the Diefenbaker government. (He later became a judge, but resigned after a drunk driving conviction.) But I digress.

The second – exemplified in this article by Mr. Baker’s three Bills calling for designated Heritage Months – are simply political pandering. They are introduced so the MP can claim to be “fighting for” some interest group (real or imagined). They sometimes become a tool for fundraising appeals.

In general, Private Member’s Bills in Canada’s Parliament are usually pointless and often stupid. On the plus side, they are usually relatively harmless. But it still feels like a strange thing for our MPs to spend so much time on.

This column was produced as a public service. I read all these Bills so you didn’t have to.

One of the things I’ve always admired about the American “founding fathers” was their capacity for alcohol. Not to put too fine a point on it, but those guys were a bunch of piss-tanks. Functional alcoholics would be the best modern terminology for them.

I’ve sort of understood the importance of hooch to the revolution for a long time – after all, George Washington had to put down the “Whiskey Rebellion” when the new US government put a tax on whiskey. But there’s a great new book about the revolution called Cocked and Boozy: An Intoxicating History of the American Revolution by Brooke Barbier.

Barbier tipped me off to the fact that Benjamin Franklin wrote a Drinker’s Dictionary – 229 words and phrases describing being drunk. The only missing letters are U, Y, X, and Z. I won’t give you the full list, but here are my alphabetical favorites:

A is for “He’s casting up his Accounts.”

B is for “Has Stole a Manchet out of the Brewer’s Basket”. (or maybe “He’s had a thump over the head with Sampson’s Jaw Bone.”

C is for “Sir Richard has taken off his Considering Cap.”

D is for “Kill’d his Dog.”

E is for “He’s Eat a Toad and a half for Breakfast.”

F is for “Been to France.”

G is for “Dizzy as a Goose.”

H is for “Hammerish.”

I is for “He’s Intoxicated”.

J is for “Going to Jerusalem.” (Or “Been to Jerico.”)

K is for “Seen the French King.”

L is for “He Makes Indentures with his Leggs.”

M is for “He sees two Moons.”

N is for “Nimptosical.”

O is for “Smelt of an Onion.”

P is for “He’s been among the Philistines.” (or “He’s been among the Philippians.”)

Q is for “He’s Quarrelsome.”

R is for “Been too free with Sir Richard.”

S is for “Staggerish.”

T is for “Has Swallow’d a Tavern Token.”

V is for “He makes Virginia Fence.”

W is for “The Malt is above the Water.”

Honorable Mentions:

“Has drank more than he has bled.”

“He sees the Bears.”

“Half way to Concord.”

“He’s been too free with the Creature.”

“Fuzl’d.”

“Got the Gout.”

“Haunted with Evil Spirits.”

“Clips the King’s English.”

“He drank till he gave up his Half-Penny.”

“Lost his Rudder.”

“Like a Rat in Trouble.”

“As Drunk as David’s Sow.”

When you raise a glass to toast the birthday of our great neighbor to the south, don’t exercise moderation. Benjamin Franklin would not have. Drunkenness was obviously on his mind.

As a fun exercise, the promo page for Barbier's book has an online quiz that lets you know which figure from the American revolution you most enjoy bending an elbow with. I did the quiz and am told that my drinking companion would be Abigail Adams. Not entirely sure how I feel about that! Take the test and let me know who your companion would be (in the comments section).

Canada’s centennial celebration was quite the affair.

There was a major “EXPO” in Montreal.

A Centennial Train – a kind of mobile museum – made stops in 83 communities.

Over 860 building projects got federal money for things like hockey arenas, concert halls, and community centers.

1700 members of the Armed Forces crossed Canada performing a Military Tattoo complete with 17 bands.

There was a 3,283-mile (this was in the days before Canada went metric) canoe race with teams from almost every province and territory. Team Manitoba won after covering the distance with a paddling time of 507 hours, 21 minutes and 51 seconds.

Over 500 Canadian businesses still have “Centennial” in their name after being founded in 1967.

In Toronto, recent immigrants from the Caribbean launched the first Caribana parade and festival to both celebrate Caribbean culture and thank Canada for allowing them to move north.

To make the year complete, all the Premier’s got together for a Confederation for Tomorrow conference to talk about constitutional change. (Those fun-loving Premiers knew how to have a good time. We did better in Uranium City where there was a parade, three days of live music at the beach bandstand on the July 1 weekend, and a bingo at the arena. Ten-year old me won an egg beater.)

There was a soundtrack to the centennial year. The pride of Cabri, Saskatchewan – a guy called Bobby Gimby – was commissioned by the Centennial Commission to write a song celebrating the country. The result was called “CA-NA-DA”. Two groups of children performed for the recording. It sold 270,000 copies. At the time, it was the best-selling record in Canada’s history. It also received almost constant radio airplay and was played at the innumerable community events. Not content with the recordings, almost every school in the country taught students how to sing it. It had a tricky “in the round” thing going while the main lyrics were sung.

Here are the lyrics. I’m willing to bet every Canadian over the age of 65 can remember how to sing it. Kids – challenge your parents or grandparents:

CA-NA-DA

(One little two little three Canadians)

We love thee

(Now we are twenty million)

CA-NA-DA

(Four little five little six little Provinces) Proud and free

(Now we are ten and the Territories sea to sea)

(Chorus):

North south east west

There’ll be happy times,

Church Bells will ring, ring, ring

It’s the hundredth anniversary of

Confederation

Ev’rybody sing together!

CA-NA-DA,

We love thee.

For a popular parody version with comedian Rich Little impersonating Prime Minister Lester Pearson and Opposition Leader John Diefenbacker singing the song, click here.

But that’s not all. CBC commissioned Gordon Lightfoot to write a song celebrating the building of the Canadian Pacific Railroad which extended brought British Columbia into Canada and made possible the agricultural settlement of the prairies. The song was first broadcast on January 1, 1867.

The Canada being celebrated was not perfect. Federal legislation for cost-shared Medicare had only been passed the previous year. Most provinces had not yet signed on. “Medicare” had not yet arrived. The Trans-Canada highway was four years away from completion. Officially, 24 percent of Canadians lived in poverty (it’s now around 10 percent). Not everyone was happy with being in Canada. The FLQ detonated over a hundred bombs in the few years leading up to the Centennial celebration. They throttled down the pace of blowing things up for the Centennial year but came back hard the next year by bombing the offices of Quebec political parties, Eaton’s main department store in Montreal, Montreal City Hall, and the Montreal Stock Exchange in 1968. A couple of years later, terroristic bombing escalated to kidnapping and murder.

But overall, Canada was a pretty good country and most Canadians knew it. The 1967 Centennial celebrations were an expression of gratitude for what had been built for people like the ten-year old me to enjoy. Heck. Even the FLQ took a (mostly) year-long break from blowing things up so the rest of us could celebrate our country.

“Everything seems broken”

If you rank countries by affluence, equality, public safety, absence of corruption, ability of diverse groups to get along, and quality of public services, Canada is generally in the top decile. We are not really #1 at anything (not even hockey anymore) but of the 193 countries recognized by the United Nations Canada is almost always in the top twenty. Often the top ten.

It’s not perfect, but this is not a bad place to be. The proof of the pudding is in migration push/pull. Millions of people from dozens of countries want to move to Canada but not many Canadians want to leave. The only country in the world that attracts more Canadians lose their folks to Canada is the United States. This gives us a reasonable claim to be the second-best country in the world. That’s not bad.

Just as it was in 1967, Canada is a good country.

But the mood has changed. Click the link to the Gordon Lightfoot song and give it a listen. It is inconceivable that this would be recorded today - let alone that it would be sponsored by CBC and become a huge hit.

Prior to the last election, our Opposition Leader was proclaiming that “everything seems broken.” Lots of people agreed with him. That was from the right side of the political spectrum. In many ways, the critique from the left is even more condemnatory – even though for different reasons and expressed differently.

There is quite a bit of public opinion polling that shows a malaise in the land. I won’t wallow in the numbers, but roughly a third of Canadians express the view that Canada is a “bad” country. Very few describe Canada as a “great” country. Until a year ago, pride in Canada had been dropping for over a decade but bounced up a bit when President Trump started doing his 51^st state thing. In a way, this disturbs me. If it takes Donald Trump to cause Canadians to take stock of the good things in the country, something is profoundly wrong.

The other thing the polling consistently shows is that the Canadians who most appreciate Canada tend to be the ones who moved here from other nations. They are the ones with a basis of comparison.

Part of this malaise comes from media discourse and political debate. The media understandably gives a lot more attention to the plane that crashes than the one that lands. The social media rewards click-bait stories of outrageously bad news whether true or not. Politicians exist to identify problems that they and they alone can solve.

We get a steady diet of news about things that have gone wrong but very little about what has gone right.

But don’t just blame the media and politicians. We seek out the bad. There is a reason that hunters of clicks on the social media present the bad and outrageous. That’s what gets people to click. I’ve had some personal experience with this. During 2024, I posted weekly columns about things that are now better than they were in “the good old days”. Fifty-one of them. My average readership dropped by about 40 percent. About a year ago, I got back into weekly posts that were much more focused on things that have gone wrong. My average readership has almost doubled.

Hmmm.

Humans have a natural tendency to focus on problems and dangers. It is evolutionary more advantageous to worry about whether the rustling in the woods is a bear than it is to adopt a “don’t worry, no problem” approach.

Part of our collective negative attitude towards Canada comes from this somewhat natural preoccupation with problems and failure rather than with achievement and success.

But something deeper has occurred. After all, folks in 1967 could be pretty critical of the government (for example) while still being proud of Canada. Media has always focused on the bad and politicians have always been in the market for problems to highlight.

But in the past - much more than today - this did not result in a general condemnation of the country. It was possible to be whining and complaining while still being appreciative and proud.

So let us drill a little deeper.

Let us look at gratitude and ingratitude.

Ancestor Worship and Ancestor Condemnation

Most societies practice some form of ancestor worship.

Or at least ancestor veneration.

In some societies, ancestors become a kind of deity. Graves become shrines. In other societies, things don’t go quite this far. However, people maintain gravesites and compile genealogical information. Statues are erected for those who are deemed to have done something significant. Towns, streets, schools, rivers, lakes, and mountains are named after people from the past.

Collectively, this is all an expression of gratitude. It is a recognition that much of the good things we enjoy today are an inheritance from the past.

In 1967, when I was ten, this gratitudinal attitudinal orientation to the Canada’s past was turned up to eleven. Canada’s Centennial celebration was effectively a giant “thank you” to those who wrote our constitution, established our government, built our railroads, dug our mines, and first plowed our fields.

This story of achievement was true and valid, but it missed a few things. As good things were being achieved, bad things were happening as well. There were losers as well as winners.

Let’s take the story of immigration and the settlement of the prairies. When I was ten, this was told as a story of the heroic building of the railway, the opening of an empty land to allow the poor and oppressed to build a future here, and the thwarting of American “Manifest Destiny” north of the 49^th Parallel.

Let me be clear.

The story being told in 1967 was true.

But it was incomplete.

It glossed over or ignored completely a couple of salient points. It glossed over the treatment and fate of indigenous people in the prairies. It ignored completely the profound racism of Canada’s immigration policies. Blacks and Asians were barred – sometimes very crudely – from building their new lives in Canada.

A few years after the Centennial celebrations, Canada’s historiography and social analysis started to fill in these missing pieces. This was a good and necessary thing. It allowed for some badly needed corrective actions. For example, more attention was paid to honoring Treaty obligations to First Nations. Canada opened its doors to people from around the world.

But somewhere along the line, a switch got thrown. As “bad” was acknowledged, “good” became the untold and acknowledged part of the story.

I suspect it is because we tend to think in binary terms. Something is “good” or “bad.” We have trouble thinking in terms of “both good and bad.” We recoil against tradeoffs. As a result, when we started to acknowledge the nastier side of Canadian history, we turned off the parts of our brains that acknowledged the good and had gratitude towards our ancestors.

Without gratitude to the past, we lose appreciation of present and hope for the future.

Without showing how things have become better, we assume that things are bad today and will be worse tomorrow.

In my lifetime, my great-grandparents have gone from being hard-working, honest pioneers who built a good life for their descendants through their courage, toil, and sacrifice into being described as racist “settler-colonialists” who stole the land from indigenous people.

In a few decades, we went from ancestor veneration to ancestor condemnation. As part of this process, we lost any sense of gratitude towards those that came before us. The tax on this loss is a loss of appreciation for the present.

And that was the fate of the reputation of normal folks like my great-grandparents. It gets worse for people who made a mark on history sufficient to get biographies and statues.

Let’s take Sir John A. MacDonald.

When I was a kid, he was described as a wise and farsighted “Father of Confederation” – a tricky, willey, and often intoxicated politician who used his skills (and sometimes his tolerance for corruption) to unite the existing colonies, keep the Americans out of the West, negotiate treaties with indigenous people, create the Mounted Police to protect them from American whiskey traders and murderers, and built a transcontinental railway. According to the narrative, when a tired Sir John A. went to his heavenly reward, he was replaced by the equally wise Sir Wilfred who opened the prairies to the poor and oppressed.

And you know what?

That story is true. It leaves out some things, to be sure, but it is true.

