Rep by Pop: Re-drawing the USA

Despite their differences in governmental style, the USA and Canada share one political fact: the glaring inequality of voting regions based on geography rather than population. Such a scheme may have made sense  two or three centuries back, but as our societies grow increasingly urban, the result is that the vote of a citizen in a sparsely populated region vastly outweighs the vote of a voter who lives in a large city or densely populated area.

One possible solution has been proposed by Neil Freeman, an artist and urban planner who, in an article posted at his site, proposes a radical re-drawing of the map of the USA (Electoral College Reform (fifty states with equal population). Mr. Freeman was careful to preserve the number of states, although he did rename them all. For a refreshing look at a possible America, I urge you to visit his site.

I for one think this is a great idea, albeit extremely unlikely to occur. I would like to apply the same principle to the map of Canada, and shall do some work on this soon. In Canada we have what we call Ridings, which are regions that elect a Member of Parliament. I have the populations of all Ridings in Canada; I just have to average them and redraw the boundaries.

TreeViews -- A Powerful Yet Simple Alternative

Treeviews – A Powerful  Alternative

I have written previously on using the TreeView within Access (Using TreeViews). There are a number of good reasons to use TreeViews – perhaps highest among them is that they are everywhere within the Windows UI, with the result that virtually everyone knows how to use them.

TreeViews are not especially easy to program. Further, they have a number of limitations. However, I have stumbled upon a powerful alternative that delivers an interface much more to my liking. Not only that: it’s very powerful and flexible, and delivers precisely the amount of control that I want. Best of all, it’s dead-simple to create – so simple, in fact, that I wonder why it took me so long to think of it.

The following example was developed in Access 2007 and will work in later versions. I have not tested it in previous versions.

Figure 1: Three-Level "TreeView"

This looks a lot like a formless browse of the parent table. Access does this automatically when you have defined relationships among your tables. However, it happens automatically only when any given parent table has exactly one child table. When two or more child tables exist, Access can’t determine which one to use, and therefore prompts you for the table to use. And unfortunately, once you've made that decision, you're stuck with it: every time you open the parent table, you get the same child you originally selected. 

Although Figure 1 looks a lot like a formless browse, it is actually a series of forms created in DataSheet style, then nested. If you wish, you can even create normal forms for each level, and open them on double-click anywhere within the row of interest. (In this app, I did not do that, because the target users are all very comfortable in Excel, and used to the "spreadsheet" format depicted above.)

By using DataSheet forms rather than simple table-browses, you get complete control  over columns, events, validations, lookups and so on that are available in a form. In this example, I chose to freeze the first two or three columns at each level, so the user never loses track of which row is active.

To create such a “treeview” form, follow these steps:

1. Decide the hierarchy of tables or queries you want to display.
2. Starting at the bottom of the tree, create a datasheet form for each level. This command is hidden a little bit on the Create ribbon. Figure 2 shows where it is.

Figure 2: Create a DataSheet form.

3. Starting one level above the bottom, add a subform. In this example, we create three DataSheet forms and save them. (Call them DS1, DS2 and DS3.) Then we add a subform to DS2 , selecting DS3 as the subform to add. Then we add a subform to DS1, selecting DS2 as the subform. Presto! Your hierarchical form is ready to go.

4. Customize each form to suit your requirements. Write code for events, add validations, combo-boxes. Do everything you would do to a standard form that displays only one record at a time. Decide whether it would be useful to freeze one or more of the columns.

That’s all there is to this simple trick. When I presented the app to the users, they were wowed. With their approval, I used this technique throughout the whole app, wherever hierarchies were involved.

Idle No More

The Idle No More movement is clearly one to be reckoned with, not only by non-indigenous people but also by the "white" establishment (which will suffice as a shorthand term for all Canadian citizens that are non-indigenous; it includes citizens of all races but the emphasis is on "establishment"). Finally, it is of major concern to the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), whose national chief is Sean Atleo.

