Garth Turner; what next?

I recall back in my Decima Research days during riding tracking and polling programs we couldn’t interview on a Saturday night if say the Montreal Canadians were playing the Toronto Leafs for fear of biasing the sample. The theory being that opinion-rich couch-potatoes in the form of a beer-drinking hockey fan might not come to the phone, thereby skewing the Random Digit Dialing sampling process. Or, that Leaf fans pissed off at Harold Ballard might not be in a proper frame of mind to render a political opinion. Back in the day we also had our “news antenna” up for anything else that might affect the data. All good practices according to strict and conventional methodological market research practices.

Personally, I am not always a fan of such restrictions, although sometimes the safeguards are warranted and we adhere to them when we have to. However, sometimes it’s more than just a little-bit fortuitous to be in field, especially qualitatively, if something huge happens mid-stream.

Case in point, in the span of the past 12 days, Garth Turner held six previously and long-ago scheduled Town Hall meetings (Focus Groups), and near smack in the middle he was essentially fired. He was not fired by the people he reports to mind you, his constituents that elected him, but rather by one other elected official, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and his handful of appointees. These divine folks see it as their job to initiate all the decision making and to carry-out the will of the supreme being, including rubbing-out anyone who objects.

I had the privilege of attending, and listening attentively, to all six town halls and I can tell you that from a strict methodological perspective, I would not have had it any other way than to be “in field” when the proverbial dung collided with a propeller. Had we been in field with a quantitative survey, I agree, the numbers would be all shot-to-hell. But that’s not what we were doing. Numbers don’t even come into play in a focus group, at least not in a statistically scientific or meaningful manner.

We were holding very informal, very open, and very deep and heartfelt discussions about the way people felt about anything THEY wanted to talk about. Be that a room of a couple of dozen people wanting to talk about the Environment, Afghanistan, Same Sex Marriage, or Tax Reform, or in a room of only 4 people where the bulk of the discussion centered on an elderly rural woman’s concern about how much bottled water we are, quite literally, allowing to be marketed down our throats instead of taking advantage of the existing best quality and most economical form of delivery, the tap.

Here’s the rub and why the timing of our research didn’t just not matter, it was actually a good thing … a very good thing. Back in my Decima days, our concern was that a major event, say another Maple Leaf loss to a Pee Wee team from Gem Alberta might skew how people felt about say Free Trade, National Unity, or what animal should grace the back of the $1 coin, now called a Loonie.

In this instance, however, the news of Garth’s expulsion from Stephen Harper’s graces, and how it came about, has ZERO effect on what people think about the Environment, Afghanistan, Same Sex Marriage, or Tax Reform. Indeed, about the ONLY thing that changed, mid-stream, was the sense of outrage most people expressed about THEIR voice in the form of “Garth Turner” being ignored.

Just because Garth Turner got fired for expressing what most of his constituents feel about say the environment or tax reform, we did not observe in the post-ousting town halls a constituency suddenly fearfully scurrying to change their views. The constituents of Halton don’t now suddenly feel, just because Stephen Harper said don’t talk about it, that it’s okay to not worry too much about pumping CO2 into the atmosphere for another 44 years, or the tax system is fine as it is. It should not surprise you, or the PMO therefore, that Garth Turner isn’t fearfully scurrying either. He’s just doing what his real bosses are telling him to do and that, more than anything else, remained very clear this past weekend.

Resign? Yikes! Just mentioning the “R” word at town halls drew loud groans and hisses. “Don’t change a thing” was the clear message from most. Maintain your independence, give Green a study. Only a minority said go back and “kiss butt.” The truly interesting finding when we dug a little deeper into this latter category, is we found even the kiss-butt category didn’t really mean it. Upon further probing we find they don’t want Garth to change his views on say the environment; rather they want him to try and find a way, within the Conservative party, read as the PMO, to make them come over to Garth and his ideas, not the other way around.

It was extremely interesting and a fluke chance that we happened to be “in field” physically to really get a sense and appreciate what the treatment of Garth by the PMO means to people. We learned how they really feel about it, and above all as afforded by a qualitative process, we learned why they feel the way they do. It was, at times, truly sobering.  