In the 1970s, we started to fill in the missing pieces. For reasons I don’t understand, Sir Wilfred Laurier kind of gets ignored in the new narrative, but Sir John A. MacDonald has been recast as a racist thug who not only committed genocide on indigenous people but imposed a racist Head Tax to keep the Chinese from immigrating. The somewhat amused acknowledgement of personal vices such as an over-fondness for gin has been replaced with a blanket condemnation approaching Hitlerian levels. The statues were pulled down. The history books were expunged. Sir John. A. became the Canadian equivalent of Lord Voldemorte.

Was the record of Sir John A. MacDonald perfect?

Absolutely not. He was a wheeling and dealing politician in a tempestuous time operating in a cultural milieu that is a lot different than ours today. But let’s look at a few things in relative terms:

1. Immediately after buying the property rights to “Ruperts Land” from the Hudson Bay Company, MacDonald and the Canadian government dispatched negotiators to reach negotiated treaties with indigenous people. Contrast that with the much bloodier approach in the United States. Quite simply, there were no military massacres of indigenous people on the Canadian prairies along the lines of the Big Creek Massacre, the Sandy Creek Massacre, the Wounded Knee Massacre, or the Washita Massacre. There was no Canadian “Trail of Tears”. The person that said, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” was an American general (Phillip Sheridan) and not a Canadian politician.

2. The proximate reason for establishing the Northwest Mounted Police (NWMP) was to respond to a massacre of indigenous people by Americans up from Fort Benton, Montana. The first NWMP forts were positioned to protect Canadian indigenous people from murderous Americans.

3. After the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Chief Sitting Bull and his people fled TO CANADA to seek (and obtain) protection from the American army.

4. It is true that Sir. John A. MacDonald’s government imposed the first Head Tax on immigrants from China. What is now ignored is that MacDonald opposed the measure. He bobbed and weaved (establishing a Royal Commission, etc.) to avoid the measure. When the electors in British Columbia INSISTED that something be done to stop Chinese immigration, MacDonald imposed the Head Tax – and set it at a rate as low as he thought he could get away with. Compare his record with that of Australia. When Australia had its version of Confederation, the very first law its Parliament passed was an absolute ban on non-British immigration AND the immediate deportation of any people originally from Asia.

The biggest cause of current condemnation of Sir John A. MacDonald is the treatment of indigenous people so that agricultural settlement could occur. I am the last person to say that this process was not “problematic” – but two essential points need to be remembered.

First: The basic approach was one of negotiation and treaty rather than soldiers and guns. Land in the prairies was not “stolen”. Transfer of some (most) of it was negotiated in a process called Treaty. I’m glad that was the Canadian way.

Second: If MacDonald’s government had not acted the way it did, the indigenous people in the Canadian prairies would not have “kept their land” or “retained their way of life.” The buffalo were gone (killed south the border). The indigenous people would have starved (as it was, some did). There would have been no indigenous utopia. Manitoba and Saskatchewan would have been part of North Dakota. Alberta would have been part of Montana.

Indigenous people in Canada’s prairies got to deal with Canadian treaty commissioners. That was not always a good experience, but it was a helluva lot better than dealing with General Sherman or General Sheridan. I really admire those two generals for their role in ending slavery by helping win the American civil war, but there is no two ways about it. They were ruthless bastards.

That is for sure.

And they were the alternative - the only alternative - to MacDonald’s Treaty negotiators.

Rejecting binaries and having gratitude

The story of Canada is BOTH the story of a lot of dispossessions of indigenous people AND the creation of hope/opportunity for poor and oppressed from other parts of the world. Both these things can be – and were – true at the same time. They were inseparable.

For myself, as Canada Day approaches, I feel a lot of gratitude to my ancestors – broadly defined. Those that came before me allowed me to grow up and live my life in relative affluence and personal security.

My paternal great-grandparents all immigrated from Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. They arrived in Saskatchewan on a railroad made possible by Sir John A. MacDonald and through the immigration policies of Sir Wilfred Laurier. They were given land and opportunity – and worked damned hard to turn this opportunity into a good life for the generations that came behind them.

And what would have happened without Canada as a haven and refuge?

It would have been grim for my great-grandparents.

They were members of a German-speaking, pacifist, religious minority. They were prosperous enough to have been considered Kulaks by Stalin. What I’m saying is that if the first world war had not killed them, the Communists would have. In Canada, they worked hard and built. Their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren prospered.

And so, I am grateful.

To my great-grandparents for having the courage to make the move to a strange new land.

And to Canadian politicians such as Sir John A. MacDonald and Sir Wilfred Laurier for giving them the opportunity.

This Canada Day, let’s remember and be grateful.

Very often, with bloodshed. Lots of bloodshed. Some of the major examples from the last few hundred years include:

• The unsuccessful attempt of 11 states to leave the United States of American in 1861 (500,000 killed),

• The partition of India into India and Pakistan in 1947 (about a million killed),

• The attempt by the province of Biafra to leave Nigeria in 1967 (about 150,000 combat deaths and as many as 2 million from starvation),

• The separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971 (as many as 3 million deaths),

• The breakup of Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001 (about 140,000 deaths).

Sometimes the breakup of countries initially appears relatively peaceful but has a delayed death toll. When the Soviet Union broke into 15 pieces, the process seemed peaceful. However, the largest component (Russia) has since started wars with Georgia (almost 1,000 deaths) and Ukraine (about 460,000 deaths and counting).

Not good, Bob.

The breaking up of countries contains within it the potential for real ugliness.

And so, we come to the Albertan referendum on whether to have a referendum to leave Canada.

Let me be clear.

If Albertans decide to separate from Canada, I do not expect there to be mass violence and killing. History suggests that the possibility exists, but it seems unlikely. Canada’s army is neither big nor mean. In the case of a breakup, Canadian passive aggressive approach to things would be a good thing. Passive aggression is less bloody than aggressive aggression.

There are examples of countries breaking up without war and bloodshed. Although historically rare, this can be pulled off. The most salient recent example is Czechoslovakia.

The Country of Czechoslovakia

When I was a kid, there was a country called Czechoslovakia on the map. I knew about it because it had great hockey teams. When I got a little older, I learned that Bohemian beer originated there. In my first-year history class at University, I learned that people there had created the word defenestration – “the act of throwing someone out of a window.”

Hockey. Beer. Passionate politics.

My kind of country.

Czechoslovakia no longer exists. There is now both the Czech Republic (a.k.a. Czechia) and the Slovak Republic (a.k.a. Slovakia). The “o” in Czechoslovakia has been replaced by an “and”.

This divorce happened without violence. If Alberta does decide to leave Canada, the path of Czechoslovakia is worth looking at. Better than Yugoslavia or Nigeria. That is for sure. e

Let’s look at Czechoslovakia to see what we can learn about breaking up countries without bloodshed. What can Canada learn from this late country in the event we need to start planning for the eventuality of national dismemberment.

The most important fact of the breakup of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia was how artificial and recent the union was in the first place.

What became Czechoslovakia emerged after World War 1. Prior to that time, the geographic area of the country was composed of three provinces in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The empire was a strange beast. Since 1848, the Empire consisted of two separate countries: Austria and Hungary. They had separate Parliaments, government structures, and armies. Union only came at the top in the person of the emperor.

In any event, the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia were part of Austria while Slovakia was part of Hungary. The histories, cultures and languages were similar but clearly distinct.

At the end of World War I, United States President Woodrow Wilson was big on “national self-determination” in Europe (not so much in places like Africa and Asia). He believed that each nationality (people with a common language, history, culture, and geographic area) should have its own nation-state. Wilson was largely ignorant of the ethnic complexity and fragmentation of Europe. He thought national boundaries defined themselves.

Anyways, the Austo-Hungarian Empire was the exemplar of the kind of multi-national state that Wilson thought was bad. Defeat in World War 1 meant it would be broken up into constituent parts. Up for grabs was the composition and boundaries of the newly created countries.

It seemed clear to everyone that Bohemia and Moravia were “Czech” and that Slovakia was, well, Slovakian. Exiled political leaders met in Pittsburgh (that’s right, in Pennsylvania) to decide that these three parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire should be one country. They appeared at Versailles to make their case to the Presidents of France and the United States and the Prime Minister of Britain.

This looked great to Wilson. One story has it that the translator for the Czech and Slovakian languages was the same guy, so Wilson did not realize two languages were being spoken. One country therefore seemed like a good idea. The French were enthusiastic because they wanted bigger states surrounding Germany to serve as potential allies. The British didn’t care. Thus was born Czechoslovakia – a country that had never before existed. It was created at a conference table by foreign powers. As a reward for good behavior, Czechoslovakia was also given part of Carpathian Ruthenia and Silesia (now present-day Ukraine and Poland respectively). Despite Wilson’s attachment to the idea of states conforming to single national/ethnic boundaries, Czechoslovakia was almost as multi-national as the defunct Austrian-Hungarian Empire. By language was about 51 percent Czech, 22 percent German, 15 percent Slovakian, 5 percent Hungarian, and 4 percent Ukrainian.

Despite its weird origins and Heinz 57 ethnic composition, Czechoslovakia worked pretty well. It contained the most industrialized parts of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire and was pretty prosperous. The Germans and Hungarians were grumpy about being in the new country, but discontent was manageable.

Until Hitler took power in Germany in 1933.

After that, Czechoslovakia was in big trouble. Hitler claimed to be the protector of “downtrodden and oppressed” ethnic Germans. The country was sold down the river by its allies in 1938 at Munich. The Germans moved in and took the place over. Then they divided it. Small pieces went to Poland and Hungary. The German speaking areas went to Germany. The Czech speaking areas were placed under German military rule. There was a strong home-grown Nazi-type party in Slovakia so Slovakia became a separate, sorta-independent country allied (subservient to) Germany.

When the dust settled after World War 2, the victorious powers restored Czechoslovakia to its pre-1938 boundaries. A coalition government was installed. In 1948 there was a Communist coup. The old Czech word of defenestration was dusted off as non-communist cabinet ministers such as Jan Masaryk exited their offices from windows rather than doors. Back in 1618 during the original “Defenestrations of Prague”, lower windows had been used and manure had been piled up to ensure a safe – if disgusting – landing. Three centuries later, the Communists chose higher windows and harder landings.

To make a long story short, Czechoslovakia existed through the Cold War as an unhappy member of the Soviet bloc. Sometimes the relationship between the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia generated some pretty good jokes. Here’s one from 1968:

An American, a German, and a Czech were arguing about who had the more efficient defense industry.

The German said, “we are so efficient we can build a tank for 2,000 Deutschmarks”.

The American said, “That’s nothing. We can build five tanks for 2,000 dollars.”

The Czech said, “So what? We can write 2,000 words and fill our country with tanks.”

The Communist regime in Czechoslovakia collapsed with the “Velvet Revolution” in 1989. Three years later, the country divided. About 10 million Czech’s went one way. About five million Slovaks went another. It was all relatively cordial. Or at least non-violent.

How Czechoslovakia became Czechia and Slovakia

After the Velvet Revolution in 1989 and the collapse of Communist rule directed by the Soviet Union, differences between the two main areas of the country – previously suppressed – quickly emerged. In the first free election since 1946, there were two competitive parties the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, but the Slovak part was dominated by a single party. There was essentially no overlap – that is, no national party. In general terms, the Czechs wanted to move quickly to a private-sector, market economy while the Slovaks were more supportive to state-owned enterprise and central planning

Incomes in the Czech portion of the country (two thirds of the population) were about 20 percent higher than in the Slovak portion. During Communist rule, transfer payments from Czech to Slovak were made. In 1991, the Czech majority stopped making these payments to the Slovak minority. This made the Slovaks unhappy.

By and large, the Czech’s wanted a more centralized government. The Slovak’s wanted a more decentralized federation.

These differences meant that the politicians quickly started talking of separation as a solution. This was initiated by the Slovak politicians who argued that if they were to be a relatively powerless minority, they wanted to go their own way - especially if they were no longer getting subsidized. The Czech politicians said “fine”. This was doubly fine if the price of continued union was the continuation of subsidies.

That was that.

But not quite. Two new countries were created. There was not a sense of one part of the country leaving. It was a divorce of a childless couple rather than one member of a larger family leaving.

There were three basic reasons for the ability of the country to divide peacefully.

Reason 1: Czechoslovakia was never strongly united or integrated.

Czechoslovakia was a country artificially grafted together. Its seven decades of existence was broken up by a half decade of division created and enforced by the Nazis. It was a quasi-puppet state of the Soviet Union for four full decades. It only really existed as an independent, single country from 1920 to 1938, 1946 to 1948, and 1989 to 1992.

Economically, the country was not that integrated. Each part had a strong, export orientated manufacturing sector that were not integrated with each other. While both countries are landlocked, Czechia has borders with Poland, Germany, and Austria (as well as Slovakia). Slovakia rubs up against Hungary, Austria, Poland, and Ukraine (as well as Czechia). Both have borders with their primary markets so negotiating transshipment rights was not a big issue.

Politically, after the demise of the Communists, no national Czechoslovakian political party emerged. There was no political voice for the country as a whole.