When we feel anything at all, most Canadians feel ashamed at the treatment served up to our indigenous people. We have consistently violated historical agreements, and this practice dates back a century and more. Most Canadians are oblivious to the fact that South Africa modelled its system of apartheid explicitly on the Canadian Indian Reserves model. That fact is not taught in our schools, perhaps because we are too ashamed of it -- and rightly so.

New events have cast all this history in a new light. I'm thinking specifically of the recent Supreme Court ruling that our Metis and non-status Indians are to be now recognized as Indians under the Constitutional Act. And of course, the Idle No More movement has brought all this to the forefront of consciousness in this country. It is too big to ignore.

Some of the opinions on this decision could be predicted. The economists, epitomized by Robert Lovelace (a global development studies professor at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario), declare that "This ruling could cost the government billions." On the other side, more than a few non-Metis First Nations people see this as a dilution of the moneys they currently receive. And finally, more than a few Metis people themselves are grateful that they were not included in the original definition of First Nations people, because their exclusion kept them out of the reserves system and forced them to fend for themselves; hence, overall they are doing better than the traditional First Nations people.

The Indian Act itself, whose most recent iteration was in 1985, has come under fire, with some on both sides arguing for its abolition.  (For the document in full, see The Indian Act (RSC 1985.)

One thing is perfectly clear: the gap between the AFN and the federal government is so huge that tinkering with a clause here and there satisfies no one, and further, gives the federal government both grounds to say "We're trying" and excuses to do nothing substantive.
I have a more radical, but in my view far more sensible, proposal:

Abolish the Indian Act and replace it not with some similar act, but rather to declare a new Canadian province, comprised of all the reserves, crown lands, and lands currently under territory arising from land-claim settlements. 

Note: Until I began to research this notion and its consequences, I had no idea that a formal paper on exactly this proposal exists. It was written by Thomas J. Courchene and Lisa M. Powell, of the Institute for Intergovernmental Relations, at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. (For the full document, see A First Nations Province).

There are more than 2,250 reserves in Canada, comprising approximately 600 First Nations governments. As of the 2006 national census, there were 1,172,790 First Nations people in Canada (this number includes First Nations, Inuit and Metis).
The following chart shows population by province from 2008 to 2012.

	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
	persons (thousands)
Canada	33,317.70	33,726.90	34,126.50	34,484.00	34,880.50
Newfoundland and Labrador	506.4	509.1	511.9	512.9	512.7
Prince Edward Island	139.5	141.1	143.1	145.7	146.1
Nova Scotia	937.5	940.6	945.2	948.5	948.7
New Brunswick	746.9	749.9	752.9	755.3	756
Quebec	7,750.50	7,825.80	7,905.10	7,978.00	8,054.80
Ontario	12,932.50	13,068.80	13,223.80	13,366.30	13,505.90
Manitoba	1,205.70	1,219.90	1,235.70	1,251.70	1,267.00
Saskatchewan	1,013.80	1,029.50	1,044.40	1,057.80	1,080.00
Alberta	3,592.20	3,672.70	3,723.80	3,778.10	3,873.70
British Columbia	4,384.30	4,459.90	4,529.50	4,576.60	4,622.60
Yukon	33.1	33.7	34.6	35.4	36.1
Northwest Territories	43.7	43.6	43.9	44.2	43.3
Nunavut	31.6	32.2	32.8	33.6	33.7
Note: Population as of July 1.
Source: Statistics Canada, CANSIM, table 051-0001.
Last modified: 2012-09-27.

To put it another way, the First Nations Province would be larger than Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Given that the creation of FNP would also be the subtraction of these people from the provincial numbers above, it's quite possible that FNP would surpass Manitoba as well, in terms of population.

Above all, the creation of FNP would finally give the First Nations peoples a place at all the First Ministers conferences, and entitle them to all the benefits and responsibilities enjoyed by the other provinces.

This change would have dramatic consequences, virtually all of which would be good in the end. perhaps the most immediate and obvious consequence would be the instant creation of a new "have not" province, and thus a significant shift in the moneys paid out in equalization payments. This new virtual province would also become responsible for education and medical plans; and be able to impose provincial taxes on its citizens. There are many more consequences, which have been addressed thoroughly in the paper cited above. I encourage the interested reader to examine this paper and give it careful consideration.

