Autumnal Fading of the Insolation

The waning of summer has now been replaced by the rapid decline of the autumn as the sun passes the equinox. This is the time of year when the daily rate of change in sunlight -- the interval between sunrise and sunset -- is at its greatest. As we all know, as the days grow shorter and the sun gets lower in the sky the amount of energy we receive from the sun decreases. The why of it is pretty straight-forward although perhaps it is less clear just how great is the difference.

When I was a child and I first learned these facts I can clearly remember standing outside in the frigid winter air and looking at the sun hanging low in the south. It was cold but the sun seemed just as bright (or even brighter due to all the reflecting snow on the ground). I knew that the sun was no further away in the winter -- it's actually closer in the northern hemisphere winter -- and since I was facing it full on the energy I received should also be identical. This is in fact close to the truth, excepting the attenuation due to the longer path sunlight took through the atmosphere to reach my face.

The energy we receive from the sun by facing it, unfortunately, does not hold when you consider the wider expanse of the Earth's surface, both land and sea, which is what counts when it comes to weather and the seasons. At lower elevation angles, the energy is spread over a larger area, which directly lowers the flux. This is called solar insolation, and it is usually measured in watts per square meter, as power crossing a surface. Integrate by time and you get the energy, which matters when you have to take into account length of day.

This is all very qualitative and probably tells no one anything they don't already know. However I like to look into the details since it is intuitive that there are some interesting dynamics at play. For example, during the summer at higher latitudes the days are long, far longer than in the tropics, and the sun is high enough in the sky that the effect of sunlight spreading should be minimal. It should also be evident that at both equinoxes the total daily insolation should only depend on latitude, decreasing as one moves away from the equator, since daylight is 12 hours everywhere on the globe. In winter, the cooling effect due to latitude should be accentuated, and especially so in the arctic and antarctic which for a time has not daylight at all.

It is actually quite easy to do the calculation if you have a little bit of trigonometry at your fingertips. All you need to do is figure out when during the day the sun is in the sky and track its elevation between sunrise and sunset. If, like me, your trigonometry lessons are lost in the dim past you turn to the internet. If you do this you will quickly locate the equations for the sun's declination -- its angular displacement from the celestial equator -- and for the solar elevation angle. One then plugs these equations into a spreadsheet, enters a date and a latitude and spit out the numbers. Except that there are a couple of complications we need to deal with.

First, there is the matter of calculus since a proper calculation requires integrating the solar elevation angle over the time between sunrise and sunset. I took the easy way out and did a numerical integration with half-hour steps, which is a simple operation on a spreadsheet. The second is accounting for all the confounding factors if you want to achieve accuracy: the Earth's elliptical orbit, atmospheric scattering at various incidence angles, local terrain, and so forth. I opted for simplicity by discarding all these items and reduced the significant digits to two. The numerical integration adds its own inaccuracies but this is only a few percent.

With a tip of the hat to the prodigal spherical cow I proceeded to calculate. A summary of some interesting results is in the following table. Since watts and joules and all that stuff is not intuitive to most people I opted to normalize daily solar insolation where a value of 1.0 represents one hour of insolation with the sun standing still at the zenith. That is, directly overhead.

If you peruse the table you should notice some items of interest. One is that the loss of insolation in winter (it's at a minimum at the solstice, give or take a few days) is dramatic once you get to higher latitudes. I chose Iqaluit for my northernmost location since it's just south of the Arctic Circle. Edmonton gets only half the insolation of Ottawa, and Iqaluit gets only one-tenth of that, being only about 1.5% that Quito on the equator received on that same date.

The second interesting item is that at this same date Quito does not get its maximum insolation despite being on the equator. This is because the sun is in the northern sky by just enough to drop the insolation by about 10% from when it is at a maximum, both equinoxes. These are the two dates on which the sun crosses the zenith.

For me, the most striking result is the insolation at the summer solstice. All of these Canadian cities have a higher insolation than anywhere in the tropics. Even Iqaluit gets about the same amount as us southerners. This is of course due to the extra long summer days, when the sun barely gets below the horizon during the brief night, and compensates nicely for the lower solar elevation angle. More interesting is that the daily insolation gets even higher as you go north. This is because the daylight is 24 hours yet the sun is high enough in the sky to have half the intensity at the zenith even at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island, our most northerly point of land. But you have to time your visit to there just right because the warm sun doesn't last for long.

Only about 80 more days until we get our 2.0 zenith-hours of insolation here in Ottawa. I can hardly wait...until the day after.

Mayor is Not an Entry-Level Job

Although politics is not the most popular topic on this blog (if I can believe the web stats) I'll go out on a limb and a make a second consecutive post on politics (but there won't be a third). This time it's Ottawa municipal politics, but my chosen topic is relevant to other locales: that is, qualifications for the job of mayor.

Elections are a bit like job interviews where there are many hiring managers and a few applicants. After perusing the resume of a well-dressed candidate seated across from us we would quite understandably want to ask why someone with either no job experience at all or none that is relevant to the advertised position would take the trouble to even show up. This is especially true for a position where those candidates with ample and relevant experience are so unlikely to have a chance at winning the position, a position that is high profile and requires a great breadth of inter-personal, management and public relations skills.

It is of course possible for someone with minimal experience to make a good mayor (or CEO or any top-level position) but there is a terrible lack of evidence to believe it; while some people do have natural talent that can surprise, voting should not be an outright gamble on the unknown. Out of the 20 candidates for mayor there are just 4 with a notable profile. Of the remaining 16 -- none of whom has any conceivable chance of winning the election -- few appear to have much experience relevant to someone aspiring to become mayor.

This is not to say they have nothing of value to say, and indeed some have made good points. In a way I wish some of them were more electable since the 4 front-runners do not appeal to me at all. O'Brien invents his platform seeming at random based on whatever pops into his head -- such as his proposal to write the city budget himself -- while Watson has a glib tongue with no notable accomplishments to his favour, and a previous tenure of mayor that is mostly forgettable. Doucet seems to have a mix of reasonable and bizarre points in his platform, and Haydon is an angry man with good reason to be angry, but no clear platform that makes any sense. Of course the choice will in actuality be between O'Brien and Watson which only saddens me since they are the only two that appear to resonate with the entire population, in both positive and negative senses. Of the two, Watson has an unfortunate advantage in that all he has to do is call attention to O'Brien's peculiar policy proposals.

