A provincial by-election has been called for the riding of Carleton. The People's Alliance of New Brunswick has just
announced their candidate. The following is a copy of the press release:

The People's Alliance of New Brunswick announces Deputy Leader Randall
Leavitt as candidate for the upcoming Carleton By-election.

Leavitt's background is in business management and sales, with several
years experience spent within the NB school system working with special
needs students and those with learning challenges.

With the current state of the province, Randall sees this as an excellent
opportunity for the people of Carleton to elect an MLA who will take their
concerns to the Legislature, free of partisan politics.

“The people of Carleton need an MLA who can freely bring forward issues on their
behalf, “ says Leavitt, “ rather than electing a red or blue who just gets lost in the
shuffle of big party politics. People come first, I would be honored to work
extremely hard for the population of the region.”

People's Alliance leader Kris Austin says Leavitt is the change the area needs,
and the change it deserves.

“Randall puts people first,” says Austin, “whether at work or in volunteer
endeavors. There is no other candidate that would work as hard for the
people, and we are extremely proud of the dedication he has shown by putting himself forward to serve the riding ”

The by-election is scheduled for October 5th.

Media Contact:

Wes Gullison
Communications
506-999-0200

wesgullison@peoplesalliancenb.com

For those unfamiliar with the People's Alliance here is their About page, as well as a link to their 2014 Provincial Election Platform. Best of luck to the new candidate!

As a graduate of New Brunswick's education system I sometimes reflect on
the quality of the schooling I received. I also have a longstanding  interest in
Japanese culture. It is natural then that I would eventually get to looking at how
Japan does education. What I found was a school system that better instills the
values of leadership, sense of community, and respect than anything I've seen in
New Brunswick. I figured I may as well detail some of the highlights of their
system and make the argument that New Brunswick would do well to adopt at
least some of these policies. The policies are in no particular order of importance.

This is my third time trying to write on this topic and I've struggled with how to cover it. This is mostly because the ideas I
am advocating for are interconnected to a large degree. So doing one topic left a lot unsaid and doing the entire article
created an unreadable master's thesis. I settled on covering two topics in each article. Expect this series of articles to link
back to older articles and forward to newer ones (linear existence being more a suggestion than a rule). 

It seems appropriate when the government is cutting teaching positions to discuss how we might cut janitorial positions instead. In Japan it is common practice to have students do most of the cleaning in the school. This cleaning is usually scheduled after school each day. Usually the soji no jikan (the cleaning time) takes up 15 minutes to an hour. It has been tried out in some charter schools in the United States to great effect as well.

Some might balk at the idea of even a minute of potential class time going towards school cleaning. They may well argue that such cleaning has no educational value. I'd argue they are wrong. Being able to work together in a shared endeavor is an important skill to learn. Understanding that you have a responsibilities towards your community is a fundamental aspect of citizenship. It might even instill a bit of respect for people who clean as a profession. Students might even welcome the change since, as long as the work was getting done, there would be an opportunity to socialize.

Interestingly, having students clean produces a result that is perfectly logical in hindsight. Students tend not to write on school property with pens or markers since they may well be assigned that section to clean later. While there would still be a need for a few janitors for dangerous and difficult tasks the number needed would be much reduced. From a savings and educational stance this policy has a great deal of appeal.

This kind of thing has precedence in New Brunswick. My mother recalls that her school was cleaned once a week by the janitor and the students were expected to clean up after themselves during the week. It is time we revived this expectation.

Probably the biggest difference between teachers in New Brunswick and Japan is that in Japan the position has a certain level of prestige. Teachers are among the most highly paid civil servants in Japan and the hiring process is very selective. Most importantly teachers are able to teach in the subject they were trained in. Due to the number of teaching graduates the field is highly competitive and schools can afford to be picky. 

While Canada has a very sharp division between moral and academic education, Japan does not. Teachers are expected to be a stand-in for the child's parents at school and to instill moral values and help develop a child's character. Indeed, a teacher's influence often extends into the surrounding community. Teachers in Japan often work unpaid overtime and patrol local events with a eye out for misbehaving students. 