There remains the serious question of how to consolidate so many First Nations governments into a single entity. One thing is clear, however: this is not a problem for the federal government to solve. That is exactly the wrong thing to do. This is best left for the First Nations peoples themselves to solve.

I don't expect a solution to appear overnight. But I see no reason why the First Nations peoples would object to this proposal. On the other hand, I can easily imagine the federal government's objections, virtually all of which reduce to dollars. That in my view is unacceptable -- as unacceptable as was South African apartheid.

How about Obama's cajones?

In the US every year, guns kill almost as many people as cars do. Many of those victims are children, and many of those tragedies happen at home. If you compare the rational licencing controls on driving a car with the lax controls on owning and carrying a gun in the US, you feel sick.

So it may seem reassuring that there's broad public support in the US for more effective gun control. In a recent Pew poll, 85% of US respondents support background checks for private and gun show sales, 80% support banning gun sales to the mentally ill, 67% support a federal database to track gun sales, 64% support armed guards in schools, 58% support a ban on semi-automatic weapons, 55% support a ban on assault-style weapons, and 54% support a ban on high-capacity gun clips. A recent Washington Post/ABC poll found even stronger support for gun control.

Yes, you have to worry about that mental illness question. Error rates in psychiatric diagnosis run about 25%. That's at least 2,500% higher than the percentage of mentally ill people who kill themselves or others with guns. Prognostic predictions by psychiatrists are even worse. The simplest Bayesian arithmetic shows how useless such a program would be.

And you have to worry too about armed guards in schools. Would you send your child to a school where the guards are armed?

And the Pew poll revealed an interesting divide. Respondents with high school education or less are 31% more supportive of armed guards in schools. Did we know that the NRA view that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" plays best to the less well educated?

Still, the polls are clear, the US public wants more gun control, even if two of the controls they favour look dodgy.

Will the US public's preferences translate into effective legislation? Well, about two-thirds of the US public wanted a public option in health care, but the health and insurance industries would have none of it; they made sure no such legislation made it to the floor of Congress, and Obama refused to fight for it. 

Likewise, about two-thirds of the US public wants gun control, but the lobby for 5,400 gun manufacturers has the same kind of stranglehold on Congress. A couple of weeks ago, I asked if there were enough Congressional cajones to pass effective gun controls. Since then, only about a dozen Republicans have publicly broken ranks with the NRA. Not nearly enough.

Then does it come down to whether Obama is Chamberlain or Churchill?

Cajones for Congress?

Does Fareed Zakaria's support in the Washington Post and on CNN for effective gun regulation indicate we can hope the US will get sensible about guns?

The US has 30 times more gun homicides per capita than Australia, France and England & Wales, twelve times the average for other developed countries.

A child in the US is 42.7 times more likely to die from gun violence than in other OECD countries.

If that were mainly because the US is intrinsically violent, the US would have ten or twenty or thirty times higher rates of robbery, rape and assault. It doesn't. US rates of other violent crimes are comparable to rates in other developed countries.

If it were because of violence in pop culture, other countries with similar pop culture violence, like the US and Australia and Japan, would have gun homicide rates like the US's. They don't. Japanese kids love violent video games, and Japan's gun homicide rate is near zero.

If it were because the US has more crazy people, epidemiologists would find ten or twenty or thirty times more psychosis and sociopathy in the US than in Britain, Australia, France and other comparable countries. They don't. Rates of serious mental are comparable, and psychiatric care is better in the US than in many of those countries with much lower gun death rates.

The difference is gun ownership. The US has more guns than adults. It has 5% of the world's population but 50% of the world's guns. 

In the ten years after Australia banned all automatic and semiautomatic weapons in 1996, their gun homicide rate dropped nearly three-fifths and their gun suicide rate dropped nearly two-thirds.

As Zakaria says, the solution's blindingly obvious: regulate guns, ban assault weapons. He thinks the US problem is lack of courage. 

To solve this problem, courage is needed in just one place, the US congress, where so many legislators are afraid of losing the NRA's approval and bribes.