It was easy to tell Czechs and Slovaks apart. They spoke different languages. During Communist rule, there had been almost no immigration into the country in 1990, 0.64 percent of Czechoslovakians were born outside of the country. Only 4 percent of people living in the future Czechia had been born in the future Slovakia. Even fewer people had migrated the other direction.

Let’s just say that Czechoslovakian existence as a unified country was more tenuous than that of Canada. It was easy to divide.

Even the symbols were easy. The Czechoslovakian national anthem was bilingual. Each part of the anthem spoke to the history of a different part of the united country. When the country broke up, so to did the national anthem. Two shorter anthems replaced a single longer one. The words and music remained unchanged. Same thing happened with the flag. Like the flag of the “United Kingdom” on the British Isles, it was a merging of different heraldic symbols. It could be divided as each group claimed its own.

Money was initially divided by stamping existing bills as being either Czech or Slovak. Going forward, each country printed its own currency. In 2009, Slovakia joined the Euro zone. The Czechs have not.

Reason 2: Leaders were motivated to work things out peacefully

There was a lot of violence in Czechoslovakian history. Memory gave politicians motivation to resolve disputes peacefully. What’s more, the violent breakup of Yugoslavia was happening. Folks in Czechoslovakia could look south-east and say “let’s not go there.” What’s more, the histories of the different parts of the country were different, but not profoundly antagonistic. Both had been ruled by the Hapsburgs, the Nazis, and the Soviets/Communists at the same time. They had been simultaneously and mutually dominated/oppressed. There was not the Yugoslavian history of hatreds and quarrels.

Both the Czech’s and Slovaks wanted to join the European Union. They understood that the other countries in the Union would be reluctant to admit the progeny of a bitter quarrel. What’s more, admission to the EU took a lot of questions – such as movement of people from one country to the other - off the table. This had a huge effect in lowering the consequences of citizenship choice or allocation.

Finally, there was no “successor” country. One country became two new ones. In both the Soviet Union (Russia) and Yugoslavia (Serbia) component parts of larger country “left” while the biggest part “stayed”. It produced a different psychology.

Reason 3: The public was not involved

There were no referendums.

The breakup of Czechoslovakia was a backroom deal. Negotiations were conducted between politicians behind closed doors.

Public opinion polling both at the time and subsequently showed that a majority of people in both the Czech and Slovak portions of the country opposed the breakup.

They were not consulted.

That sounds bad – and in some ways it was. But the lack of respect for public opinion had its advantages. It meant that public opinion was not mobilized. Negotiations could be conducted without the glare of publicity. Compromises could not be denounced.

Canada and Czechoslovakia

Canada has had over half a century of serious “break up Canada” political discourse – first centering on the possibility of Quebec separation. Currently, Alberta separation is on the table.

What can we learn from the Czechoslovakian example? (I’d rather not learn from Yugoslavia and other places where the road to breaking up a country was paved with blood.) Czechoslovakia is probably the best-case study for a peaceful and reasonably successful breaking up of a country. Both Czechia and Slovakia are relatively prosperous countries with functioning democracies that respect human/civil rights. All good. Although prosperity is relative. According the International Monetary Fund, the per capita GDP for Czechia in 2025 was $35,678 USD. It was $28,498 USD for Slovakia. These income levels make the two countries reasonable prosperous, but are a lot lower than the $55,765 USD produced by a united Canada. There’s a lot of reasons for the difference, but the fact remains that a united Canada is a lot more prosperous than a divided Czechoslovakia.

If Alberta were to separate from Canada, what would the similarities be between Czechoslovakia circa 1992 and Canada 2027ish.

The most important similarity is the lack of ancient hatreds and bloodlust. Just as Czechs did not want to kill Slovaks (and vice versa), I don’t think there is any bloodlust between Canadians in Alberta and the other parts of Canada. This is a really important starting point, although things can change. The people in Czechoslovakia had a lot of both direct and observational experience with political violence. The looked at Yugoslavia and understood that “it could happen here.” In Canada, we assume “it can’t happen here.” I would much rather have the Canadian historical experience leading to this disbelief in the potential for violence but the dark and paranoid part of my soul worries about false complacency.

Another point of similarity is that Czechoslovakia was, and Canada is, affluent. Separation does not entail an existential struggle for the resources necessary for survival. Within this similarity, there is a difference between Slovakia in 1992 and Alberta in 2026. Slovakia was the poorer part of the country that started talking about leaving when cross-subsidization ended. Alberta is the richer part of Canada in which some want to leave in order to end cross-subsidization going the other way. To be honest, I have absolutely no idea how this would translate in any separation process but it probably would have some impact.

That’s about it for the similarities. We now come to the differences. These are numerous and significant. It means that we cannot blithely assume that “Czechoslovakia did it peacefully so it will be peaceful in Canada.” Different facts can lead to different outcomes.

Going in roughly in order of importance, here are the differences that I see:

1. The duration and intensity of attachment between the parts of the country. Czechoslovakia was a relatively recent and somewhat artificial creation. The bonds were not that strong. Alberta has been a part of Canada since 1870 and a province since 1905. Political systems, governmental benefits, and economies are integrated in a way that they were not in Czechoslovakia. Strong ties are tougher to sever than weak ones.

2. As noted earlier, it was easy to tell Czechs from Slovaks. They spoke different languages and there had been little mobility from one part of the country to another. The lack of immigration from other countries contributed even more to strong historical regional identities. In 2026, about a quarter of people now living in Alberta were born in other countries. Question: did the move to Edmonton or Calgary or Fort MacMurray to be Canadians or Albertans? The answer matters. What’s more, of the remaining population, about one third of people now in Alberta were born in other Canadian provinces. There is no linguistic difference between Albertans and people in other parts of Canada.

3. The public is involved in the debate for Alberta separation. This means opinion must be mobilized. Debate can harden positions. Politicians must play to their base rather than focusing on reaching compromise.

4. The two parts of Czechoslovakia were contiguous. If Alberta left Canada, British Columbia would be physically separated from the rest of Canada. In the last century, the fate of countries containing geographically separated parts has not been happy. Post World War 1, East Prussia was separated from the rest of Germany by part of Poland. Post World War 2, West Berlin was separated from the rest of Germany by East Germany. After Indian independence and division in 1949, Pakistan was divided into West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Two of these cases resulted in large wars – and the third almost touched off World War 3 on more than one occasion. The geo-political logic of an Alberta separation would be for British Columbia to move towards becoming an independent country as well. If this happened, all sorts of things become up for grabs. For example, economic ties and geographical logic suggest that the Upper Peace region of British Columbia would likely want to join Alberta. That kind of quarrel can turn ugly in a hurry.

5. There were no indigenous governments or treaty obligations in Czechoslovakia. This introduces a lot of complications into Alberta separation.

6. The existence of the European Union gave both Czechia and Slovakia something to join AND took a lot of potential dispute items off the table. The dynamic of these two countries joining the EU was very different than Alberta potentially joining the United States. It is akin to the difference between joining a club with lots of members and moving in with a roommate who is bigger, stronger, richer, and not entirely sure about the arrangement – and who owns the house.

7. There would be more parties at the negotiating table. In the case of Czechoslovakia, politicians from the two parts met behind closed doors to hammer out an arrangement. It was understood that there would be no surviving successor government. In the event of Alberta leaving Canada, the federal government would be seeking to stay in business. There would also be nine other provinces and three territories demanding a place at the table and bringing their own interests and demands. First Nation’s governments would not be silent.

I could go on, but this is getting too long already. My basic point is that when it came to a relatively harmonious and successful separation, there were a lot of factors that made it possible in Czechoslovakia in 1992. Almost none of these conditions exist in Canada today.

My personal view is that for all its flaws, Canada is a fairly successful country. Far more people want to move here than want to move away. If Albertans decide they want to leave, I’d rather let them leave than kill them – but I do not think for one second that the process would be quick, easy, or result in the betterment of the conditions of Albertans. Identifying the pre-conditions of a successful separation for Czechoslovakia highlights how different the process would be for Canada.

Let’s remember the wisdom of that great philosopher, Neil Sedaka:

“They say that breaking up is hard to do
Now I know, I know that it’s true
Don’t say that this is the end
Instead of breaking up I wish that we were making up again
I beg of you, don’t say goodbye
Can’t we give our love another try?
Come on baby, let’s start a new
‘Cause breaking up is hard to do”

I’ve always thought this weird fact sums up the strengths of the province.

Alberta’s rat-free status did not happen by accident. It took foresight and determination. The misnamed “Norway Rat” requires human urban or agricultural settlement to live. The rats live in/under human created buildings and eats food grown by people. These rats are incapable of living independently in nature. They are vile, dirty, disease-ridden parasites who sponge off humans. They spread from Central Asia to infest any place with urban or agricultural settlement.

Except Alberta.

When the Canadian prairies were settled by farmers originally from Europe or the United States, the rats followed. They came up from Minnesota into Manitoba and spread through Saskatchewan. In 1949, the first rat reached Alberta at Alsask.

Albertans said – “no further.”

The Alberta/Saskatchewan border was patrolled by dedicated public services trained in the ways of rats. Every barn, granary, corral, and feedlot was inspected up to three times per year for signs of rats. Bait laced with warfarin was placed under these buildings. If a rat breached Alberta’s border defenses by hitching a ride on a train or truck, Albertans mobilized to track them down before a colony can be established.

Alberta is – by far – the largest rat-free area of the world in which there are towns, cities, and farms.

It is an impressive accomplishment. To me, it symbolizes the essence of Alberta as a place where people get things done. It is no accident that Alberta has long been the most prosperous province in Canada. The wealth was created by a combination of ingenuity and hard work even as Canada as a whole sometimes seem determined to punish the province for being successful.

There are those who dismiss Alberta’s prosperity as a geological accident – that the province was a like Jed Clampett – a backwards hillbilly lucky enough to stumble upon some “bubbling crude – black gold – Texas Tea – oil that is.” These people are wrong. The oil was there, but it had to be developed.

Let’s compare the oil and gas industries of Alberta and Quebec. The reality is that Quebec sits on lots of oil and natural gas. But it produces nothing.

According to Natural Resources Canada, the Utica shale formation (16,000 square kilometers) contains oil, and the Macasti shale formation (7,900 square kilometers) contains natural gas. The presence of oil and natural gas in these formations was confirmed by preliminary drilling a few decades ago …. but the exact amounts are unknown and there has been no production because the Quebec government passed a law banning all oil and gas exploration and discovery in the province.

Alberta developed its oil and gas deposits. Quebec has not because it has deemed fossil fuels to be evil. In the meantime, Quebec consumes 8.85 billion liters of gasoline, 4.96 billion liters of diesel, and 215 billion cubic meters of natural gas every year.

Albertans developed the resources god gave them. Other provinces – not so much.

I’ve lived in five provinces and two territories. Even though I keep coming back to Saskatchewan (a combination of inertia and friendship/family relationships), Alberta is my favorite province.

But I worry.

If Alberta separates from Canada, will it get too distracted by the political turmoil to keep the rats at bay?

Alberta’s options for separation

In last week’s post, I explored some of the impacts of using separation referendums to “improve” Alberta’s bargaining position within Canada. Based on Quebec’s experience, a period of uncertainty leading up to a separation referendum causes people and employers to leave the province, unemployment to rise, and incomes to fall. These things happen even when people vote against separation.

Now let’s look at what options the province would have if people voted to leave Canada. There are two basic options:

• Become an independent country, or

• Join the United States.

Becoming an independent country

Premier Danielle Smith has released preliminary costing for Alberta forming a new national government. Her price tag was $400 billion. That’s a lotta enchiladas.

But there is a bigger, long-term problem. Alberta’s economy is based on resource extraction and export. After separation, it would be a land-locked country.

That’s a bad combination.

The best comparators are Kazakhstan, Bolivia, and Paraguay. These seem like strange countries to aspire towards becoming, but maybe that’s just me. After all, I’ve never been to any of these places, so what do I know?

According to the Foreign Affairs travel advisory portal, Kazakhstan is a reasonably safe place to visit, but “extreme caution” is advised when travelling to Bolivia or Paraguay.

One out of three isn’t bad, I guess.

Becoming part of the United States

Pursuit of this option is based on the assumption that the Americans would actually want Alberta.

They might not.

Consider the example of Texas. It separated from Mexico in 1836 and immediately asked to join the United States. The United States did not say “yes” until 1845. Texas was thus forced to be a stand-alone country for nine years before being allowed into the United States.

Article IV, Section 3 of the United States Constitution sets out the provisions for places becoming part of the United States and becoming states. It is worth noting that these are two different things.

If Alberta joined the United States, it would initially have to join as a territory. That’s pretty straightforward and could be done quickly if the Americans wanted Alberta.

But there is a kicker.

Congress has the authority to make all rules, laws, and regulations for territories.

And the territories have no representation in Congress.

Attaining statehood is trickier.

Congress has to approve the creation of new states. Historically, this has not been an easy or quick process. For example, Puerto Rico became part of the United States – as a territory – in 1900. It is still a territory. Congress has granted it some self-governing powers akin to a state government, but not completely like those possessed by a state. Puerto Ricans are American citizens – subject to the federal taxes and the draft – but have no representation in Congress and don’t vote in Presidential elections.