To the methodological purists out there who say no I am wrong, that given the timing, even the qualitative data is skewed, I say this – you just don’t get it do you?

As a result of being in field before and during the incident, we were perfectly poised and positioned to assess exactly how people felt about Garth Turner before the incident and especially as it was happening. We got to hear it, see it, and especially feel it real time, both in the physical and virtual worlds. Better yet, in a few weeks or a few months we can and will repeat the exercise and gather what all researchers strive to collect; a very precise and  measurable understanding of the change that occurs over time. I dare say, this morning Stephen Harper and Doug Finley don’t have the kind and quality of knowledge and information we have today. In fact, what I believe Stephen Harper has, based on our research, is not a true appreciation for what is about to happen in the next few weeks, months, and years.

As one participant pointed out, “this could be a watershed moment in Canadian history.” But as another retorted, “take a close look at what are believed to be watershed moments … five years later, history often shows us there is no such thing as watershed moments.”   

Garth’s response to the latter participant’s comment was especially telling of the kind of person Garth Turner is: “Thanks” Garth said, “for that healthy dose of reality.” The difference being, Garth was truly was thankful and took the comment to heart.

For those in politics, and especially those of us in the business of measuring politics, there is a danger that we start to drink our own kool-aid after a while. It’s something I work very hard at doing, staying objective, but I admit not even I am completely immune to the effects of being involved. I am sure, in fact I know first-hand, the same can be said of the greats in Allan Gregg when he was advisor to Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney. We are all at risk. But in the end, we are not so much measured by our ability to remain objective, but in our ability to be right and strategic.

Famous journalists and editorialists love to remind us that Canadians, on average, think about politics less than 12 seconds per month. But that is the watershed difference that has begun to change in my view. The digital democracy is what’s allowing and encouraging people to think longer and more thoughtfully about politics. I have been carefully watching this change, as it is taking place, perhaps closer than any other analyst. As a result, I am 99.9% sure we have properly assessed the local data thus far, and 95% sure we have equally assessed what is going on Provincially and Nationally. Based on this assessment, if Stephen Harper isn’t worried, he should be.

The watershed moment has nothing to with what happened to Garth Turner last week. As I first wrote prior to the last election, Garth Turner would “nearly single-handedly reshape Canadian politics.” I said this because I recognized, long ago, what the impact was going to be of Garth Turner’s use of the digital democracy. As I already wrote [click here] a few days ago, Nearly seven months ago before any of this happened, John Ibbitson of the Globe and Mail on March 28, 2006, wrote "Kick Garth Turner out of caucus? They'd be kicking out the future of Canadian politics." At least one reputable and significant political scientist and journalist also “got it” back then, even if Stephen Harper still doesn’t get it as recently as last week.

The watershed moment, therefore, was not in fact a single moment but rather a period of many-many months when Garth Turner’s particular use of the digital democracy arrived and developed on the scene. This is why, in my opinion, the watershed moment has legs. For the very reason that it did not occur in a moment but rather it developed relatively slowly and methodically over time.

Based on this assessment and with the usual all-important caveat of all things being equal, the future for Garth Turner is very bright and the future for Stephen Harper is very dim. Stephen Harper’s dim future is a certainty. Garth Turner’s bright future depends on what he does next.

As a European woman in broken English said yesterday in Kilbride: “Misteh Toorner, you-you goh hend maked-de decision dets hasid to be make … vee trast you!” 

And there concludes the public portion of my analysis. The rest of my report, including my specific recommendations to Garth, has been personally and confidentially delivered to the man himself. It is my hope, that for the good of the residents of Halton, the Province of Ontario and the entire country, that my recommendations will play themselves out in the coming weeks, months, and years. And, unlike the role of the chosen few inside the PMO, I will not be the one to make or communicate the final decision. I can assure you that after a period of consultation in which his constituents will drive most, if not all of the decision, Mr. Turner will make the decision and he won’t hide behind his decision the way Mr. Harper did last week in ousting Garth Turner.

Indeed, you are just as likely to hear about Garth’s eventual decision, even before me and on his blog. How’s that for genuine openness and transparency?