It'd be lovely to imagine that those cowards are about to grow some cajones. Dare we hope?

USA, pervasively corrupt

The US has 751 people per 100,000 in prison. 

That's the highest incarceration rate in the world, five times the rate in England, eight times the rate in Germany, 12 times the rate in Japan. Yet the US mostly refuses to prosecute financial criminals like those whose malfeasance brought on the 2008 financial crash, and like the HSBC executives who for decades laundered money for Al Qaida terrorists. 

Why? Those financial institutions and their executives are big-time political donors, and they're big-time practitioners of the bribery that largely controls legislation in the US, and so heavily influences other government action here.

On 13 December a disturbed man attacked 20 or more young pupils and at least one adult in an elementary school. 

A day later, another disturbed man attacked 20 or more young pupils and at least one adult in another elementary school.

Every victim of the first attack is still alive. Twenty-six victims of the second attack, twenty of them six or seven years old, died.

What was the difference? The first attacker was in Chengping China and had only a knife. The Sandy Hook attacker brought a semi-automatic assault rifle and two handguns. 

Guns do kill. All over the world, people in democracies understand that. They've sensibly persuaded their governments to protect them from guns. 

Even a few undemocratic governments understand that.

Not in the USA. Why? Because 5,400 US gun manufacturers make huge profits on gun sales, $13.6 billion in 2011, and nothing stops them from shovelling enough of that money to the NRA, and directly to politicians, to buy obstruction of effective gun control.

Is this corruption specific to finance and guns? No. It also pervades the US prison industry, the US pharmaceutical industry, the US health insurance industry, the US energy industry, US defence industries and the US media.

You're expecting Sandy Hook to trigger a big change in gun control in the US? 

Laurier LaPierre, R.I.P.

Today one of Canada's greatest citizens passed away at the age of 83. He was most famous as the co-host of the ground-breaking CBC-TV program This Hour Has Seven Days, but he was much more than that. A journalist, a teacher, a high-school principal, the first openly gay member of the Canadian Senate, and one of the few broadcasters in the history of the CBC ever to be fired (along with his co-host, Patrick Watson), Mr. LaPierre infuriated his bosses at the CBC and simultaneously won the hearts of the Canadian public from coast to coast to coast.

This Hour made television history, and not only in Canada. Its influence spread around the world, and it served as the model for television journalism worldwide. Its most obvious descendant, in American terms, was 60 Minutes, which although nowhere near as sharp and confrontational, in its own sphere also pushed the envelope. Laurier (one cannot help but call him by his first name, he had that kind of relationship with his audience -- one of intimacy, of empathy, and of absolute fearlessness when dealing with powerful politicians.

In one of his most famous and provocative interviews, with the mother of Stephen Truscott, who was found guilty of the rape and murder of his classmate and sentenced to be hanged -- at the age of 14. A year later, Truscott's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In 2001, Truscott filed for a judicial review of his conviction. In 2007, after examining more than 250 pieces of evidence, the Ontario Court of Appeal declared his conviction a miscarriage of justice, and acquitted Truscott of the murder. During the interview with Truscott's mother, Laurier was seen to shed a tear, and this perhaps more than any other action sealed Laurier's fate with the CBC.

He so enraged CBC executives at the time that they not only fired Laurier and co-host Patrick Watson, but they also cancelled the show itself, as if determined to eradicate all traces not only of LaPierre and Watson, but of the program itself. This action inspired a nationwide protest the likes of which neither CBC nor Canada at large had ever seen.

Since then, a number of documentaries and books have been published describing the program, its influence and its wars. In its wake have come a number of vaguely similar shows (CBC's The Fifth Estate and Marketplace, CTV's W5, and others), but none have had the same impact as This Hour. It galvanized the nation, and no other journalistic program has ever gathered more viewers. It was almost as if it were a National Hockey League broadcast. Millions of Canadians gathered around the tube once a week, with a palpable aura of excitement.

As a Senator, Laurier continued in his fearless ways. He was a joy to behold, and he will never be forgotten -- even, and perhaps especially by, his enemies. He will be missed by a grateful nation.