Hmm.

126 years and counting.

And Puerto Rico is not insignificant. It has 3.2 million people which would make the 33^rd biggest state (between Iowa and Arkansas) if it became a state. Since they are citizens of the United States, Puerto Ricans do have the right to move around in the United States. Lots of folk have left the island to move to Florida, New York City, New Jersey, and central Pennsylvania. In total, as many Puerto Ricans have left the island as remain living on it. I’m not exactly sure that this is what the Alberta separatists have in mind when they speak of joining the United States.

One thing that holds up granting of statehood are partisan concerns that admission will favor one political side or the other. As a result, admission to statehood often comes in pairs. Democratic Hawaii was admitted at the same time (1959) as Republican Alaska. Going much further back, free-state Maine was granted statehood at the same time (1821) as slave-state Missouri.

A proposal for Alberta statehood would create interesting political dynamics in Congress. Hard-core Republicans view Canadians as a bunch of lefty socialists while Democrats view people from resource-producing areas away from the coasts as a bunch of right-wing reactionaries. It’s really hard to predict how Albertans would be defined. It’s entirely possible that Albertans would be viewed with suspicion by both sides in American politics. It could take a few American election cycles would have to pass (as Albertans voted in territorial elections) before members of Congress could decide what political valence attached to Alberta.

Getting statehood status could be tougher and slower than getting admitted to the United States. In the meantime, the territory of Alberta would have no political clout.

But let’s assume that it all went well for Alberta upon application to join the United States – that the province became a state fairly expeditiously.

We still come to the question of clout.

Many Albertans feel their concerns and aspirations are ignored by our national government – that Ontario and Quebec get most of the attention.

Albertans are not wrong in feeling this way. It is grounded in reality.

In part, it is a question of numbers.

According to the latest estimates from Statistics Canada, 5,048,151 people live in Alberta. This represents 12.17 percent of Canada’s 41,472,081 people.

As a result, Alberta now has 37 of the 343 seats in the House of Commons. That’s 10.78 percent of the raw votes in Parliament.

Alberta and British Columbia are in an interesting psychological position. People in these provinces feel they are big enough that they should have more power – but small enough that they don’t. People in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the Maritimes have less psychic stress about their position in Confederation because these provinces are small enough for folks to understand that they are small and insignificant.

But if having 12.17 percent of the population and 10.78 percent of the seats in Parliament is not enough to have lots of clout, it is not nothing either.

Consider this:

Three Prime Ministers came from Alberta and represented Alberta ridings while serving as Prime Minister. The current Prime Minister was born and raised in Alberta (albeit he’s been gone a long time).

But what would happen if Alberta joined the United States and became a state?

The addition of Alberta’s population would give the United States 354,011,769 people. Alberta would have 1.45 percent of the United States’ population. It would be entitled to 6 Members of the House of Representatives (1.38 percent) and 8 votes in the Electoral College to choose the President (1.5 percent).

Which is to say – not much more than zippity doo da.

The state of Alberta would rank 25^th in population amongst the states - between Arkansas and Louisiana. Alberta has generated three Canadian Prime Ministers. Arkansas and Louisiana combined have produced only one – in 1848. And he lasted only 492 days in office (Zachary Taylor died after eating too many cherries and drinking too much iced milk on a very hot day).

But – say the Albertans wanting to join the United States – Albertans would have power and prestige because of our oil, natural gas, beef, and money.

But here is the thing.

Alberta is only wealthy by Canadian standards.

Not by American standards.

If Alberta got statehood tomorrow, it’s GDP per capita would mean the new state would rank 50^th of 51. Albertans would be wealthier only than the folks in Mississippi. It would be behind West Virginia. You know. The place in the Appalachians where the hillbillies come from.

Alberta produces a lot of oil – but not as much as Texas. Alberta produces as about as much as New Mexico, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Oklahoma (combined). If Alberta was part of the United States, its oil production would be 17.74 percent of the total American production. That’s not nothing, but it is not everything.

In natural gas, Alberta’s production would rank behind Texas, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana. It would control about 4 percent of American production.

In beef, Alberta would rank behind Texas, Nebraska, and Kansas – and have about 6.5 percent of total American production.

Let’s just say that Alberta would not be Texas.

The bottom line

Right now, Alberta is a medium sized fish in the medium sized pond that is Canada. That’s a frustrating place to be since it’s too big to accept its smallness but not big enough to be big.

If Alberta separated from Canada to become an independent country, it would be the only fish in a small pond. It could look in the mirror and truthfully claim to be the biggest fish, but…

If Alberta successfully jointed the United States and was granted statehood, it would be a small fish in a big pond. In the United States, Alberta would have as much political clout as Newfoundland and New Brunswick do in Canada. It would basically be the equivalent of Louisiana except colder.

That’s the cold, hard, reality about joining the United States.

Sigh.

At the very least, we are in for several months of uncertainty. If this fall’s referendum vote is “yes – let’s have a real, binding referendum” we are in for at least a few years of uncertainty.

In this post, I’m not going to weigh in on the case for or against Alberta leaving. That can be left for another day.

But I do want to address an argument that I’ve heard a few Albertans make.

This argument manifests itself as a weird form of Quebec envy. I’ve heard it articulated as:

“I don’t want to separate, but Quebec got special treatment and a better deal by threatening to separate. Alberta should do what Quebec did so we get a better deal from Ottawa and improve our position with the rest of Canada.”

There is no question that Quebec got some differential treatment from the federal government as a result of their two separation referendums.

But that is a different question than whether Quebecers – ordinary, normal Quebecers – became better or worse off because of the two referendums being held.

Here’s the deal.

When it becomes clear that there will be a separation referendum, uncertainty is created.

Uncertainty has a cost.

There are two functional equivalents to this fall’s Alberta referendum. In 1976, the Parti Quebecois (PQ) got elected with the promise to hold a referendum in its first term in office. This promise was kept in 1980. This means that the pre-election period of uncertainty ran from 1976 to 1980.

In 1994, the PQ was again elected with the promise to hold a referendum. This time they kept the promise more quickly. The referendum was held in 1995. As a result, the period of pre-referendum uncertainty was held to thirteen months.

We can compare how Quebec did in comparison to the rest of Canada during these two periods of uncertainty. This provides some approximation of the effect of a “yes” vote this fall to hold a binding separation referendum – which is subsequently defeated. This would be the Alberta equivalent of Quebec’s “leveraging bargaining position” by holding separation referendums.

Let’s look at the numbers.

Did threatening separation by holding referendums improve Quebec’s position compared with the rest of Canada? Or did Quebec do wore than the rest of Canada because of the periods of uncertainty?

Population

When the Parti Quebecois got elected in 1976 on the promise to hold a separation referendum, net out-migration from the Quebec immediately doubled. Over the next five years, Quebec experienced a net outmigration of 156,358 people. When the dust settled after the referendum, out-migration slowed. The Parti Quebecois was re-elected in 1981, but only after promising not to hold another referendum. Net out-migration continued to slow based on this promise of political stability. By the time the PQ was defeated in 1985, net outmigration was only 11.6 percent of its pre-referendum peak.

Time passed. In 1994, the PQ returned to office. Once again, it was promising a separation referendum. Net out-migration immediately doubled. This time the period of uncertainty was not as long, but the in the three years surrounding the 1995 election, Quebec had net out-migration of another 39,009.

The bottom line?

In 1975, Quebec contained 27.4 percent of Canada’s population. By the beginning of 1996 – two decades of uncertainty about whether the province would separate – this was down to 24.6 percent.

The decline of Quebec’s relative population because of separation uncertainty is best illustrated by the relative position of Montreal and Quebec. In 1975, Montreal was Canada’s largest city. By the aftermath of the second referendum, its metro area was only 78 percent that of Toronto. Decline has a path dependency. When people leave, they usually don’t come back. Their children and grandchildren are born elsewhere. The metro area of Montreal is now only 65 percent that of Toronto.

Financial clout

The outmigration of people was matched by a decline in the financial oomph of Quebec. In 1985, the Montreal Stock Exchange was almost as important as the one in Toronto. It now does not exist as a stock exchange. Something resembling it limps on as a derivative exchange. But even this is owned by the Toronto exchange (TMX).

The highest profile corporate move directly caused by referendum uncertainty was the decision by Sun Life to move its corporate head office from Montreal to Toronto in 1978. The immediate effect was the move of 1,800 high-paying jobs from Montreal to Toronto. Sun Life now has about 3,500 head office employees in Toronto.

Sun Life was just one example. The Royal Bank moved significant head office activity from Montreal to Toronto. Monsanto Canada, Sheraton Hotels, Standard Brands, SmithKline, and RCA also moved all or part of their corporate management functions outside of Quebec.

Heck.

Even the Bank of Montreal effectively moved. Its head office was legally required to be in Montreal, but this effectively became a quasi-post office box as most executive operations and management operations are now in Toronto. It’s effectively now the Bank formerly known as the Bank of Montreal.

In 1975, eighteen of the hundred largest Canadian corporations were headquartered in Quebec. By 1996, this was down to eleven.

Let’s look at how this played out for ordinary people.

Unemployment

In 1975 – before the referendum uncertainty caused by the first PQ election, the average unemployment rate in Quebec was 7.5 percent. This was 1.39 times that of the Canadian average of 5.4 percent. By the time the referendum was over, the unemployment rate in Quebec was 10.2 percent – 1.43 times the unemployment rate for Canada as a whole.

Times were tough in 1994 when the re-election of the PQ (while promising a referendum) was 12.3 percent – which was 1.21 times greater than the Canadian average. Unemployment dropped across Canada over the next 13 months – but dropped less in Quebec than in the rest of Canada. By the time of the 1995 referendum, Quebec’s unemployment rate was 1.35 times the overall Canadian unemployment rate. Today – after almost two decades without a Quebec referendum threat, the unemployment rate in Quebec is only 1.11 times that of the rest of Canada.

The bottom line: unemployment rates fluctuate in Canada, but every time there has been a separation referendum on the horizon, Quebec’s rate has gotten worse in relation to the rest of Canada. When the separation threat recedes, the gap narrows.

Personal Incomes

Let’s look at average personal incomes.

In 1975, before the PQ was elected while promising to hold a referendum, the average personal income in Quebec was 92.2 percent of the Canadian average. By 1980, when the referendum was held, Quebec personal incomes were down to 89.7 percent of the Canadian average. By 1994 – when the PQ was again elected while promising a referendum – Quebec personal incomes were back up to 92.1 percent of the Canadian average. A year later – when the referendum was held – this was down a percentage point. After two decades of calm on the separation referendum front, Quebec average personal incomes have climbed to 95.3 percent of the Canadian average.

Once again, the pattern is clear. When there is separation uncertainty caused by a referendum on the horizon, the income of Quebecers suffers in comparison to folks in the rest of Canada. When some certainty is re-established, the gap narrows.

The impact of Quebec referendums

There’s a technical scientific term for the belief that Quebec improved its position relative to other Canadians by threatening to separate.

It’s called being wrong.

Quebec has held two separation referendums. In each case, the pre-referendum uncertainty around the status of the province resulted in:

• Increased net interprovincial out-migration,

• Quebec’s financial clout declined,

• Increased unemployment compared to the rest of Canada, and

• Lowered net personal incomes compared to the rest of Canada.

All of these things were bad for Quebec and Quebecers.

I don’t want to overstate the case.

The referendum impacts were not catastrophic for Quebec. (Although the loss of the Montreal Expos was largely a function of the out-migration of English-speaking Quebecers and the resulting shrinkage of the fan base. Vladimir Guerrero Sr. played in Montreal, but his son had to sign with the Blue Jays to play in Canada).

But referendum uncertainty did make things worse.

What’s more, after the votes were counted, things got better in Quebec again – but only to a degree. People and corporations who left tended not to return.

We sociologists call this a pattern.

Some Albertans genuinely want to separate from Canada. I think (and hope) they are in the minority. But I get worried when I hear some people argued that they don’t really want to separate – that they just want to imitate Quebec’s “success” in improving their position within Canada by threatening to leave. Not only is this strategy dangerous (a vote cannot be taken back), but it is also stupid. The Quebec example shows that separation referendums – threatening to leave – actually made things worse for the people of the province.

In 1994 – the last time the PQ got elected in Quebec on the promise to hold a referendum – a movie called Forrest Gump won the Oscar for Best Picture. Tom Hanks won the Best Actor Oscar for playing Forrest. His go-to line in the movie was “Stupid is as stupid does”.

Here’s to hoping that there is no Alberta sequel in 2026.

Consider how it was done in Argentina during the so-called “Dirty War” from 1975 to 1983. A gang of men from a branch of the Argentinian army would grab people from their homes in the middle of the night. The unfortunate victims would be tortured by pulling off their finger/toenails, smashing their feet with a hammer, and giving electrical shocks to the genitals. After the interrogation was done, the victim would be drugged, put in an airplane, flown about a hundred km over the Atlantic, and be thrown out. While the victim was being murdered, the information yielded by the torturous interrogation would be analyzed so new victims could be identified.