As to the other 16, I suggest they aim for a lower office where they can demonstrate their grasp of municipal issues and an ability to get things done. They should focus so much on working but rather on leading; a mayor, or any corporate manager for that matter, succeeds by effectively directing the efforts of others and by wise allocation of capital and time. There are lots of positions in community associations, special events, charitable organizations, and even on council, where they can publicly put themselves out there and demonstrate they have what it takes to be mayor.

I know that some of them are only running because they see the election coverage as a platform to promote specific issues that they feel strongly about. That's their right, but it is also my right to ignore them.

For myself, all I can say is how annoyed I am that Alex Cullen is off the ticket. He would have lost, which is what I wanted, and also not returned as my representative in Bay ward. I can now only hope that by flip-flopping between running for mayor, council and (allegedly) MLA next year, he has suitably tarnished his credibility with his base that we get some new blood in council. With a few years experience, perhaps that person will even become a future mayoral candidate.

Wedge Politics Need a Better Wedge

Splitting large logs for firewood is takes more than simply whacking away with an axe. You need to identify the weak point and focus on it. There is a tool for that: a splitting wedge. Once you have a narrow opening in the log you insert the wedge. You then take a sledgehammer to it, driving it deeper. It digs in and not only holds its place, it pushes the sides apart. This is a great tool if you rely on muscle power alone.

Wedge politics is similar. You need a good wedge to succeed at sundering the electorate. But is the long gun registry the right sort of wedge and is it being properly wielded. I don't think so. First, it is an issue near and dear to groups on either side of the debate: most gun owners and gun control advocates. Both sides have their reasons and arguments (they aren't always the same) but I won't attempt to judge them.

The reason I won't judge is because from my perspective this issue is a poor wedge: I just don't care enough. I can't help but see all the media coverage and all the arguments and political posturing, but I not only don't have a position, I don't hold a strong position. If you ask me my opinion on Tuesday I might say one thing, then on Friday I'll sway over to the other side. It may annoy or infuriate those with strong opinions on the matter -- since they are often so eager to get others to adopt their positions -- but my opinion is weak and wavering, and is likely to remain so. The why of it is because the benefits of the registry seem vague or uncertain at best, while on the other hand it costs some money, but not an onerous amount, to keep it going. Although I know many gun owners I don't own one myself so it's no burden on me, and it doesn't seem like much of a burden on them, as least so far as I can tell. Sure I could be completely wrong, but I don't care enough to worry about it much. It may do some good and the cost is modest so I just wish the issue would go away so that the government can get back to important tasks like tackling the economy and the deficit.

To be an effective wedge an issue must purchase a hold on people's attention, just like that wedge working at a log. Except that this wedge keeps slipping and popping out, making the job of splitting the wood laborious. If most people are like me, and I strongly suspect they are, the task may indeed be futile. In the few moments between inserting the wedge (again) and picking up the sledgehammer, the wedge has fallen out or will spring out sideways at the first blow. The woodsman may curse, pointlessly inspect the wedge one more time, and try again, but it doesn't help: the same thing occurs time after time. He can't seem to see that the wedge is defective or not the right one for the task at hand.

Soon the issue will fade for most people except those in swing ridings the Conservatives will keep hammering away at, hoping that the wedge will work on that sort of log. There are few of that sort of log in the wood pile, but if that's the only wedge you have or are willing to use then that's what you do, if you're them.

Eventually there will be an election and I suppose the registry will pop up again as an issue the Conservatives will desperately wield once more. I think they need to find another wedge if splitting wood -- I mean the electorate -- is their objective.

University Admissions and Selection Bias

I'm at the age where I see many teenagers, both relatives and children of friends, heading off to university this fall. As all students and parents know, it is quite a challenge to find the best or most appropriate school. However this comes after having made applications to the preferred institutions, some or most of which are rejected. One of the criteria used is a measure of student performance.

The better the school, or often just the better the reputation, the highest the admission standards. When universities are ranked, it should be no surprise that the higher those standards, the higher the achievement of its graduates. This is entirely expected from a purely statistical perspective, reflecting the selection bias of the admission standards. In other words, unless the university is truly awful, good students ensure good graduates. It does not necessarily reflect the superior ability of the school to educate.

As a hiring manager in the technology industry this attribute of these schools has always posed a dilemma.  Some managers will unabashedly skew their preferences toward graduates from those schools, and especially if that school was also their alma mater. Yet this is unfair to other candidates since they are often of higher quality. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that not all high-achievers are interested in or can afford to attend these schools, and may for financial reasons stick to where the cost is low. They may choose, for example, to live with their parents and attend the school in their home town.

The second reason has two parts: the quality of the learning environment and the ability of cream to always rise to the top. A consequence of selection bias is that it can hide a mediocre learning environment. Good, intelligent students will do well often in spite of the environment, in any school. This should not be surprising since that is likely what they've already done in high school: they've learned to productively learn at their own initiative. That initiative will continue to serve them well in university and beyond.

We should expect that a good school which admits an A student will, several years later, produce an A graduate. Anything less should be a travesty providing the student's life has not taken an abrupt turn in the interim. But a good school, no matter their standards, will also turn a B student into an A graduate, and even raise a C student into at least a B graduate. If you only admit A students, the grade point averages of the graduating class tells little on its own about the ability of the school to educate.

All the selection bias (high admission standards) of a school tells us is that the student has already proven himself or herself to be a high-achieving high school graduate. The standards themselves add nothing to this evaluation. Yet those standards do have one important value that is undeniable: they ensure that students are surrounded by other high-achieving students. Anyone who has gotten a science or engineering degree will know that some of the best learning comes from rubbing shoulders with intelligent peers. This alone can make up for many deficiencies in the formal teaching environment.

It is possible to ignore the high-admission standards of brand name institutions if they can meet just a few important performance metrics. Here is my list:

• Professors should be known to be good teachers and accomplished in their fields of study. A good proportion of them should have experience outside of academia, especially in the private sector. Many excellent professors can be found in lesser institutions since there are only so many positions in the select few top schools, and so good people are found in other places.
• The admission standards should be just high enough to ensure that a proportion of the students are high-achievers, to help create the needed learning environment. The sad truth is that even in schools with low standards, that proportion will increase after the freshman year since the poor students will not progress.
• Good facilities are needed to make research, studying and living both convenient and reasonably comfortable. Happily this is easier today than when I attended university since the internet adds tremendous ability to ensure that current research and communication with experts is much the same from any school.