In class an observer might be surprised by how little direct discipline there is. An example I read about in Thunder From The East detailed how after a student started playing 'bombs away' with a carrot in the fish tank the teacher stated simply that the fish might get hurt. After a couple half-hearted attempts she gave up. However, after recess she brought up her concerns about dropping carrots into the fish tank with the class. This wasn't the lectures myself and many others have had to sit through. In fact the teacher said very little. Instead she asked the class what they should do about the situation. Some students noted the game was fun while others worried it might hurt the fish and they should stop. The teacher acknowledged the first group but encouraged and praised the second group. She then got the class as a whole to agree with the majority opinion; that 'bombs away' was harmful to the fish and they should stop. This type of discipline has the advantage of being self-enforcing. Students police each other and remind those who stray of the social contract they all agreed to. Hundreds of little pushes like this throughout a student's career lead to high school students who, should the need arise due to a teacher's absence, can be left alone to study quietly for a day and not have them descend into (loud) anarchy. We often hear about the evils of peer pressure but this is largely because it has been ignored how it might be used in a positive manner to enforce positive behavior.

Next time I delve into student leadership and responsibility. 

Recently the leader of the New Brunswick NDP, Dominic Cardy, proposed
busing French and English kids to their respective school on the same
buses. This being the kind of thing that gets a politician into trouble in
New Brunswick he was quickly shouted down. 

However, one of Cardy's opponents raised an interesting point. Attorney
General Serge Rousselle cited a decision in 2000 regarding whether French
students in Summerside PEI could be bused to the nearest French school
roughly an hour away or whether a school had to be built closer. The court
ruled that busing students that far was unacceptable as "school size,
facilities, transportation and assembly of students... all have an effect on language and culture...". Now, what this has to do
with having French and English kids share a bus I don't know but it does provoke an interesting question about
another schooling question that is currently angering a lot of people.

The province of New Brunswick is currently considering closing the Dorchester and Riverside schools. Both are under-
utilized due to the slow death of rural New Brunswick and the government is looking to cut costs. In the case of the
Riverside school this means that elementary students from Alma will endure marathon 90 minute bus ride both ways
(high school students already do). Now, if the previously-mentioned court ruling is applicable it would seem that forcing
students, especially at the elementary level, to be bused such a distance is not allowed. Even if the Riverside school
remains open rural New Brunswick needs a long-term education plan that takes into account the fact that its population
is not growing and infrastructure becoming more expensive to maintain.

On the issue of duality I think the province is headed in an ugly direction. English-speakers largely see duality as unfair, wasteful and separate from the issue of official bilingualism. French-speakers see duality as a necessary protection of
their culture and inseparable from official bilingualism. Such disagreements are fine as long as both sides can engage
with their opponents and understand their points of view. This doesn't appear to be possible in New Brunswick at this
time as raising the issue is more likely to result in the following scenario:

Fredericton Mayor Brad Woodside tweeted "Bilingualism I understand, duality makes no sense. This should be on the table Mr
Premier as we look to save money. You asked." The response from Dieppe Mayor Yvon Lapierre was that the comments
were ignorant and regrettable. He further called for a boycott of a meetings of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities
(of which Brad  Woodside, is also president) unless he recanted. Woodside also endured an editorial by Alec Bruce of the
Times & Transcript which more resembled the inarticulate ramblings of a Republican Party hack than any sort of
reasoned response. 

Where does this complete failure of dialogue put New Brunswick in the future? Your guess is as good as mine but I'd
wager on the eventual result being unpleasant.

I wrote an article a number of months back about a modified first-past-the-post (FPTP) system I called the Bennett Method. The results of the 2014 New Brunswick Election provides a good opportunity to revisit whether this method is a viable improvement to our electoral democracy.