This process of “disappearing” people was labor intensive. At least half a dozen thugs would be sent to make an arrest. There would usually be at least three people in the torture chamber. The murder/body disposal flights needed a pilot, co-pilot, and someone to open the door the plane. Then there were the behind-the-scenes people. Managers, file clerks, airplane mechanics, human resource officers, and janitors. There were also weirdly specialized personnel. The Catholic Church asked the government to spare the innocent newborn. Being good Catholics, the regime leadership agreed. When a pregnant woman was arrested, she was cared for until the baby was born. Then the mother was tortured and killed. The baby would be adopted and raised by those working in the torture apparatus. That meant matrons, midwives, and social workers were needed to ensure the survival of the baby concurrent with the murder of the mother.

All this was done on an industrial scale. On average, about 150 people per week were “disappeared”.

For years.

About 500 babies survived the murderous orphan creation and adoption process.

It means that a lot of people were actively engaged in torture and murder in Argentina.

Lots of people.

Then consider the really big examples of industrial scale torture and murder.

The Nazis murdered six million Jews – not to mention a lot of Gypsies, communists, socialists, trade unionists, conscientious clergy, homosexuals, disabled, and other assorted “undesirables.” Most of these did not receive the individualized torture suffered by those who “disappeared” in Argentina four decades later, but the volume of murder and body disposal is difficult to comprehend. As Stalin observed, a single death is a tragedy but a million is just a statistic.

And speaking of Stalin…

Before Hitler began causing murder at massive scale, Stalin was drenching the Soviet Union in blood. He dispatched minions to the rural areas to force a collectivization of agriculture which involved killing millions of prosperous peasants or sending them to the gulags. Starvation was created in Ukraine simply by taking away food and seed from farmers.

But the most interesting exercise in mass violence was directed at colleagues. At the end January 1934, 1,966 delegates gathered in Moscow for the 17^th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. These delegates overwhelmingly endorsed Stalin’s leadership. Within four years, 1,108 of these delegates had been arrested – to be either shot or sent to the gulags. Of the 139 people elected to the Central Committee, 98 were shot on Stalin’s orders. The Red Army had a similar fate. Meeting their doom were:

• Three of five Marshalls,

• 13 of 15 army commanders,

• Eight of nine Admirals,

• 50 of 57 army corps commanders,

• 154 of 186 divisional commanders,

• All 16 army commissars, and

• 25 of 28 army corps commissars.

Yikes! And we think politics is a tough business today.

Aside from volume, the interesting thing about Stalin’s murderous purges was the proximity between victims and killers. Argentinian army officers and Nazis were killing strangers deemed to be enemies. Soviet thugs were killing friends and colleagues.

In 1877, William Morris observed that:

“Nor must you forget that when men say popes, kings, and emperors built such and such buildings, it is a mere way of speaking. You look in your history-books to see who built Westminster Abbey... Did they? or, rather, men like you and me, handicraftsmen, who have left no names behind them, nothing but their work?”

It is the same for industrial scale torture and murder. We say that Jorge Rafael Videla tortured over 30,000 suspected communists and socialists in Argentina. We say that Hitler killed six million Jews – along with hundreds of thousands of others deemed undesirable to the Reich. We say that Stalin killed millions of Ukrainians and kulaks – and tens of thousands of his communist colleagues.

But Videla, Hitler, and Stalin did no such thing. Murder on this scale is impossible for even the most enthusiastic serial killer.

Videla, Hitler, and Stalin got people to do their torture and killing for them.

This raises the questions of who did the dirty work and why did they do it?

Two answers have traditionally been given for these questions:

• Sadistic psychopaths – those who enlisted to torture and kill because they liked to kill. They helped the dictator because, for them, it was fun.

• The ideologically committed – those who participated in torture and murder because they believed in the cause – that it was the right thing to do.

There’s no doubt that some individuals fell into these categories and were motivated by pleasure or ideological commitment. But these two answers are unsatisfying. The simple fact is that there are not enough crazed sadistic psychopaths or bizarrely committed true believers to commit murder on the scale we need to explain. And for the true believers, there are more pleasant ways to actively advance the cause. Even amongst those specializing in violence – the professional killers of the military – nobody becomes a hero by shooting helpless victims in the back of the head.

In the 1960s, other explanations were put forward. After watching the trial of Hitler henchman Adolf Eichmann, the philosopher Hannah Arndt concluded that much of the Nazi murder was committed by bland and boring bureaucrats just doing their jobs. The psychologist Stanley Milgram chimed in by describing a series of experiments in which normal people committed abnormal cruel acts simply because of an impulse towards obedience to authority.

Arndt and Milgram were clearly onto something, but their explanations are incomplete. Even in Nazi Germany, most bureaucrats and army officers did not sign up for murder. What’s more, many people ignored, sabotaged, or undermined murderous orders.

Arndt and Milgram raised next order questions: why do some boring, otherwise normal, people participate in unspeakable cruelty while others do not? Why do some sign up for the duty while others do not? Can we tell these people apart? Can anything be done to choke off the supply of people willing to do the dirty work of vicious dictators?

Making a Career in Dictatorships

Two European political scientists have weighed in these questions. Christian Gläßel and Adam Scharpf have just written a fascinating book called Making a Career in Dictatorship: The Secret Logic behind Repression and Coups.

The bottom line: the ranks of the murderous henchmen are filled with incompetents who “go the extra mile” to please their bosses in order to keep their jobs and get promotion. They volunteer to do the dirty work as a way to resolve worries about their career prospects.

Gläßel and Scharpf begin their analysis with a detailed look at Argentina. This country’s army has confused observers. In the 1890s, the Argentinians called in the Germans to help them build the best of all possible armies. A staff school for new officers was created. A rigorous meritocracy wherein promotion was based on concrete performance measures was established and maintained. The officer class was kept separate from society so its members would not become ensnared in the political controversies and alliances of the day. According to most theories about militaries and society, the Argentinian army should be the ideal model of an apolitical army that serves the country as directed by civilian leaders.

But it has not worked out that way. Throughout the 20^th century, military coups in Argentina were endemic. What’s more, branches of the army provided the torturers and murderers for the “Dirty War” of 1975 to 1982.

Gläßel and Scharpf got access to the personnel files of all 15,000 people who served as officers in the Argentinian army in the 20^th century. They discovered there was a common feature to both the torturers/murderers and coup participants. These officers were the second-raters and less competent.

Here’s the explanation in a nutshell.

The Argentinian army is, and has been, rigorously meritocratic in its officer promotion. It is also hierarchical with a pyramid shaped structure (more junior officers than senior ones). To maintain this, the army practices an “up or out” promotion policy. Officers need to serve a specified time at a rank before becoming eligible for promotion. They also face a timeclock. If promotion is not achieved within a specified temporal window, they are dismissed. It’s a way of culling that keeps the ranks from becoming clogged with time-serving mediocrities. In theory, it should produce excellence – and it does.

It also produced torturers and coup organizers.

The structure of the army is that there a lot of Lieutenants, Captains, and Majors. At these ranks, career pressure relatively gentle since there are almost as many openings as there are people eligible for promotion. That changes at the senior levels. There is a lot fewer Lieutenant Colonels than Majors. There are fewer Colonels. And there are even fewer Generals.

This bottleneck in career opportunity creates a lot of pressure on officers at the middle levels. This career pressure is compounded by the social distance between army officers and Argentinian civilian society. This was designed to keep officers out of dabbling in politics – but it also means that officers getting bounced from the army because of a failure to get promoted were essentially unemployable. The timelines for promotion mean that people hit this intensely stressful window from promotion from being a Major to Lieutenant Colonel when they are about forty. You know. An age when one’s children are in high school. An age when full pension credits have not yet been earned. An age when a person still needs to work.

Gläßel and Scharpf argue this placed enormous career pressure on the less competent officers. They could read the writing on the wall. They were about to be stranded, career wise, with no viable options.

One response to this pressure is to participate in a coup attempt. This is a high-risk, high-reward venture in which the participating officers force a cleansing of those in the command chain above them. This creates promotion opportunities. It’s a truism that coups are organized by Colonels rather than Generals. Gläßel and Scharpf provide an explanation for this phenomenon. Generals have succeeded. They don’t need to run the risk of participating in a coup. What’s more, Colonels with good promotion prospects also have not motivation to participate in a coup. In the meritocratic system of the Argentinian army, it’s the stupid and incompetent who are motivated to participate in a coup. In addition to the political instability this creates, it also creates competence problems for the government. The dumb ones end up in charge. Gläßel and Scharpf don’t deal with the question, but it’s one explanation for the woeful performance of the Argentinian military in the Falklands Island war with Britain.

But there is sometimes another, less risky, option for the less competent officers. If the government decides there is a need to engage in the dirty work of torture and murder, officers facing their mid-career crisis can improve their chances by volunteering to serve in the branches doing this dirty work. Except for seriously deranged psychopaths, conducting torture and murder is unpleasant work. What’s more, the meritocratic selection and training process of the Argentinian army created a shortage of seriously deranged psychopaths in the officer ranks. This meant a dictator who wanted to torture and murder at volume faced an acute labor shortage. Competent officers confident of promotion avoided this service. However, for the officers facing termination, volunteering for the dirty work was a way to salvage a career. They not only got to keep working, but their promotion prospects improved because they were competing with other incompetents within the repressive branch of the army.

Gläßel and Scharpf plugged in the data from the personnel files of all 15,000 officers serving in the Argentinian army in the 20^th century (IQ scores, grades in officer school, performance ratings, and so on) into a coded data base. They then used logistical regression techniques to determine who participated in coup attempts and volunteered for dirty work assignments. Their findings:

• The murderers and torturers were the less competent, mid-career officers. Or, in the words of one senior Argentinian officer they interviewed, “the morons.”

• It turns out that people are willing to pull out toenails and throw people from planes simply in order to keep working and get a promotion.

At least that was the story in the Argentinian army. The effort to create and maintain a top-quality, meritocratic military divorced from politics accidently created a machine for generating murderers and coup organizers.

You know what they say about the road to hell.

Gläßel and Scharpf took less detailed looks at the officers in the Nazi Einsatzgruppen SS units (which contributed to the holocaust by shooting half a million people) and the secret police in Stalinist Russia. They found that in both cases, the officers doing this dirty work were those that were facing career challenges similar to the murderous Argentinian officers. In both these cases, the systems were much less meritocratic than the Argentinian army but officers faced similar career pressures because of a lack of nepotistic connections, membership in the wrong social groups, or past bad behavior. In fact, when organizing the Einsatzgruppen SS units, Himmler and Heydrich went out of their way to select commanders who were incompetents or who had committed some serious (normally career ending) indiscretion. Volunteering for dirty work was a way to get a career back on track.

Gläßel and Scharpf didn’t delve into this, but Stalin’s purges of the late 1930s were enabled by a problem in the promotion structure of the Soviet Union. In the late teens and early twenties (of the 1900s), the revolution cleaned up officialdom in Russia. There were lots of career opportunities for Bolsheviks. Revolution is a young person’s game, so the result was that by the mid-1920s, the entire structure of the Soviet government – from top to bottom – was filled by relatively young men. By the late 1930s, all of these guys were about 40. They had no desire to go anywhere and would not reach retirement age for a few decades so promotion opportunities for younger men were blocked. Stalin staffed his murder apparatus with younger mean creating promotion opportunities by killing those above them in the org chart. Gläßel and Scharpf’s analysis suggests this option was especially attractive to the incompetent. It helps explain the abysmal performance of the Russian army from 1940 to 1942 – and the sclerosis of Soviet society after the war.

Gläßel and Scharpf also test their theory by looking at coups in The Gambia. I’ve gone on longer than I thought I would, so I’ll just report that the coups were organized by incompetent Colonels.

Incompetent Careerists in the United States military

In the last few years, there’s been fretting about the possible role of the American military in destroying democracy and establishing a dictatorship.

Speaking hypothetically and without naming any names, let’s suppose that a President wanted to become a dictator. If such a wannabe dictator became President, would the American military help or hinder such efforts? Would the people in uniform holding guns help create a dictatorship or would they prevent it?

On the one hand, the work of Gläßel and Scharpf raises some alarm bells in that Argentina shows that a meritocratic, apolitical, military is not necessarily defense against a dictator. Like the Argentinian army, the United States military is organized as a fairly rigorous meritocratic organization. Like the Argentinian army, the United States military practices an “up or out” promotion system – for the same good reasons.

Hmmm.

The American military thus probably has a reservoir of less competent, mid-level, career challenged officers.

Career pressured guys controlling people with guns are a bit worrying. The findings of Gläßel and Scharpf suggest that this is the group most susceptible to both participating in coup and providing the labor pool for dirty work.

But there are differences between the Argentinian and American militaries.

Most importantly, the Americans treat their ex-military much better than did the Argentinians. The “thank you for your service” statements to military personal by everything from store clerks to politicians are one visible manifestation of this. More important are the career options for ex-service personnel – especially mid-level officers. In Argentina in the 20^th century, a major getting exited from the army at the age of 40 was really up against it. They were essentially unemployable. That creates a level of desperation that makes people amenable to coup participation and murder as a career preservation strategy.

In the United States in the 21^st century, the options are a lot better for these mid-level ex-officers. Many of the skills are more transferrable. A lot of companies, local governments, and non-profit organizations have preferential hiring policies for ex-service personnel. This is presented as a tangible token of appreciation for service.