There are of course other important attributes, although I tend to dislike those measured in most surveys. Use what you will, but just don't get blinded by the selection bias of high admission standards.

Stock Panics, Rational Pricing and Level 3

Every morning as part of my routine I check the markets for interesting activity and news. This goes wider than my portfolio since I want to get the big picture view. Every day you will find one or more stocks (usually more) that are poised to make a big up or down move -- or already have if there's an active pre-market -- due to significant news about the company. This may be scheduled earning, unscheduled earnings forecast changes, mergers and acquisitions, debt issues, win or loss of a major deal, and so forth.

Usually I ignore most of these events since they rarely affect my portfolio. Sudden pressures on a stock's price also attracts the attention of day traders (which I am not) since they can profit from the short-term volatility and trading volume that these events often initiate. For example, this morning RIM became "trader bait" after announcing their quarterly results. If you check out their stock chart you'll also notice that the price was at a precarious point where it was poised to make a monumental move up off support or down to new intermediate-term lows. As of this writing, it is bouncing higher, but that could change. It is also no coincidence that the price was at that decision point since it is fully reflective of the uncertainty of holders of the stock and anticipation from potential buyers and short-sellers.

However my interest today is to talk about another company that popped onto my screen earlier this week when they announced unexpected news, and how that affected the share price: Level 3. I hesitated when I saw their name show up in the pre-market news on Tuesday since, being the telecom I am, I knew the company and wondered what was going on. It turned out they were issuing $175M in convertible debt instruments to raise funds for general operations. This moved the market because that represented ~11% of their market cap at the time of the announcement and Level 3 has a sad history of carrying a disproportionate debt burden that has bled the company of operating income. The interest rate and conversion price also promised to pressure the stock downward.

The question then becomes, just how much should the stock price move in response to this news, assuming that there is some rationality in the market. Yet you won't learn this from the stock's subsequent moves. Like throwing an electrical switch, the circuit's change from one voltage level to another is fast, but not instantaneous, and there are confounding high-frequency transients, overshooting, undershooting, ripple and, finally, damping before the voltage settles in to its new level. News like that from Level 3 is much like throwing that switch, except that the ultimate post-news share price level is not nearly as predictable as in an electrical circuit. The combination of uncertainty, company history, size of the debt offering and lots of trader interest promised a wild ride. This is just what happened.

The increase of trade volume was enormous on Tuesday, and was somewhat lower on Wednesday as it entered its "damping" phase. Further contributions to my switch analogy are the slight rise before Monday close (before the announcement was made), two sharp spike downs (at the open and close on Tuesday) and a ripple that gradually subsided, but is still ongoing to a degree. There is no natural or rational new price level just as there was none before the announcement. Everyone, except the day traders, is calculating and guessing, and also wondering what everyone else thinks the price ought to be.

Even if one were to assume that, in the long-term, that the "convertible senior notes" are fully dilutive to the stock, this would lower the share price by that amount, which in this case is that aforementioned 11%. If you are very bold, or naive, and assume that Monday's closing price of $1.16 is a rational price that reflects all aspects of the company's assets, debt and enterprise value, Tuesday's close should have been about $1.05. It actually closed at $0.95. By the end of Thursday, two days later, the price did rise to $1.00 but this is still low by 5%. It seems there is doubt in the minds of investors and traders that the previous $1.16 price represented fair value.

I am not going to attempt to justify any particular price for Level 3 shares: it is beyond my competence and interest, and would in any case be highly unreliable, just like Level 3's business prospects. This is a damaged company that has been fighting its self-created devils for the past decade. I've been to their Broomfield, Colorado offices numerous times and it can be a bit spooky since there are hall after hall of empty dark offices that reminded me of a ghost town. They have a real business, but one that is still suffering a hangover from the dot-com era.

It is also worthwhile to understand where all that sudden trading volume comes from. There is a certain amount coming from natural buyers and sellers -- investors and institutions that hold their shares for an extended period -- but a lot of the volume comes from short-term traders, many or most of whom start and end the trading day in cash. They may each make numerous trades during the day, lured by volatility and volume to eke out a few points per trade, but they will hold zero shares by the close or shortly thereafter. This is a good reason that, if you are more interested in a long-term investment, to ignore the intra-day activity and focus on the closing price since that is more reflective of investor activity. You will likely find that in the majority of those intra-day transaction that one or both parties are traders; in effect they are acting as intermediaries between natural buyers and sellers, and attempting to profit from doing so.

Getting back to Level 3 itself, I have no idea what the share price ought to be now, and I had no idea what it ought to have been before the news. The price activity tells me that others are in the same boat. Some investors hope for better times while others believe the company is ultimately doomed by its debt burden or perhaps by competition from Akamai among others. This is a stock that is heavily infused with strong beliefs on both sides, fueled by enormous uncertainty. These are treacherous waters for small investors such as myself.

CRTC Decision 2010-632: Commissioner Denton's Dissenting Opinion

Last week I promised to follow up with a critique of Commissioner Timothy Denton's dissenting opinion on the CRTC's recently released Telecom Regulatory Policy 2010-632 on High-speed Wholesale Access. Luckily I only answer to myself when I miss a deadline, but be assured that I gave myself a stern talking to regarding my tardiness. I promised myself that I'd do better in future, but I have some doubts about my sincerity on that score.

So let's get right into it. You can read along in the actual CRTC decision to see the full text since I will only show selected extracts from Denton's opinion. I'll just mention right now that I really dislike most of what he said in his opinion so that you know what to expect.

This is a good decision, which does not go far enough. It keeps independent ISPs (Internet service providers) somewhat competitive, in the interests of the Canadian consumers and businesses. Yet it does not overcome the ambivalence that lies at the heart of the Commission’s decision-making in regard to the independent ISP sector. It neither eliminates them nor allows them the scope to compete effectively. It maintains them in a kind of regulatory limbo.

It has to be said up front that the only reason the 3rd-party ISP business even exists is because of regulatory intervention in the market. To speak of regulatory limbo is a ludicrous statement in this context. Further, this limbo he speaks of is that middle ground between allowing the unfettered free market to operate as it will -- which would eliminate those ISPs -- and having the government micro-managing the internal business operations of private corporations to make them serve every desire of their natural competitors.