First, a quick review. The Bennett method differs from other electoral systems in that it doesn't mess with ridings, voting method, or even how those votes are counted. Instead it changes what those votes mean in the resulting legislature by changing the relative strength of the elected official's vote. For example, an MLA who won their riding with a large majority and belonged to a party that had high support would have a stronger vote in the resulting legislature than an MLA who barely got elected and who's party ended up not having much support. The end result being that while seat counts would remain the same as if we were using FPTP the actual party strength would closer to being proportional to their popular vote.

So. Let's get started.

The first thing to do is to consider each riding as being 'worth' 100 points (ie. 100 percent). These 'points' are awarded to MLAs based on the percentage of the vote they won in their riding. For instance Brian Keirstead won 40.61% of the vote in his riding of Albert. His point total would be 40.61. The remaining points don't go away and I will return to them momentarily. There are 49 ridings in New Brunswick so therefore the maximum number of points in play is 4900.

Results for New Brunswick:

PARTY RIDING TOTALS (NDP & PANB not included due to not winning seats)                                                                             

Progressive Conservative Party:    
47.45, 42.00, 38.65, 52.53, 40.61, 44.27, 49.86, 38.74, 51.35, 45.24, 48.90, 39.18, 35.66, 41.97, 28.79, 40.95, 35.42, 35.21, 46.53, 56.77, 48.16
Liberal Party:    
57.54, 61.86, 53.54, 62.53, 61.28, 56.51, 45.71, 64.40, 49.04, 49.70, 49.78, 48.55, 64.39, 59.85, 45.43, 65.77, 44.90, 52.75, 44.83, 37.01, 32.19, 62.47, 41.72, 33.60, 40.83, 49.62, 56.39
Green Party:    
30.68                                                                                                                                                            
                                                                              
TOTAL: 2331.11    

2331.11 is the total number of points awarded to the all winning candidates in New Brunswick. It is somewhat less than half of the point total due to some very close races and a strong third-party vote. The remaining 2568.89 points are now to be dealt with. These points are divided equally among the candidates of each party based on that party's share of the popular vote.

Progressive Conservative Party:
889.86 (34.64%)
Liberal Party: 
1097.42 (42.72%) 
Green Party:  
169.80 ( 6.61%)

Divided between the candidates this results in each Progressive Conservative MLA receiving an additional 42.37 points. The Liberal MLAs each receive 40.64 additional points. The Green MLA takes his full total of 169.80 additional points.

Riding totals after unused points were distributed:

Progressive Conservative Party: 
89.82, 84.37, 81.02, 94.90, 82.98, 86.64, 92.23, 81.11, 93.72, 87.61, 91.27, 81.55, 78.03, 84.34, 71.16, 83.32, 77.79, 77.58, 88.90, 99.14, 90.53                
Liberal Party:  
98.18, 102.05, 94.18, 103.17, 101.92, 97.15, 86.35, 105.04, 89.68, 90.34, 90.42, 89.19, 105.03, 100.49, 86.07, 106.41, 85.54, 93.39, 85.47, 77.65, 72.83, 103.11, 82.36, 74.24, 81.47, 90.26, 97.03
Green Party:  
200.48           

The total strength of the Progressive Conservative vote is 1798.01, Liberals 2489.02, and Greens 200.48. Total of all three parties is 4487.51 (you may notice the total is short by roughly 412. This is likely due to the number of people who voted for either the NDP or PANB).

Voting power of MLAs as a percentage of 4487.51:

PC: 40.06% 
LIB: 55.46%                
GRN:  4.46%
 
Distortion between voting power and percentage of the popular vote received in FPTP and Bennett Method:

The Liberal voting power was actually 0.36 points more distorted but this is off-set by the overall results being 4.85 closer in terms of voting power vs. popular vote. This is a known error that last occured when I looked at Nova Scotia's results. I don't currently have a good explanation as to why it sometimes occures. It could be that large numbers of votes for parties that don't win seats is the cause of the distortion (in the Nova Scotia test the Greens did pretty well). If, so it could be fixed by giving a seat to party leaders whose party gets X% of the vote.

So what if they were included?