If Gläßel and Scharpf are right, it is also really smart policy. It can be viewed as insurance against coup participation and the staffing of murder squads.

There is also the composition of the enlisted ranks. How willing would the privates, corporals, and sergeants be to kill their fellow citizens at scale?

I’m just making some spit-ball guesses here, but I suspect that today’s American soldiers would be less willing than the Argentinians of the 20^th Century. The general rule for internal repression is that the soldiers should be “different” than the people in the communities they are repressing. There were valid reasons that the Czars used Cossacks to repress Russians. In Argentina, the common soldiers came primarily from poor rural areas whereas the most severe repression was in the cities. I think that the American soldiers are more integrated into their communities – but probably less so after the draft was abolished. The all-volunteer army is a much superior fighting force, but is likely a little more repression participation tolerant.

In any event, if you like to brood thoughtfully on the issue of the staffing of dictatorships, the book by Gläßel and Scharpf provokes a lot of thoughts. But I do have one warning about it. The core of the book is based on a lot of statistical analysis of a large number of personnel files. If you are an aficionado of logistical regression tables, this is the book for you. But people who really enjoy this kind of statistical discussion are almost as rare as those who really enjoy doing the dirty work of dictatorships. What I’m saying is that it won’t be a best seller even though - message wise - it should be.

I’ll leave Rothman’s argument to after I read the book but hearing him made me decide to write about presidential assassinations and assignation attempts. I’ll also include assassinations and attempts on presidential candidates.

My criteria for inclusion are that the assassin or wannabe assassination has to get close. Shots have to be fired at the president or candidate - or the wannabe assassin has to be clearly in a position to do so. I’m not counting things like somebody firing shots in the general direction of the White House or getting arrested a few hundred miles away. I am also ignoring out-of-country attempts by non-Americans. For example, an Argentinian anarchist tried to blow up Herbert Hoover’s train during a South American tour in 1928. In 1996, an El Quida terrorist tried to plant a bomb under a bridge in the Philippines that Bill Clinton was going to drive over. In 2005, a Georgian (the former Soviet Union Georgia) threw a hand grenade in the direction of George W. Bush – but he appears to have been trying to kill the Georgian President rather than the American one.

Those don’t count for my purposes. I’m just looking at Americans killing Americans in America.

To keep score about political valence, I’m going to classify the attempts by motivation. While there is a strong element of mental illness running through almost all of these attempts, some assassins and wannabe assassins have an ideological justification. As far as I can tell, there are four basic types:

Just plain nuts: No ideological orientation or ideologies that are so confused/convoluted that no meaningful categorization is possible.

Left-wing nut: Here you’ve got your anarchists, communists, and other “social justice” warriors.

Right-wing nut: Nazis, white supremacists, or “anti-communists.”

Nationalist nut: These are ideologues that are pushing for some ethnic/nationalist cause which takes valence over any left/right valence. The historical exemplar of this is Gavrilo Princip, who touched off World War One by assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on the belief this would help Serbian nationalism (one in four Serbians died as a result – well done Gavrilo!).

Enough definitional blah blah. Let’s get to the list.

Presidential Assassinations:

Abraham Lincoln: April 14, 1865

Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending a play. The assassination was part of wider plot. Another assassin tried to kill Secretary of State William Seward. Seward was stabbed in the neck and face. Four others were wounded in the struggle. A third assassin was supposed to kill Vice-President Andrew Johnston, but he chickened out after drinking heavily in the bar at the hotel where Johnston was staying.

Wilkes was killed two weeks later in a shoot-out with soldiers. A bunch of other conspirators were hanged.

Motive: Nationalist nut (the Confederacy).

James Garfield: Shot on July 2, 1881. Died September 19 from the resulting infection.

Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau who thought he’d been responsible for Garfield’s election and was pissed because he did not get an ambassadorship or a similar high position. Guiteau did a lot of planning – including attempting to tour the crematorium in Washington D.C. to inspect the facility he thought would dispose of his body and (just before the assassination) writing to General William Sherman asking for army protect from a possible lynch mob.

Guiteau was hanged on June 30, 1882.

Motive: Just plain nuts.

William McKinley – Shot September 6, 1901 - died September 14.

McKinley was shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz to protest the exploitation of the working class.

Czolgosz sat in the electric chair on October 29, 1901. They didn’t waste a lot of time dealing with assassins back then.

Motive: Left wing nut.

John F. Kennedy - November 22, 1963.

Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald – a wannabe Communist who moved to Russia before wearing out his welcome there. Oswald seems to have believed he was supporting the Cuban revolution by killing Kennedy.

Oswald was shot two days later by a nightclub owner named Jack Ruby while being transferred from the city jail to the county jail. That was weird. It helped put conspiracy theories on steroids.

Motive: Left wing nut.

Attempted Assassinations of Presidents

Andrew Jackson: January 30, 1835

Richard Lawrence tried two shots at President. Both pistols misfired. Jackson beat the crap out of Lawrence with his cane.

Lawrence was found not guilty by reason of insanity and held in a mental hospital until death in 1861.

Motive: Just plain nuts.

Abraham Lincoln: August, 1864.

Lincoln was taking a recreational horse ride when someone shot at him. Lincoln’s hat was wounded. Lincoln was probably saved by his horse, which didn’t like being shot at and galloped away. Security around Lincoln was beefed up, but obviously not enough.

Motive: Unknown since the shooter was never caught.

William Taft: October 16, 1909

Taft was meeting with Mexican President Porfirio Diaz in El Paso, Texas. A man with a small gun in his hand got within three feet of the two Presidents before being grabbed by a Texas Ranger.

Here’s what’s weird by today’s standards. After the two Presidents left, the guy was just released. No harm, no foul. We don’t even know his name.

Motive: Unknown. Diaz could well have been the target.

Franklin Roosevelt: February 15, 1933

I’m going to count this as a Presidential attempt even though it was 15 days before Roosevelt was sworn into office. Roosevelt was in Miami giving a speech when Giuseppi Zangara took 5 shots at him. A woman named Lillian Cross probably saved Roosevelt by grabbing Zangara’s arm as he blazed away. Instead of hitting Roosevelt, Zangara killed Chicago mayor Anton Cermak and wounded four others.

Zangara initially pleaded guilty to four counts of attempted murder and got sentenced to 80 years. Then Cermak died 19 days after the shooting. Zangara was charged with First Degree Murder. His lawyer wanted to argue against the First Degree charge on the grounds that killing Cermak was unintentional – that his death was Cross’s fault – but Zangara insisted on pleading guilty and was electrocuted on March 20, 1933. They were still moving quickly on these things in the 30s.

Motive: A bit murky, but I’m going to code this as a left wing nut since Zangara was calling for the death of “all presidents, kings, and prime ministers”. He was generally described as an anarchist, but other anarchists tended to deny kinship.

Harry Truman: November 1, 1950.

The White House was being renovated so Truman was staying at the Blair House. He answered the door (things were different back then) to be confronted by two Puerto Rican nationalists with murder on their minds and pistols in their hands. Truman attacked them. You have to love the guy.

A shoot-out ensued. One wannabe assassin - Greselio Terresola was killed. So was a policeman. The second wannabe assassin - Oscar Collazo – was wounded. Amazingly, Truman was unhurt.

Collazo was sentenced to death, but Truman commuted the sentence to life in prison. Maybe he felt bad about punching the guy. In 1979, Jimmy Carter commuted the rest of the sentence.

Motive: Nationalist nut.

Richard Nixon: February 22, 1974

This one didn’t get close to Nixon but has to make the list. Samuel Byck attempted to hijack plane to crash into White House to kill Nixon. Byck killed a policeman while seizing a DC-9 containing 14 passengers. After being told that the plane could not take off because the wheels were blocked in place, Byck shot the pilot and co-pilot. The pilot lived, the co-pilot did not.

Byck shot himself as police were storming the plane.

Motive: Left wing nut. Byck said Nixon needed to die because he was oppressing the poor.

Gerald Ford: September 1975.

Ford had a bad run that month in San Francisco.

On September 5, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromm tied to shoot Ford. She didn’t know that she needed to have a cartridge in the chamber before the gun would shoot, so the attempt was unsuccessful.

Fromm got life, but was released in 2009.

Motive: Just plain nuts. Fromm was an acolyte of Charles Manson. Nuff said.

On September 22, Sara Jane Moore took another run at Ford. She got off a shot but was tackled by an ex-marine in the crowd. A taxi driver took the bullet (he lived).

Moore got sentenced to life but was paroled in 2007. She later got a few short terms for parole violations.

Motive: Left wing nut. Moore hung around the Symbionese Liberation Army types and said she wanted to kill Ford because of the Vietnam War.

Ronald Reagan: March 30, 1981

John Hinckley Jr. shot Ronald Reagan along with Reagan’s press officer, a secret service agent, and a police officer. Hinckley was attempting to impress actress Jodie Foster – who he’d never met but had an erotomaniac obsession with. Reagan almost died and his press secretary – James Brady – was partially paralyzed.

Hinckley was found not guilty of attempted murder by reason of insanity. Weirdly, Foster was forced to testify at Hinckley’s trial. Hinckley was released from a mental hospital in 2016.

Motive: Just plain nuts.

Barrack Obama: Various dates

There were a lot of plots against Obama, but these wannabe assassins were remarkably incompetent. Nobody seems to have gotten close. Two examples:

An actress named Shannon Richardson (biggest role was on The Walking Dead) sent Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg letters laced with ricin in an attempt to frame her estranged husband for the attempts.

Glendon Scott and Erick Feight were two white supremacists. They attempted to kill Obama with a home-made “radiation gun” which they described as “Hiroshima on a light switch.” Really. This pair of clowns provided a very good argument against any claim for white intellectual supremacy.

Motives: Various but heavily weighted to just plain nuts with a smattering of right-wing nuts.

Donald Trump: April 25, 2026

Cole Allen armed himself with a shotgun and pistol before attempting to run through security at the White House Correspondence Dinner. He didn’t get very far, but did shoot a secret service agent.

Allen’s numerous charges have not been resolved by the courts.

Motive: Left wing nut.

Presidential Candidates Killed

Robert Kennedy – June 5, 1968

Kennedy was shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel following his victory celebration the night of the California Democratic Party Primary. His killer was Sirhan Sirhan, who was born in Jerusalem but came to the United States with his parents as a twelve-year old.

Sirhan was sentenced to death in 1969, but the sentence was commuted to life in prison three years later after the US Supreme Court struck down existing capital punishment laws (gone were the days of quick executions).

Motive: Nationalistic nut. Sirhan was a Palestinian nationalist who hated Kennedy because of support for Isreal.

Presidential Candidate Assassination Attempts

Theodore Roosevelt: October 14, 1912

After leaving the Presidency in 1909, Roosevelt was running for the Progressive party. On his way into the hall to give a speech in Milwaukee, Roosevelt was shot in the chest by John Schrank. Roosevelt’s life was saved by his speech. It was 50 pages long and tucked in his jacket. The speech slowed the bullet enough that it did not reach Roosevelt’s heart – but Roosevelt carried the bullet inside him until he died from an unrelated blood clot seven years later.

Schrank had been stalking Roosevelt for several days. He claimed that the ghost of William McKinley had ordered Schrank to avenge McKinley’s assassination by killing Roosevelt. Schrank was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He died in 1943 in a hospital for the criminally insane.

Motive: Just plain nuts.

George Wallace: May 15, 1972

George Wallace was the bad boy of American politics. He had served two terms as the segregationist governor of Alabama. At the time, the Democratic Party was moving from being the party of southern segregationists to the party of civil rights. Wallace was fighting the change. He’d run for the Democratic nomination against Johnson in 1964 (opposing the Civil Rights Act), run as an independent in 1968, and was taking another run for the Democratic nomination in 1972 when he was shot by Arthur Bremer while giving a speech. Wallace was paralyzed from the waist down.

The assassination attempt changed Wallace. He renounced his racist, segregationist ways. In 1982, he was even re-elected as Alabama governor on a racial reconciliation platform.

Bremer was an equal opportunity assassin. He originally set out to kill Richard Nixon but decided the security around a sitting President was too tight. That took him to Wallace. Bremer was sentenced to 63 years. On appeal, the sentence was reduced to 53 years. He was released on parole after serving 35 years.

Motive: Just plain nuts. However, some of Nixon’s people tried to break into Bremer’s apartment to plant forged evidence tying him to the Democrats. Ahhh. The Nixon White House. So classy.

Donald Trump: July 13, 2024

While giving a speech in Pennsylvania, a sniper fired eight shots at Trump. One shot nicked Trump’s ear. An audience member was killed and two were wounded. The sniper – a guy named Thomas Crooks – was killed by the Secret Service.

There’s some evidence that Crooks had scouted the Biden campaign before going after Trump. He was registered as a Republican but donated to Democrats. His social media posts were apparently all over the political map. He had no previous criminal record or documented mental health issues.

Motive: Who the hell knows?

Donald Trump: September 15, 2024

When Trump was golfing at his Maro Largo course, Secret Service agents spotted Ryan Routh hiding in the bushes with a rifle.