While there is ample room for opinion and debate, at least the CRTC is attempting to strike a reasonable balance between oligopolistic market practices which would harm consumers and forcing the carriers into becoming public utilities, which would the harm the health of their businesses -- impacting employees and shareholders, among others -- and handicap them in the global market: such as when foreign companies, that are not so fettered, set up shop in Canada or our carriers seek to extend their operations in other countries. In these difficult matters it helps to try to see both sides and not be swayed by personal interests which might favour one party over the other.

As regards the eventual elimination of wholesale services, I have doubts about whether wireless based alternatives will ever be sufficiently cheap and capacious to justify their elimination. This is a future state of affairs on which it would be superfluous to speculate, and I let the matter rest for the unfolding of events.

On this point I strongly agree with Denton. As I mentioned in my article last week, the CRTC is not only at odds with the government on whether wireless could be competitive with wired broadband service, but they also appear blind to the technological trajectory. Wireless remains the least capital intensive way to build networks and is therefore best positioned to deliver competition that does not require government intervention in the market. On this point I believe the government has it right and the CRTC is wrong.

Where I depart from my friends on the panel is in relation to a technical arrangement called CO-based ADSL access service.[46]  The advantage of such an arrangement, if it were brought into being, would be to allow an independent ISP to get behind the traffic management measures imposed by the incumbent carrier. The effect of doing so would be to allow substantial service innovations, so that the lessee of the wholesale service could rearrange the technical characteristics of the signal without harming the underlying network, and which would allow it to offer quality of service guarantees, different bit rates, capacities and prices...

My concern is that the Commission is not engaging the steps that would be consistent with allowing significant service innovation, and doing so on rather flimsy grounds that it knows better than industry participants what the difficulties might be. It has done this both in relation to CO-based ADSL access service, and with regard to local head-end-based cable access service. It has not investigated the matter in depth, in the sense of spending extra time investigating these matters. It has relied in part upon cost figures from the parts of the industry opposed to these possibilities. I think the Commission would have been better off looking into these assertions in greater depth than we did.

The ellipsis is where I skip over a lengthy, and in my mind simplistic and naive, history lesson on the benefits of open networks and the innovation that comes from small, entrepreneurial companies, which I feel is so condescending as to be insulting to the industry players participating in this proceeding; I think these companies and their leadership teams don't need lessons from a regulator on obvious business dynamics.

I might have forgiven him for this, considering that he may have been attempting in a way to educate members of the public of these matters, until he went on to suggest that the CRTC is better than the business they regulate at understanding the sophisticated business practices, technologies and engineering practices they employ. It is of course right that the CRTC ought to inquire deeply enough that they can challenge the network engineering and financial analyses that the carrier present to support their positions, but to suggest that they can do better? Perhaps Mr. Denton is in the wrong line of business and ought to apply for a management position in one of these companies.

Although I can believe that he is an intelligent and thoughtful individual, from the bio of him posted on the CRTC web site I can see nothing that would qualify him for a senior position in a telecommunications company other than perhaps in a government relations role where he can interact with...the CRTC. Interestingly, however, he was counsel to CAIP back in 1990s. In his opinion he does wax poetic about the heady days when ISPs flourished, before broadband replaced dial-up, so perhaps that is why he has some attraction to the current plight of the retail, 3rd-party ISPs.

I shudder at the thought of Mr. Denton or the CRTC attempting to suggest or mandate reconfiguration or equipment investment in the carriers' networks. However, I am pretty sure that this goes beyond the CRTC's power, for which we can all be thankful.

The large carriers have the inclination and ability to convey their messages to the public and the political class relentlessly and effectively. That message can be reduced to the simple proposition that they should at all times be allowed to maximize profits because only then can they make the investments they need to keep Canada internationally competitive. No matter what the profit margins are on leased equipment, wholesale services are always deemed to undermine profit maximization. It is a message constantly heard by the Commission and we have repeatedly found it to be without merit.

Networks are private property and derogations from the full rights of ownership are deeply suspect. In this view, those who lease equipment and services, regardless of the profit margins allowed by regulation, ought in principle not to exist, or if allowed to exist, they should have no rights to lease services at tariffed rates, but should have to negotiate the price.

Wow! I find it difficult to believe he could say something so obviously false about profit maximization and to imagine that the government has an obligation to not merely dictate what services the carriers are _required_ to offer, but to also allow their competitors a role in setting the prices. It's one thing to find a compromise, a middle ground between the public interest and private interest, but to hear the Commissioner willing to discard private interests entirely is a way out of line.

Contrary to his contention, there is a also very simple reason why wholesale reduces telco profitability: it enables more competition for the higher-value, higher-margin retail services that the telco sells. He, and indeed many others, may not care about telco profitability, but the impact can be substantial. I wrote about these internal telco business unit dynamics over two years ago when this blog was still very new.

Now imagine you are the executive in charge of wholesale products at Bell Canada. You are responsible for selling products that enable outside businesses, including competitors, to add value to Bell Canada's transport of bits. Every other executive in the company wants you to fail since you are enabling their competitors and therefore damaging their ability to meet their own business objectives. There is some fierce internal competition in these companies. Pity the unfortunate wholesale business head, fought and ostracized by his or her peers.

I have known some of these very executives in my time. No, not at Bell Canada, but in the US. When I say it's a dreadful job, I know first-hand from talking and working with them. Turnover was high since the entire corporate team did what they could to make wholesale fail. The smart or young ones left. Others rode the downward slide until they got a golden parachute or retired.

Commissioner Denton is either posturing or displaying an ignorance of what it takes to run a successful business. Just because Bell Canada and other carriers are big, profitable and dominant does not make them evil; they, like any business, have a responsibility to their employees and shareholders, and sometimes, unfortunately, that means they would prefer to not offer some services or to at least have the pricing power to generate profits.

The result is that the possibility for service innovation was turned down, without sufficient consideration, in my estimation. The current ambivalence about the role and legitimacy of smaller carriers continues. They are allowed to exist but denied the means to innovate. In a business with as much uncertainty as this, turning down the possibility for technical and business innovation seems a riskier move than letting it go ahead. To that extent, I dissent.

Denton has this completely wrong. It is not for him or the CRTC to decide which companies are the ones with the duty to innovate and move the industry forward: no regulator should be in the business of picking winners and losers, and then explicitly changing the ground rules to favour their preordained choice. Innovation does not have to come from small, non-facilities based ISPs.