If the leaders of the NDP and People's Alliance were each given a seat and a vote share based on their popular vote the numbers would look like this (using the 412.49 points that we are short and adjusting to be out of the full 4900):

PC: 1798.01 (36.69%)
LIB: 2489.02 (50.79%)              
GRN:  200.48 ( 4.09%)
PA:   67.97 ( 1.38%)
NDP:  344.51 ( 7.03%)

In this case all parties moved towards proportionality. While the Liberals still have a slim majority in this case (which their popular vote doesn't support) it drops to a minority once they pick a speaker.

Pros & Cons

-Nothing changes for voters or Elections New Brunswick staff. Everyone still has one vote to cast and, as a result, they can be counted the same way they always have been.
-It doesn't require extra ridings be created and only requires a few new seats if the optional method is used.
-It is, if not perfectly proportional, at least closer than what we have now.
-It eliminates most wasted votes by having votes for candidates not only weaken the winner of that riding but also increase the strength of the party elsewheres.
-There is some basic math involved but it doesn't inconvenience either the voters or those counting the votes.
-It weakens independent MLAs somewhat since they will never benefit from a party's popular vote share.

I'll close with my standard disclaimer: I don't claim this is a great system. I don't even claim it is a good system. I only claim it is an interesting system.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

For those unaware, New Brunswick is in the midst of an election campaign. The political parties are out and about trying to sell their message to all who will listen. Part of these efforts is participating in debates organized by media and community organizations. I'd like to take a second to focus on some controversial decisions made by the media establishment in New Brunswick. Specifically, the exclusion of the People's Alliance of New Brunswick from several debates.

CTV & Rogers have confirmed they will each hold a debate with only the Progressive Conservatives, Liberals, and New Democrats participating. The parties excluded will be the People's Alliance and the Green Party. Neither gave reasons for excluding the latter two parties (although I will present my own theory below). It is not like five people on stage is unmanageable. Federally, we have been having debates between 4-5 participants for years without difficulty. 

Radio Canada is also excluding the People's Alliance and Green Party from the French debate. Unlike CTV & Rogers they at least gave a rationale for excluding these parties: they felt neither of the leaders were fluent enough in French.

It is clear that CTV & Rogers caved to political pressure from the Progressive Conservatives. The evidence for this view can be found in the PC's reaction to the CBC deciding to include all of New Brunswick's parties in their debate. Their reaction was to storm out of the meeting and refuse to participate unless the People's Alliance and Green Party were banned from the planned debate. It is not hard to imagine this threat coming up in regards to the other debates too. This seems to be the standard operating procedure for incumbents who want a debate on their terms. When I was in Sackville for the 2011 Federal Election a debate was cancelled due to the incumbent Liberal candidate refusing to come. I do have some small sympathy for the media when presented with this kind of ultimatum. It is an impossible choice between presenting all options and having a debate without the incumbent there defending their record. That doesn't make it right and New Brunswickers would be better served by a media establishment with some backbone.

Premier Alward has reason to prefer a three-way debate: as the only party of the three on the right of the political spectrum the PCs can hope that vote-splitting with help them more than it hurts. Including the People's Alliance and Green Party throws a wrench in these plans. The People's Alliance for their part were formed by former PC members. While they have made excellent efforts towards being an inclusive 'big tent' party their origins may be a concern for a party used to having the political right all to itself. This may explain why the PCs have on more than one occasion tried to tar the People's Alliance as socialists. The Green Party for its part has shown that it can cut into Conservative support in unexpected ways (most recently in Calgary Centre). Both parties represent an unknown to the PCs which they would rather not deal with.

Summary: Premier Alward, you are a coward. Although, to be fair, the Liberals and NDP don't seem to be in any hurry to ensure the people are presented with all their options either.

The most immediate goal is to get CTV & Rogers to change their minds and have an inclusive debate. Rogers can be contacted at 506 462 3659 (Terri Willis), 1-888-307-8862 (TV Viewer Response Line), or online at this link.