Routh had over a hundred previous criminal convictions and been involved in over 200 civil lawsuits. When he made his assassination attempt, Routh claimed to be recruiting volunteers to fight for Ukraine in its war with Russia. The Ukrainians had wanted no part of him.

Routh was convicted on a lot of charges. When the verdict was read, he stabbed himself in the neck with a pen. He got sentenced to life without parole.

Motive: Just plain nuts

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Dead and Almost Dead Presidents

Being President or running for President in the United States is a risky business. 8.5 percent of individuals who have been President where murdered while in office. And that death toll comes despite the implementation (about 8 decades ago) of really tight security. Nineteen Presidents survived serious assassination attempts – some more than once. Gerald Ford dodged two bullets in one month.

This is an astonishing homicide rate for political leaders.

There have been 41 English monarchs since William the Conqueror in 1066. Of these, six were murdered (14.6 percent) were murdered. However, there have been no murdered English Kings since Charles I lost his head (Thereby inspiring the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty: “All the King’s horses and all the King’s men could not put Humpty together again”). Since Charles I, sixteen successive English/British monarchs have died natural deaths. When the Kings lost power to Parliament – when they reigned but did not rule – people stopped killing them. If you go back more than four centuries, English Kings had a lot of power. This, combined that with an absence of a constitutional removal mechanism, resulted in a lot of murdered kings. Reducing the power reduced the homicidal motivation. The policies of the government could be changed without bumping off the King. You just had to vote different people into Parliament.

The homicide rate for American Presidents is actually more disturbing than the rate at which English Kings were killed back in the good old days. The Presidents have a lot of power, but there are non-violent ways to get rid of them. A disgruntled citizen just has to wait a few years. The process can be speeded up by elections or impeachment – but a bad President cannot be in office for anything like the 70 years, 214 days that Elizabeth II was Queen.

But I guess Americans are an impatient people. Presidents get murdered even when there are other relatively quick, less violent, means of removal at hand.

My list of assassination attempts could be a lot longer. I have kept my criteria for inclusion narrow since there’s been a lot of really stupid, half-baked assassination attempts. Many of these are objectively harmless, but in the words of the immortal Bill “Spaceman” Lee, “Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while.”

One thing that jumps out of this historical survey is the absence of conspiracies. The only group effort of note was the conspiracy led by John Wilkes Booth to kill not just Lincoln but much of the senior leadership of the United States government.

The assassins have been lone-wolf, solo practitioners. The most common motive stems from mental health issues, pure and simple. For those whose mental health problems are overlaid with some ideological valence, left-wing and nationalist motivations are the most common. I could not find any serious presidential assassination or attempt that had a right-wing valence to it.

Bad-ass handling an assassination attempt

When Donald Trump lost a piece of his ear to a bullet, he responded by waving his fist in their air and starting a “fight, fight” chant.

I’m not a Trump fan, but I have to give credit where credit is due. That was a seriously bad-ass response to an assassination attempt. It’s got my respect.

But Trump’s response is not the most bad-ass response by the survivor of a serious assassination attempt.

I rate it at number five all time.

Here’s my ranking of the top five bad-ass responses to an assassination attempt.

Number 5: Donald Trump. Like I said, seriously bad-ass.

Number 4: Andrew Jackson. The guy pulled two pistols on Jackson at close range and pulled the triggers. After both misfired, Jackson almost killed the guy by beating him with his cane. That’s bad-ass. And don’t forget – Jackson was carrying a bullet in his chest from an earlier duel. The other guy died. Don’t mess with Andrew.

Number 3: Harry Truman. He was confronted with not one, but two, wannabe assassins. Their guns were still loaded and in working condition. Did Truman flinch or run? He did not. He went right at them – with his bare hands. That makes Harry more bad-ass than Andrew.

Number 2: Ronald Reagan. Trump lost a chunk of his ear. Jackson and Truman didn’t get shot. Reagan was almost killed. That makes a great response even more bad-ass than the others. Reagan had a different kind of bad-ass. He responded with humor rather than aggression. When his wife came rushing into the hospital, he said, “Honey, I forgot to duck.” Before he went into emergency surgery, he told the doctors, “I hope you are all Republicans.” When he came out of anesthesia, Reagan said to the doctors “all in all, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” This is from a guy that genuinely believed (with good reason) that he was dying. That’s bad-ass.

Number 1: Theodore Roosevelt. No question. Teddy is the undisputed champion of bad-ass assassination survivors. He was shot at point-blank range. The bullet was slowed by hitting Roosevelt’s speech but still penetrated his chest almost to his heart (Doctors were afraid to remove the bullet – it was that close.)

People around Roosevelt started to beat the wannabe assassin and started making lynching talk. Quick preparations for summary justice were beginning. Roosevelt stopped them – telling the angry crowd to let justice take its proper course.

Having settled down the lynch mob, Roosevelt went out and gave his speech. He told the audience that he’d been shot and showed them the bloody speech with a hole in it. Then he delivered the speech. Only after finishing what he’d come to do did Roosevelt allow himself to be taken to the hospital. He said later that he was not spitting blood, so he knew that the bullet had not hit a lung – and that he was still living so it had not hit his heart. No reason the show not to go on.

Damn.

That was bad-ass.

Well, just a little longer than forty years ago.

The Divorce Act received royal assent on February 13, 1986.

On the evening before Valentine’s Day, legislation establishing ‘no-fault’ divorce in Canada came into effect.

Mulroney’s Divorce Act was a big deal. In 1968, Trudeau the Elder got Parliament to made divorce accessible to average people by transforming it from something needing individualized, exceptional treatment into a relatively routine matter for the courts. However, the Trudeau legislation required that one partner had to have been ‘at-fault’ – that is, found to have done something really bad. Someone had to have committed adultery, abuse, or abandonment. Divorce was still punitive with blame attached to one partner.

Mulroney’s new divorce law simply said that when a marriage was over, it was over. There was a one-year waiting period, but someone could get a divorce without having to prove that their spouse had done something morally wrong.

There was obviously a pent-up demand for no-fault divorce. In 1985, 63,021 Canadian couples got divorced. In 1986, this rose to 77,940. A year later, the number of Canadian divorces reached 97,773.

Then the number of divorces began to drop. By 2020 (the year the most recent statistics are available from Statistics Canada), the number of divorces was down to 42,933. In 1987, there were 3.697 divorces for every 1,000 people in Canada. In 2020, rate this was down to 1.129.

“Going to Reno”

The reason I started thinking about divorce was because the Turner Classic Movies channel showed the 1961 movie The Misfits – the last movie made by both Marilyn Munro and Clark Gable.

Munro played a woman who was in Reno, Nevada to get a divorce. While there, she fell in with a cowboy played by Gable. It’s a good flic.

But why did the movie make sense?

Why was Munro’s character in Reno in the first place?

Why was she there alone?

To most people today, the premise of the movie is confusing. But in 1961, it all made sense.

Reno’s economy was based on broken hearts and broken marriages. “Going to Reno,” was an euphemism for getting a divorce. At its peak, 49 percent of all divorces in the United States were issued from the Washoe County Courthouse. The divorce court fees accounted for 15 percent of the Nevada government’s total revenue.

There were over 30,000 divorces per year granted in Reno during the 1930s. This was pretty impressive given that city’s population was just under 20,000 people. By the time The Misfits was filmed, Reno had grown to just over 60,000 people. Almost a third of the city’s economic activity was generated by the divorce industry.

What in the name of Saint Monica was going on?

Back in the day, divorce was very difficult to get in most of the United States. In states such as South Carolina, it was flat out illegal. In states such as New York and California, the only grounds for divorce was adultery. One spouse had to admit to, or be caught in the act of, being engaged in horizontal folk dancing with someone other than their spouse. Weirdly enough, if both spouses were caught “cheating”, no divorce would be granted. Adultery cancelled out adultery. Two wrongs might not make a right, but two wrongs were deemed by the courts to remove harm.

The “adultery only” grounds for divorce was tough on reputations. It also created a booming business for private investigators who specialized in bursting into hotel rooms with a camera. In cases where the desire for divorce was mutual, enterprising divorce lawyers offered a package deal that included a hotel room, a naked companion, and the photographer. One or the other spouses would climb into bed with a naked stranger to pose for the required pictures.

In 1906, an enterprising New York divorce lawyer named William Schnitzer came up with a better way for his clients to get a divorce. Schnitzer noticed that Nevada divorce laws were much more lenient than in other jurisdictions. Adultery did not have to be alleged, admitted, or proven.

Hmm.

Schnitzer realized is clients could get a divorce in Nevada without the damage to their reputations caused by establishing adultery.

But there was a catch.

For Nevada to grant a divorce, the person applying for the divorce had to be a resident of the state.

For six months.

That was a problem. Let’s just say that in 1906, Nevada was not the tourist destination it is today. The state had more rattlesnakes than tourists.

But Schnitzer was undeterred.

With a population of around 4,000, Reno was Nevada’s largest city. That meant it had a few hotels and boarding houses. What’s more, Reno was on the main Central Pacific rail line. People could easily access the city by train from New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

Schnitzer started selling package deals for couples to get their marriages “Reno-vated.” He struck gold by arranging the divorce of William and Laura Corey. Mr. Cory was the president of the U.S. Steel Corporation. The soon to be ex-Mrs. Corey spent her time in Reno to earn a settlement of $3 million – which was a huge pile of money a hundred and twenty years ago.

With that, the Reno divorce industry boomed. The town’s population doubled almost immediately. Over the next six and a half decades, close to a million people got divorced in Reno for a divorce including Mary Pickford, Jack Dempsey, Douglas MacArther, Carole Lombard, Adlai Stevenson II, Lana Turner, Nelson Rockefeller, Rita Hayworth, and Cornelius Vanderbilt IV. The last – a wayward scion of the incredibly rich Vanderbilt clan - got five of his six divorces in Reno. He eventually bought a house in the town.

To get a divorce, one partner would go hang around Reno for six months. Then they would apply for, and be granted, the divorce. It was usually, but not always, the woman who went to Reno. In cases where the desire to divorce was mutual, the husband would stay home working to earn enough to pay for the wife’s desert adventure. In other cases, the woman would just take the initiative and head off by herself. Occasionally the husband would be the one to go to Reno, but usually they stayed in their hometown to keep working. Then, as now, divorce was expensive.

By the 1920s, Reno and Nevada had competition for the divorce dollar. Arkansas, Wyoming, and Idaho tried to muscle in. Nevada fought back by lowering the residency requirement. In 1927, Nevada cut this to three months. Four years later, this was cut to three weeks. Reno advertised nationally that “quickie divorces” were available in Nevada.

But cutting the residency period had drawbacks as a competitive response since it cut profits. Less time in Reno meant less income for hotels, boarding houses, and restaurants. Some businesses were unaffected by the reduced residency requirements. For example, jewelry stores and pawnshops still did a good trade in buying or resizing rings. But still, after 1931 it was clear that a competitive response other than a reduced residency period was needed. Something that increased the margins on each divorce rather than cutting them.

A genius named Phil Tobin had an idea.

Casino gambling.

Legalized casino gambling.

Give the gals something to do while waiting for their divorce. Vacuum their purses while doing so.

Brilliant.

Tobin was a member of the Nevada state legislature. He introduced legislation to legalize casino gambling. About six months after the 1931 cut to the residency period, casino gambling was legalized – explicitly as a “support” to the divorce industry.

In 1960, Reno was a bigger city than Las Vegas. Reno had divorces and casinos. Las Vegas just had the casinos.

But all good things must end. In 1970, divorce business began to evaporate.

For the good folk of Reno, the villain was Ronald Reagan. As surely as William Schnitzer and Phil Tobin brought prosperity to the city, Reagan created an economic bust in Reno.

Reagan did not set out to hurt gambling in Reno. He went after the divorce business. It was not that “The Gipper” had a problem with divorce. In 1949, he got divorced from Jane Wyman. What Reagan resented was the expense and inconvenience of Wyman being forced to spend three weeks in Reno as part of the process.

Reagan dealt a body blow to Reno’s economy by implementing no-fault divorce in California. Just like that, Reno lost almost half of its divorce business. Worse yet, other states soon followed California’s example.

And now Reno’s just another Nevada gambling town. Heck. I know even know people who went there for a honeymoon. That would not have happened in the old days.

It’s a big day for me.

I’m a census buff. When the data starts to get released (it comes in tranches by subject area), I have the release dates entered on our wall calendar. My wife thinks this weird, but I get really excited by data releases. When I was teaching, I used census data a lot. Now that I’m retired, I’m quite possibly the biggest recreational user of census data in Canada.

Helping with the census is pretty simple.

Your household should have received a yellow card/envelope with an identifier number. If you have not done it yet, someone in the household has to log into Statistics Canada’s census portal and enter the number. You’ll then need to answer some questions. Four of five households receive the “short form” census. This takes less than five minutes to complete, if that. One fifth of households get the “long form” which has more questions. It takes about half hour to forty minutes to complete.

If you don’t complete the census, someone will show up at your door to ask the questions, so my advice is just do the thing. Don’t procrastinate. Just do it.

It’s not that hard these days. A couple of millennia ago, a carpenter named Joseph and his wife Mary had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem to complete an early census. It was about 160 km, which was a long way to travel before the car was invented – particularly since Mary was nine months pregnant.