In fact I would argue that they are not the innovators, but merely (though important) enablers of access to the real service innovators. These include companies like Google, Skype, Salesforce and Ebay, to pick a few prominent names, but also a plethora of small companies located around the globe, including right here in Canada and in Ottawa. Perhaps Mr. Denton would benefit from a trip a few kilometers west to meet with some of these innovators. He appears to not only be cavalier about protecting the tenets of Canada's free market economy and the reasonable rights of Canadians, including protecting the assets of the companies they invest in and operate, but he is also out of touch if he believes ISPs are the true innovators.

We do need those ISPs and healthy competition for internet access services since they contribute to the success and innovations of new Canadian businesses that depend on those networks to reach their customers both at home and around the world. As a consumer of internet access services and other internet-based services that broadband enables I do want healthy competition. I also know that an overly-interventionist regulator or government will inappropriately favour the easing of short-term consumer pain over the uncertain promise of enabling long-term business success stories. Because I strongly believe this level of CRTC intervention to be against Canada's wider interests I am appalled by many of the views expressed by Commissioner Timothy Denton in his dissenting opinion on CRTC decision 2010-632.

Digging Nokia Out of a Hole

Can a company regain its dominant position by changing its CEO? This is a common theme in business, with new examples nearly every day, although we usually only notice those companies that are especially prominent (or if they are in our investment portfolios). Nokia is now trying the same trick.

I have to wonder if the frequent fixation we have on the person at the top of a hierarchy is deeply-rooted in the human psyche. Whether it be president, CEO, dictator, general or heroic action figure, the fixation of our attention on the archetypal alpha male (or female) figure distracts us from the many thousands or millions of individuals in the hierarchy that contribute to the organization success or failure. This does not mean that a CEO change is unimportant, in fact it can be crucial, but whether it can have a positive impact depends on many, many factors. We sometimes have an almost comic book view of power and power structures since the majority of people, as employees, have rarely wielded real power in an organization. Those that have done so know just how difficult it can truly be.

A CEO often has substantial power, but it is never unlimited. When anyone is give the responsibility and accountability to achieve a lofty goal it is incumbent on those assigning the objective to give the person the necessary tools to get it done. When that person is the CEO, the giver of the tools is the board of directors. The toolkit includes capital and authority. The CEO combines those tools with his or her own skills, connections and other assets to do the job.

One immediate challenge is that business operations cannot be changed quickly. That alone is responsible for the company's existence -- its customers and revenue -- and provides a base, and the time, for the CEO to redirect and invigorate the business. Nokia is blessed in this respect since it has a strong base business, although one that is losing share in the high-end, high-margin, high-growing smart phone market. More importantly, its product pipeline appears to be running on inertia with little coming to market that is likely to change the situation. Elop, the new CEO, has quite the challenge on his hands.

To give an example of how an ailing, large technology company can fail even with a new, capable CEO, we need look no further than Nortel. By all accounts Mike Zafirovski is a talented and capable CEO. Yet he failed utterly at the task of renewing Nortel. There were many reasons for this but to my mind there were a couple that stand out: the product and technology decline had gone on for so long that not only were customers abandoning the company, there was nothing substantial in the product pipeline; and, the culture in senior management was out of touch and internally-focused on its own difficulties, not those of customers. There is also some question as to whether the board gave Zafirovski the authority he needed to solve these monumental problems or if they impeded his attempts to change management and inject capital into the areas where it was needed. Big holes like the ones that Nortel and Nokia have dug themselves into took a lot of digging by many hands, not only that of the CEOs.

One thing that a company's investors can fixate on, especially those that come on board when the pain is most acute, is that if the new CEO achieves any measure of success the returns will be enormous. One extraordinary example is Apple: looks what Steve Jobs accomplished, and how far they've come from the $7 share price before iPod and iTunes began to conquer the world. Any investor in a sick but formerly great company can dream of such out-sized returns. However the reason that share prices go down to such depths is that it is uncommon for the turnaround to succeed; often the shares either go to $0 (like Nortel) or the company is liquidated.

Apart from its still-dominant global position in the mobile phone market, Nokia has some definite talents when it come to phone technology and design. Unfortunately their typically excellent radio performance is not recognized by customers, who will often not notice or overlook if the product draw is strong. The recent very public airing of Apple's difficulties in this regard demonstrate that very nicely. Assuming that Nokia's design talent hasn't all left the company, there is an opportunity for the new CEO to empower their designers to take some chances, to make a few mistakes in the hope that they can come up with phones and other mobile or portable devices that are unique, attractive and can inspire.

As many have noted, however, a deeper technology problem is their dependence on Symbian as the platform OS. It is old and difficult to modernize, with next generation versions coming too late and lagging in features. There are also the business structures and partnerships that are dependent on Symbian, where if they make drastic changes they stand to risk disrupting their ongoing business by alienating the carriers, users and app developers. However if they don't change all of them will abandon Symbian, and therefore Nokia as well, if they do not make a bold move.

This is another critical area where the new CEO can have a major and positive impact. I believe that they will have little choice in their corporate renewal in leaving Symbian behind since they stand to gain more than they will lose. In my opinion it is very likely that within several months Nokia will announce their shift to Android for their future high-end phones. They may delay publicizing the fact until the first phone is closer to release. I just don't see any other way they can move quickly to become a contender in the smart phone market. Symbian can continue to be used for the other, lower-end products for some time, so that the move is not too disruptive, but it is likely that a strategy shift of this magnitude will ultimately doom Symbian.

What I now want to see is whether Nokia board is ready for this degree of change and risk, and whether Elop can successfully steer this large company and its culture onto a new trajectory. Unlike Nortel, I think Nokia has an excellent chance of pulling this off, by exploiting their many strengths, if they make the necessary commitment. If they don't do it, I fear they will soon be relegated to selling low-margin $25 phones (but lots of them!) to new users in developing countries.

Update: An opposing viewpoint regarding Nokia switching to Android, but agreeing on other points.

Apple Offers App Developers Some Certainty

As someone involved in mobile application development, Apple's policies and practices regarding app development have always made me uncomfortable, as it has many, many others. One of the most unacceptable from a purely business perspective has been their app approval process. Not only has been little certainty whether, after you've put in your investment, they will permit your app onto their market (the only legitimate way to distribute to iPod and iPhone owners), you can never be sure it's due to some unwritten policy, the reviewer being in a particularly bad mood that day, or because your app may competitive with a current or future strategic initiative of their own.

Despite this dreadful uncertainty, Apple has been enormously successful in attracting a large stable of app developers, both small shops (including individual hobbyists) and some of the world's largest companies, many of whom are making a decent business of it. In other words, despite the criticism Apple had lots of reason not to make changes since their policy to this point has worked very well indeed.

Yet Apple is now officially loosening some of their more restrictive policies and coming clean on their app approval criteria. Uncertainty is one of those terrible things that can scare off any investor or businessman, so the change can only be a good thing. Less uncertainty means more predictability and less arbitrariness in those that might choose to develop apps for iOS products. As John Gruber says in his Daring Fireball blog:

**The existence of this document is a very welcome change, and it goes a long way to answering much of the criticism regarding prior controversial App Store rejections, by putting in writing the rules that are actually used by the reviewers.**

Regrettably the new policy is not public, only becoming available after you've paid your money and signed up to their developer agreement, which is not really as transparent as they ought to be. Of course this does not mean that it will not end up becoming widely available (there are far too many potential points of leakage), and in fact it already has. Apple's non-legalistic summary language is a fun read:

• We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don’t need any more Fart apps.
• If your app doesn’t do something useful or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it may not be accepted.
• If your App looks like it was cobbled together in a few days, or you’re trying to get your first practice App into the store to impress your friends, please brace yourself for rejection. We have lots of serious developers who don’t want their quality Apps to be surrounded by amateur hour.
• We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, “I’ll know it when I see it”. And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.
• If your app is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps.

Of course the actual agreement text (including the above summary) goes into lengthy specifics, which you can find on the Wired site (hopefully this link remains valid for a while). Despite the disclosure of these criteria, Apple retains a great deal of latitude in rejecting apps, so there is no reason to believe that the situation will now be much different for many developers.

Still, it’s an important step. By publishing the guidelines, Apple mobile customers will be able to know what they can and can’t get on an iOS device versus, say, an Android phone. Also, third-party programmers will have a clearer sense of whether or not to invest in developing an app, whereas before they were subject to rejection without knowing what they weren’t allowed to do. However, some developers think parts of the guidelines could be more clear.

“By no means is what they put out today perfect,” said Justin Williams, developer of Second Gear software, who quit iPhone development last year. “There are some vague areas. But compared to where we were yesterday, it’s a big improvement.”

As some of the commenters on this Techcrunch article correctly note, the terms of service regarding use of user data continue to be a bone of contention. Privacy sounds good, and in general it is, there does have to be a balance between user privacy and reasonable commercial practices. This is an area where Google and other mobile ad companies had concerns with Apple since much of the sellable value of ad space is lost if the advertisers can't know as much about users as they can on other mobile platforms or on traditional web browsers.

I've gone and lost the link now, but Google did issue a statement that they can work with Apple's new policy on user data privacy. Presumably they believe that they have enough access to non-identifying user data to meet advertisers' needs.

Apart from my concerns about the practice as a user, I have also had concerns as a developer because of the personal data that mobile ad companies demand that Android app developers such as myself get from their users. For example, disclosing location and unique device identifiers to enable user tracking. I don't particularly care for this as either a user or as a developer, though I also know that most smart phone users are simply not concerned about it. The qualms come from not knowing how the advertisers or mobile ad distributers are using this data, while having to take responsibility for asking users to give their permission to disclose this data.

It is interesting to watch the different approaches taken on iOS and Android on user privacy and app approvals. I can't say that Apple is really out to protect users with their stronger stance on app and ad content. They have their own commercial interests in exploiting their control over the entire eco-system they control, but they also know that they must treat their customers better than they treat developers and advertisers if they are to retain their still dominant position in smart phones.

I have to wonder how much of their policy changes on app approvals, mobile ad services and 3rd-party app development tools has to do with their increasing comfort with the reins of control they enjoy or with the increasing thunder of the advancing Android army. The battle continues.

CRTC Decision 2010-632 on High-Speed Wholesale

It seems that I just can't help being fascinated with the ongoing series of decisions from the CRTC on access of 3rd-party ISPs to the incumbents access networks. One reason is that I have in the past been a bit of a professional telecommunications policy wonk, though mostly focused on the US. I also enjoy the dynamics of policy development on the part of regulators and legislators, which are so often at odd. Of course I am also a customer of broadband service, and in particular a 3rd-party ISP utilizing wholesale DSL from Bell Canada.

The telecom regulatory dynamics in Canada are particularly interesting at this time since the current government is not happy with the CRTC and its Commissioners and decisions since the CRTC is interventionist more than it is free-market oriented. This is a delicate balancing act since the broadband access networks are essentially monopolies, and it is reasonable to therefore expect the owners of those networks to exercise their market power to the extent they are permitted, but to be too overbearing on what they are required to do to promote competition and innovation impacts not only economic ideologies but also employees and shareholders of the incumbents, and that can have negative consequences for even those people that don't care about these matters. In other words, this is about politics, perhaps more than telecommunications policy regarding broadband competition.

Before moving on to the decision itself -- which I finally had a chance to read over the long weekend -- let's recall something I said recently about how politics and telecommunications regulation connect in the US:

At the top are five Commissioners, where the tradition is to have three, including the Chairman, affiliated with the party of the Administration, and the other two affiliated with the other party. This arrangement is easy to maintain in an effective two-party system, only requiring resignations, re-assignments and appointments soon after a presidential election.

In Canada's parliamentary system we do not give Commissioners the heave-ho after every election, their terms being unconnected to changes in government. Instead the government, if particularly unhappy with regulators, have to construct some justification for removal and then deal with the consequences in the House of Commons. The present government is no exception as we've seen on numerous occasions recently: nuclear safety, veterans' ombudsman, RCMP oversight, gun registry, among others, but not the CRTC. There have been some sniping back and forth in public statements of the Von Finckenstein and Cabinet ministers, but he's still in the CRTC and, as we'll see in a moment, still guiding the CRTC in opposition to the government's wishes.

Now it is time to review the basics of how the present decision, 2010-632 on high-speed wholesale access, ties into CRTC policy. As the CRTC nicely lays out in the opening paragraphs it is about promoting competition and consumer choice, but doing so (as mentioned above) with due regard to the business interests of the incumbents that are being ordered to provide access to all broadband speeds that they offer their own retail customers.