If Joseph and Mary could do it, you can too. It’s a lot easier today.

But as census day approaches, I’ve been noticing something weird on social media. There seem to be a disturbing number of Canadians suffering from census derangement syndrome.

I’ve seen on-line rants about the census as an invasion of privacy. I’ll just note that someone who spends a lot time commenting on social media shouldn’t be worried about their privacy since it’s already been given away.

I’ve seen some people post pictures of their census card marked up with ranting obscenities and marked “return to sender. I’ve also seen some people write 500-word instructions on what to say to census takers to avoid answering questions.

This is weird. It’s stupider than road rage, although not as dangerous. But there are consequences to not responding to the census.

The government actually needs information about Canadians in order to make informed policy decisions. If government cannot collect this information – basic stuff like how many people there are in Canada – government becomes more stupid than it already is.

Another observation:

This might simply a function of the feeds I get because of social media algorithms, but most of the people exhibiting census derangement syndrome seem to be coming from Alberta. Refusing to participate in the census is being described as an act of resistance to a federal government that ignores and denigrates Alberta.

But here is the thing. One of the core purposes of the census is to count how many people live in each province. This determines how many seats each province gets in Parliament. If people in one province boycott the census, they will get fewer seats in Parliament. If that’s what they want – fine. But I then don’t want to hear whining and complaining about a lack of political influence.

Now – most people cooperate with the census. Most who don’t those who start as procrastinators who then suffer from forgetfulness. Fair enough.

But there is a group out there who suffer from census derangement syndrome. I don’t know how many belong to this group, but they are making their presence felt on social media.

I’m going to be blunt.

If you are someone getting this worked up about the census, you’ve become deranged. Please seek help from a mental health professional. Seriously. You need help.

That’s my rant about the census refusal syndrome I’ve been seeing on social media.

But I also want to recall a different type of census derangement syndrome a decade and a half ago.

Before moving on to the second type of census derangement syndrome, I want to touch base on another reason for census refusal that I’ve been hearing about in face-to-face conversations rather than on the social media.

This is narcissistic self-centeredness. Let’s call it a personality disorder rather than manifestation of mental illness. It’s a kind of bored, disengaged selfishness rather than a mental health issue, per se. Instead, it is a manifestation of a decay in our social cohesion.

Quite simply, this takes the form of “I can’t be bothered” or “what’s in it for me?” rather than an active, hostile refusal on some weird point of principle.

For a country or society to function, people have responsibilities as well as rights. We must put in as well as take out. When someone “doesn’t bother” to fulfil a social obligation as infinitesimally small as filling out the census, they’ve become a social parasite.

Here’s the thing about parasites. Enough of them can kill an organism. Enough social parasites can destroy the functioning of a society.

In Dr. Zivago, the half-brother to the doctor saw his brother knocking over a fence to steal some firewood. Yevgraf Andreyevich Zhivago observed that “one desperate man stealing wood is a pathetic sight. A million of them can destroy a city.”

Failure to meet tiny obligations of a functioning society is a form of firewood stealing - but without the moral justification of being cold.

The Academic/Activist Census Derangement Syndrome of 2011

It is against the law to refuse to complete the census. In theory, you could get fined $500 for your refusal. Even more theoretically, you could go to jail for three months.

Now, the chances of this happening are remote.

In 2021, Statistics Canada banged (electronically or in person) on the doors of almost 15 million households. When the dust settled, it reported a 98 percent completion rate. That means that about 60,000 households did not complete the census. For the 98 percent of complying households, there were an average of 2.4 people per household. This means that about 144,000 people did not complete the census.

According to Statistics Canada, 43 people were charged with non-completion. That means about 0.02986 percent of those who refused to complete the census were charged.

That’s why I said you could “theoretically” get fined or go to jail for refusal. It’s a paper threat. Our legal system could not process the volume if there was anything approaching real enforcement of the law.

Going into the 2011 census, the Harper government decided to restrict the use of unenforceable threats. It believed that threatening the recalcitrant with unenforceable fines or jails just makes them more recalcitrant. As a result, two changes were made to the census:

• For those getting the “long form” census, the threat of fines or jail was removed. Participation in the “long form” became voluntary. People were still legally compelled to complete the short form census.

• The sample size of the detailed long form document was increased from one in five households to one in three.

The result was a larger sample, but one that was less rigorously randomized. If those refusing to complete the long form were correlated with specific demographic groups, those groups would be underreported in the results.

That was the policy decision made by the Harper government. It was arguable but defensible.

But holy crap. The pointy heads went nuts.

It was asserted that without the threat of fines or jail, the results of the census would be useless. Academics vowed to refuse to use the results of the census in their research. They asserted that without threatening to throw people in jail, the ability of the government to engage in “evidence based” decision making would be impossible. It was an attack on science itself.

In the 2015 election, the Liberals promised – in their platform – to reinstate the fines and imprisonment for refusal to complete the long form census. While attacking the Conservatives for being “tough on crime” by increasing penalties for drug dealers and child molesters, the Liberals promised to get tough on census refuseniks. Priorities are revealing.

The Liberals won the election. The commitment to get draconian on census violators was a rare promise that Trudeau actually kept. The threat of fines and jail was reimposed in time for the 2016 census. That year, a total of 47 people were charged for census refusal, but it is unclear whether these were charges for refusing to complete the long form or the short form. (In 2011, 54 people were charged with refusing to complete the short form.)

When the 2011 data was released, I was back at university as a graduate student. I contacted about a dozen of the most prominent academics who had attacked the removal the possibility of fines/jail for refusing to complete the long form. I asked if they were conducting any analysis of the actual effect on census findings (there are statistical techniques and comparisons that could be used). About half did not respond. The other half haughtily told me that no such analysis was necessary since they KNEW the findings were tainted.

“So much for evidence-based decision making,” I thought.

I’ve looked at what Statistics Canada had to say on the matter. The only suggestion of an anomaly that I’ve been able to find is that recent immigrants from some countries appear to have under-participated.

That appears to be it.

This whole kerfuffle over the imposition of fines or jail for census refusal also seems to me to be an example of census derangement syndrome. It manifested itself differently than the refuseniks but was just as stupid. The pointy heads asserted that without the threat of jail, the results of the census would be useless. Then they refused to analyze the data to see if their predictions were fulfilled. What’s more, the protests ignored the fact that the threat of prosecution is an idle one. Almost nobody gets prosecuted.

My experience on the doorstep

I worked for Statistics Canada during the 2021 census. I was given a list of addresses where the census had not been completed. I’d arrive at their doorstep and – if I ever caught them home – would run through the questions. Almost everyone fell into the procrastinating forgetfulness category. No threats were needed to get compliance. Just a reminder in the form of someone on their doorstep.

I only met two refuseniks.

One was just an asshole. He screamed at me for about fifteen minutes about Justin Trudeau. Not a fan. The worst thing was that he stood close and sprayed spittle in my face while he screamed. This was at the tail-end of COVID stuff. It was the only time I was happy to be wearing a mask. In any event, he concluded by claiming he’d already completed the census. Two things were clear to me (in addition to the fact that he was an asshole):

1. That he was lying about having completed the census, and

2. If I mentioned the possibility of fines or jail, he’d go completely berserk.

I just marked him down as claiming to have completed the thing and beat a retreat. I’ve got no idea what follow-up there was after that, but I suspect there was none. Not worth it.

The other guy was more entertaining. He was a guy in his late thirties with a British accent. He told me he moved to Canada about two years earlier. We had a nice chat about weather and suchlike. Then I asked him to answer the questions.

He refused. He took the position that he did not want to.

I replied, in a general way, that he had to answer. It was a legal requirement.

He continued to refuse. He argued that he had not been told this was a requirement when he immigrated to Canada. Because he had not been so informed, he claimed, he did not have to comply.

I asked him if he had a driver’s license. He did. I then asked if he had been specifically told one was needed to drive on Canadian roads.

With this, the guy conceded the “failure to specifically be notified when immigrating” argument was a loser. He reverted to the “it’s stupid, so I don’t want to” argument.

I asked him what he did in Britain before coming to Canada.

He told me he’d been in the army for ten years.

I asked him if – in ten years in the army – he had ever been given a stupid order by an officer.

He conceded that such a thing had happened from time to time.

I asked him what he had done when receiving a stupid order.

The guy started laughing. “I saluted and said ‘yes sir.’”

“Well then?” I asked. With that, he answered the questions.

My experience was that almost everyone will willingly do the census. Some might need a nudge or reminder, but folks are willing.

Of the two refuseniks I encountered, one was just an asshole. I suspect he had mental health problems. A personality disorder at the very least.

The other guy just enjoyed a good argument.

But a heavy-handed threat of fines or jails would have been profoundly useless in either case. Given that reality, I wonder why the social science academic community was so adamant about the need to threaten people to gain compliance.

I’ll also note that the sociologists and their ilk claimed that the removal of the threat of punishment would lead to an undercounting of the poor, indigenous people, and minorities. You’ll note that the two examples of refusal I encountered in 2021 both came from relatively affluent white males. The deranged posts I’ve seen on the social media are not coming the poor and oppressed. The cases of the narcissistic self-centered refusal that I’ve been hearing about are also coming from the relatively privileged. If the removal of the threat of punishment actually decreased response rates, we’d likely have an undercounting of assholes rather than an undercounting of the poor and oppressed. The assumption that it will be the poor and oppressed who are undercounted seems to be based on snobbery combined with moral preening disguised as virtue signaling.

The only explanation for the 2011 hysteria in the ivory towers that makes sense to me is that too many people with Ph.D.’s are authoritarians at heart who like the ability of being able to threaten people.

There seems to be at least two forms of census derangement syndrome out there. And one narcissist personality disorder. Statistics Canada reports that the response rate in past censuses has been just over 98 percent. If this completion rate goes down in 2026 - and I suspect it will - it will not be a good sign.

To make a long story short, 210 days passed between the time I applied and payments began to be deposited in my bank account. This only occurred because my application was “expedited” after being placed on “urgent” status because normal processing times (either 120 days or 150 days – conflicting information was provided).

I was curious, so dug into the Departmental Results Reports of Employment and Social Development Canada. Doing a little math (dividing the number of people turning 65 every year by the number of employees in the branch processing claims), I determined that every employee processes about 70 applications per year – that is, it takes about 3 person days of government civil service staff time to process one application.

It seemed to me, that this seemed to be a very low level of productivity. I wrote to the (two) Minister(s) responsible for the program to ask (a) whether my calculations were correct, and (b) why productivity was so low, and (c) what was being done to improve the situation.

I waited a month and didn’t get a response.

So, I reported on this to my readers.

A few weeks later, I got a response from a Michel Dubé – identified as:

A/Director – CPP/OAS Operational Policy and CPP-D Operations

Seniors and Pensioners Directorate

Service Design and Reporting Branch

Integrated Services Strategy and Operations

Service Canada

Mr. Dubé basically ducked my questions. He assured me that:

I want to assure you that the provision of good service is one of the fundamental principles to which Service Canada is committed.

And

I appreciate receiving your views. Comments such as yours are taken into consideration during the Department’s ongoing efforts to ensure that services remain responsive to the needs of Canadians.

That’s nice.

Significantly, Mr. Dubé did not challenge my information or math. In the rules of evidence, silence can sometimes be considered as agreement or affirmation. This suggests that the productivity standards are in the range of 1 application processed for every 3 days of civil service time.

It seemed clear that the two Ministers of the Crown responsible for the OAS program had no intention of being responsible for their programs. Further, I had no desire to further trouble Mr. Dubé. He had been polite, albeit not overly informative.

I forgot about the matter.

Until yesterday.

What I found in my mailbox

When I checked the mail two days ago, there was a letter from Service Canada.

“That’s odd,” I said to my wife. “I wonder what they are writing to me about.”

I opened the letter. It began:

Dear MARK STOBBE

We have approved your application for the OLD AGE SECURITY (OAS) pension.

It went on to explain my entitlement. The letter was dated April 20, 2026. That’s interesting. Given that the first payment appeared in my bank account on December 9, 2025, that either means that:

1. I’ve been paid for the last several months without my application being authorized,

Or

2. It took the government 133 days to send me a form letter.

Neither alternative is particularly comforting, although I hope the second is true. It would eliminate the possibility of me being – in about six years – being dinged for receiving money without proper authorization.

In any event, if this represents what would have been the normal processing time for an OAS application, we are at 343 days between receipt of the application and the claim being approved.

Phooey.

And don’t forget the post office

Then we have Canada Post.

The letter was dated April 20. It was delivered on May 6. That means it took Canada Post 16 days to deliver a highly urgent, official, government-originated, first-class letter.

It was mailed from Winnipeg. According to Google Maps, it travelled 580 km or 360 miles. That means it moved at a rate of 36.25 km or 22.5 miles per day.

Seriously.

A person could walk more quickly than that.

In 1860, the Pony Express delivered mail from Missouri to California. The route was 1,966 miles. On average, it took 10 days to deliver a letter. That’s an average of 196.6 miles per day.

By my math, the pony express was 8.74 times FASTER than Canada Post.

And the Pony Express used – well, ponies – to deliver the mail.