Competition drives innovation and provides consumers with a choice of service providers and service characteristics. The Commission notes that ILECs and cable carriers are offering their retail Internet services at increasingly higher speeds. The Commission considers that, at present, retail Internet service competition results primarily from services provisioned using wireline facilities. Other retail Internet services, such as those offered using wireless and satellite facilities, are not generally substitutes for wireline facilities at this time.

The Commission therefore finds that, at present, there is a continued need to require ILECs and cable carriers to make their existing wholesale high-speed access services – aggregated asymmetric digital subscriber (ADSL) access service and third-party Internet access (TPIA) service, respectively – available subject to a speed-matching requirement. Otherwise, in the Commission’s view, retail Internet service competition would not be sufficient to protect consumers’ interests...

The Commission expects that at a future date, competition among wireline-, wireless-, and satellite-based retail Internet service providers will be sufficient to protect consumers’ interests. At that time, the Commission will apply its essential services framework to the ILECs’ aggregated ADSL access services and the cable carriers’ TPIA services to determine whether they should no longer be mandated.

Back in an earlier decision on usage-based billing (UBB), 2010-255, they chose to limit resale in an effort to encourage facilities-based competition. In my opinion that was an odd place to draw the line on what services they were mandating the incumbents to wholesale. I think where things get really interesting in the present decision is that the CRTC is stating quite explicitly that wireless is not sufficient, at least not now, to offer sufficient competitive choices to consumers. This seems very much in conflict with the government which had overruled the CRTC to get Wind Mobile into the market since they see wireless as the proper vehicle to deliver competition, voice and data, by creating more facilities-based competitors. That is, getting more networks built, not ordering the incumbent carriers to compete with service providers to whom they must open their own networks.

52.  In the Commission’s view, however, the pricing considerations and capacity limitations associated with retail Internet services provisioned using wireless and satellite facilities make them less attractive as large-scale substitutes for wireline retail Internet services in geographic areas where these wireline services are available. The Commission notes, for example, that current prices for wireless- and satellite-based retail Internet services generally significantly exceed wireline retail Internet service prices for comparable service and that speed issues can occur as those systems’ capacities are approached.

The CRTC provides some history to their decision by describing how ISPs created a vibrant, competitive market for internet services back when dial-up was the only realistic choice for the vast majority of consumers.

7.  When the Commission made these decisions, competitive retail Internet service providers were able to provide their services on a dial-up basis, using the customer’s retail telephone service. Therefore, they did not need to use the incumbents’ facilities on a wholesale service basis. As the retail Internet service market began to evolve to higher speed retail Internet services, to ensure these services remained subject to competition sufficient to protect consumers’ interests, the Commission required that the ILECs and cable carriers make some of their high-speed access facilities available as wholesale services for competitors to use as inputs in the provision of retail Internet services.[8]

In other words, when broadband came onto the market, the telcos and cable companies had an unassailable competitive advantage because it was impossible for those ISPs to offer broadband services without access facilities of their own. With dial-up they exploited ordinary, and tariffed, business line services to reach their customers and the telcos, as common carriers, could do nothing about it except watch a burgeoning business opportunity get away from them. They knew that what they had in broadband was a superb tool to recapture those customers who had no reason to subscribe to a relatively poor service from the incumbents, such as Sympatico provided. It is no surprise that they would fight to retain the competitive advantage they have from the network they have built and is owned by their shareholders (that likely includes you if you are invested in a mutual fund).

No matter the economic and political forces, the CRTC is quite clear on what they see as their mission:

16.  On 10 December 2009, the Governor in Council issued Order in Council P.C. 2009-2007 (the Order in Council). The Order in Council directed the Commission to reconsider its determinations in the speed-matching decisions that (a) ILECs must provide their aggregated ADSL access services at speeds that match the speeds they provide for their retail Internet services, and (b) the speed-matching requirement is not limited to the ILECs’ end-to-end copper access facilities, and includes aggregated ADSL access services provisioned using hybrid copper-fibre facilities.

17.  The Order in Council directed that the Commission specifically consider whether

(a)    the speed-matching requirements unduly diminish the incentives to invest in new network infrastructure in general and, in particular, in markets of different sizes;

(b)   in the absence of the speed-matching requirements there would be sufficient competition to protect the interests of users;

(c)    the respective wholesale obligations imposed on incumbent telephone and cable companies are equitable or represent a competitive disadvantage; and

(d)   the impact of these wholesale requirements unduly impairs the ability of incumbent telephone companies to offer new converged services, such as Internet Protocol television (IPTV).

As the CBC reports in this article, the CRTC, incumbents and ISPs have disparate opinions and reasons for those opinions:

The CRTC is sticking to its guns and ordering big phone network owners such as Bell and Telus to offer smaller wholesale companies higher internet speeds, despite previous disagreement from the government... 

"The CRTC’s approach will entrench the duopolistic nature of the communications wireline services industry in many important markets and stifle the ability of competitors to provide new and innovative services," said Teksavvy's chief technology officer Marc Gaudrault in a statement...

Bell said the decision discourages investment in its networks and shows there is a lack of clarity in public policy...

"We need to know, which is it? Do we want as much network investment in Canada as possible, or not? Last year, cabinet sent this issue back to the CRTC for reconsideration. Clearly, this isn’t the decision cabinet was looking for."

Over the next 3 months, which takes us to the end of November, the incumbents have to file fee proposals for these high-speed services and, importantly, the government has an opportunity to intervene and possibly overrule the CRTC once again. Such a turn of events would certainly be in keeping with government policy and would, with some real probability, threaten the tenure of Von Finckenstein at the head of the CRTC; it is difficult to continue making decisions that are rejected by the government and retain any credibility with the industry and the public.

Yet as I think about the situation further I have to wonder if Von Finckenstein is thinking that this time he is free to tweak the government's nose without much risk to himself or the other Commissioners. The reason is that the government is at present in a precarious position in the polls and much move with some caution as the new sitting of Parliament gets under way shortly. Unlike some other decisions, this one hits the wallets of the majority of the electorate thanks to the near ubiquity of broadband service. It is also true that there is widespread hatred and disgust with the incumbents, telcos and cable companies alike, with prices and service quality for all types of telecommunications services.

Canadians (although perhaps not shareholders) gladly accepted a foreign-owned Wind Mobile for this reason, and this worked in the government's favour when they acted contrary to the CRTC. However if they overrule the CRTC this time, for the same pro-facilities based competition policy, it will be seen -- likely with the Liberals' help -- as pro big, unliked monopoly and anti-consumer. I think the government will hesitate and think long and hard about this.

Before ending this article, I do want to draw attention to a few interesting aspects of the decision. The first is that the CRTC (as has been widely reported) would not order the incumbents to reconfigure their networks to provide fewer interconnection points (that would have lowered 3rd-party ISP costs) or allow the ISPs to get around throttling controls and to make it easier for consumers to switch ISPs and services on demand. In my opinion this is reasonable since I dislike the idea of the CRTC ordering technology investments of this sort. I oppose it since I believe this to be an unwarranted intrusion by government in a private-sector business. I state this despite the fact that as a consumer I would benefit from such an order.

Here are those sections that I believe are worth skimming:

• Paragraphs 23-27: Essential services argument that wireline is still an effective monopoly and since wireless is being excluded as a competitive alternative, equitable access wired broadband is required to protect consumers.
• Paragraphs 62-74: Tortuous argument that line sharing doesn't impact ILEC provisioning of IPTV.
• Paragraphs 143-149: How policy objectives are met with this ruling.

If I have the time I hope to write a separate article on the dissenting opinion of Commissioner Timothy Denton. He wanted to have the CRTC intervene more intensely in the affairs of the incumbents and he lays out in some detail, and clarity, why he believes this to be appropriate. If the subject of broadband competition interests you, I highly recommend you read these several pages. I intend to tear apart some of his arguments.

Conservatives Don't Lose; Liberals Don't Win

As political polls get trotted out one after another one gets the impression that all we've been seeing is little more than statistical noise fluctuations that contain about as much information as pure white noise. That is, none at all. In this most recent poll by Ekos, as reported by the CBC, Ignatieff has this rationalization for the current noise fluctuation that has the Conservatives and Liberals in a dead heat:

Ignatieff has claimed his party has seized momentum from the Conservatives following a summer-long bus tour across Canada that featured the Liberal leader speaking unscripted and taking questions from audience members.

This is nothing more than an empty attempt Ignatieff to claim that the poll result is due to his efforts over the summer, which in reality few people paid attention and resulted in nothing new in the Liberal platform or did little, if anything, for his appeal to voters. It's merely the sort of empty rhetoric we get from the majority of our politicians.

The Liberal party is not gaining much traction with voters, but rather I suspect that the poll, if it means anything at all, tells us two things: the Conservative party is making a steady series of policy blunders that each alienates some segment of the country's population; and, the sponsorship scandal is passing into history, and is increasingly not being considered by voters when they consider their preference. None of this is impacted by Ignatieff's presence.

Each small blunder by the Conservative government reflects badly on Harper's leadership since, rightly or wrongly, they each get laid by his feet since he is so clearly the primary decision maker. This is, for him, a disadvantage of the degree of control he exercises over his cabinet and caucus, in that by not delegating authority he also cannot deflect blame. My perception is that he does not seem to understand that what he considers as minor policy decisions meant to incrementally progress his political agenda are cumulative irritants over the large body of the electorate.

Perhaps Igantieff can exploit this beyond immediate polling figures, not by attacking Harper but by crafting better governance structures as a policy objective. Writing in the Globe and Mail, Lawrence Martin describes this tremendous opportunity for Ignatieff and the Liberal party to reverse the centralization of power.

Ever since Pierre Trudeau started overcentralizing the power structure four decades ago, we’ve been regressing into what former Quebec Superior Court justice John Gomery, who headed up the federal sponsorship inquiry, described as “one-man government.”

Both major parties have followed the same unwritten policy, much to the detriment of our democracy. It is now a large flaw that cannot even be swayed by our votes. We all know that our elected representative no longer represent us (other than a few mavericks like Cadman and Casey) since their votes are dictated by a small cabal of power brokers around the Liberal and Conservative leaders, and sometimes the leader alone. It's gotten to the point that more and more of us know how ineffectual our vote can be in getting what we want, which I believe is leading to unreliable polling data: voting preferences are volatile since we don't trust those vying for our votes.

If not governance, the economy is no longer Ignatieff's policy card. Going back in this blog's archive, almost one year ago I declared that it was already too late because the economy was bottoming and an election during the inevitable upturn would favour the government, even though the government can take little of the credit.

The truth is that neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals are responsible for either the recession or the coming economic resurgence. The economic cycle is almost entirely due to what is going on in the United States. With our economy so closely dependent on commodities exports to the US, we are simply going along for the ride. The Liberals hope to ride this wave to renewed popularity and a majority government by 2011.

This is even more true today since everyone can see that we are on the first steps of a long-term economic recovery. Sure, there are many bumps along the road and risk of a relapse, but with every passing day it becomes increasing likely that the worst is truly behind us.

The finance minister, Jim Flaherty, is now beginning to attract the degree of respect that Paul Martin had in that role a decade and more in the past. Even more so than the sponsorship scandal, the Liberal party's reputation for fiscal responsibility is becoming a historical event, and not something to which the Liberal party of today can lay claim. The nail in the economic policy coffin for the Liberals was this pronouncement by Stephen Harper:

"All the signs are that the economic action plan has been effective, but if we want to be effective in the future, the next step will be to get some of our deficits down and make sure that we're providing good incentives to the private sector to continue to move the economy forward."

Of course the Conservatives are not any more fiscally responsible than the Liberals, it just that they spend and cut differently: Conservatives cut taxes and trim social programs and spend on the military, while Liberals have tended to keep taxes and social programs steady, and cut the military. The specifics are in reality more nuanced than my simple description, but the fact is that if you want overall spending controls there is little reason to prefer one of these parties over the other since both must operate in within the constraints of the country's overall economic health.

In closing this post, I don't expect either Harper or Ignatieff to rush to the polls anytime soon. Both know they have poor prospects of forming a majority and therefore an election would doom either or both leaders' positions. Coming back to governance, we should be thankful for the prospect of continuing minority governments so that neither party can behave as a five-year dictatorship. Even more than the polling split, who we really have to thank for this state of affairs is Quebec and the Bloc Quebecois.

I don't say this facetiously; I really mean it. With 15% to 20% of the country's seats out of reach of both of both the Conservative and Liberal parties for the present, it would take a wild swing in the polls for a majority to be possible for either of them. They may endlessly bemoan and threaten us over this state of affairs, but without some real governance reforms -- which could require constitutional changes, and are unlikely at this time -- minority governments serve us better than majorities. They are also more entertaining.