A Few 2015 Election Scenarios

So UBC has an election calculator for 2015. You key in vote movement from one party to another and it gives you a new seat count. Thought I'd play around with it. My 'the NDP performs well, the Conservatives perform adequately, and the others tank' calculation went like this:

• The Liberals retain only half their vote, with 25% going to the NDP and the remainder split evenly between the Tories and the Greens.
• The Bloc also retain only half their vote, with 25% going to the NDP and the remainder split evenly between the Tories and the Greens.
• The Greens split in half, with half of their 2011 vote going to the NDP and the other half staying with them.
• The Tories retain 90% of their support, with 10% shedding to the NDP.
• The NDP keep every one of their 2011 votes.
• One-third of 2011 non-voters starts voting NDP.

This would be, as you can see, a great improvement for the NDP. Unrealistically great, you could say. In fact, it would result in a sad 3.0% for the Bloc, an improved 5.1% for the Greens, a horrid 9.5% for the Liberals, a pretty-similar 39.1% for the Tories, and an astounding 43.2% for the NDP - in first place by four percent.

But here's the kicker: according to the UBC model, that would be a majority government... for the Conservatives. It would be a strictly bipartisan parliament with not a single Liberal, Bloc or Green MP, the NDP would bet 144 seats, anf the Tories would get 164, losing only three and maintaining a comfortable majority.

Surprising, eh? One could imagine how loud the electoral-reform talk would be in such a circumstance. It'd look like this:

• 19 CPC seats in the Atlantic (+5) to 13 for the NDP (+7).
• An amazing 71 NDP seats in Québec (+13) to a pathetic 4 for the Tories (-2).
• 72 Ontario seats for the Tories (-1) to 34 for the NDP (+12).
• 21 CPC seats in Saskitoba (-3) and 7 for the NDP (+5).
• No change in Alberta - 27 Conservative seats and one NDP.
• 20 Conservative seats in BC (-1) and 16 (+4) for the NDP.

Essentially, what would happen is that current Liberal and Bloc seats would subsume into NDP seats, while Tory seats would stay Tory (presumably, anyway - I'm not looking at a seat-by-seat projection).

The NDP can't go anywhere without eroding the Conservative vote.

So let's look at that: The CPC collapses and the NDP are one of several beneficiaries. So I imagined the Conservatives able to hold onto only 60% of their 2011 vote, losing 20% to the NDP and 10% each to the Liberals and the Greens. I don't know how it would calculate a 10% loss to the Bloc, since we're not talking uniform swing, so I skipped it. In fact, I disbanded the Bloc, giving half their vote to the NDP and 25% each to the Liberals and to the Greens. The NDP, Liberals and Greens retained all their vote, and non-voters stayed non-voters. The result? It's just as bizarre. With no BQ, we'd have the Greens at 9.5%, the Conservatives in 3rd place for popular vote at 24.0, the Liberals at 24.6% and the NDP as king of the hill at 41.9%. With this, the Greens would keep their one seat, the Conservatives would fall into a dismal third with 62 seats (-105), the Liberals would be the official opposition at 70 and the NDP would have a 175-seat majority. Region by region:

• In the Atlantic: 16 Lib, 15 NDP, 1 CPC.
• In Québec: 69 NDP, 6 Lib.
• In Ontario, 43 NDP, 38 Lib, 25 CPC.
• In Saskitoba, 15 NDP, 7 CPC, 4 Lib.
• In Alberta, 24 CPC, 4 NDP.
• In BC, 26 NDP, 5 CPC, 4 Lib, 1 Green.

And then here's one more: the NDP rake it in, stealing votes from left, right and centre. I have the NDP getting 100% of the Bloc vote, 75% of the Green vote, 50% of the Liberal vote, 25% of the Tory vote, and 25% of the people who didn't vote at all in 2011. This would give the NDP 59.5% of the vote and a ridiculous 88.0% of the seats - 271, with a dismal 37-seat rump Tory opposition (28 of those seats would be in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba).

One last one: here's 'The Liberals shift to the right': the Conservatives lose 25% of their vote to the Liberals, who lose 25% of their votes to the NDP. Nothing else changes. That would leave a total vote of 3.9% for the Greens, 6.1% for the BQ, 24.3% for the Liberals, 30.0% for the Conservatives and 35.7% for the NDP - that would be a loss of 10.0% for the CPC, split roughly evenly between the Liberals and the NDP. The seat count would be 1 each for the BQ and the Greens, 51 for the Liberals, 122 for the CPC and 133 for the NDP - an interesting hung parliament with the Liberals holding sway and able to decide who to support for PM, like we currently see in the UK.

ignatieffselection.com

I've mentioned this yellow dishrag of a website before, when it was used to dish up dirt on Ignatieff's family.

But I think ignatieffselection.com must represent the absolute bottom, the most disgusting and wretched of the political process. This website presents nothing more than distortions and scaremongering so tacky even Quebecor would blush at it.

They've removed the family slander, but they've replaced it with three pieces about the 'coalition' bogeyman - each more pathetic and desperate than the other.

• The first one screams MORE PROOF OF THE COALITION and features that picture of Ignatieff waving that they love so much along with a picture of Layton pointing his finger. This ridiculous piece of garbage considers the defection of the London NDP candidate to the Liberals as proof positive that the nasty Liberals and NDP are schening to form a coalition - completely ignoring the fact that in the same week southern Ontario saw both a Liberal candidate and an NDP candidate defect to the Conservatives. Selective editing at its most egregious.
• The second one has Ignatieff and Duceppe and screams BREAKING NEWS: IGNATIEFF'S COALITION PLAN REVEALED. This one is even worse, and positively leaps the gulf separating 'stretching the truth' from 'outright lying'. The article itself says nothing about Ignatieff or Liberal policies: it points out that the Bloc, in their platform, reserve the right to support a coalition. Which (a) is public knowledge anyway - Duceppe has never attempted to deny it, and (b) under no stretch of the imagination can this be seen as 'Ignatieff's coalition plan'.
• The third one is no less ridiculous. IGNATIEFF COALITION DENIALS CAN'T BE TRUSTED, it caterwauls. This is noteworthy as being their only direct acknowledgement, as far as I'm aware, that Ignatieff has resolved not to form a coalition post-election. But the content is more rubbish: it also makes no mention of Ignatieff at all but merely points out that Dion also said he wouldn't form a coalition in 2008, right before attempting to do just that. Fair game, perhaps, except that the headline doesn't say 'Don't trust Liberals' - strictly for being in the same party, Ignatieff is painted with the same brush as Dion. Of course, their maniacal desire to make Ignatieff look personally as bad as possible as often as possible might have something to do with this.

Who, incidentally, are 'they'? Who is responsible for this travesty of a webpage, this ugly (and ugly-looking) libellous smear site?

Ah yes. The Conservative Party themselves.

Keep it classy, Tories.

Beyond the Pale

I can still remember the first time I went to http://ignatieff.me, the Conservative Party's trash-Ignatieff site. I was met with that sinking feeling I've had much more often recently: that feeling that the guttersnipe tactics of American divisive politics had really entered Canada, and entered with a vengeance.

As I've said so many times before, I don't like Michael Ignatieff. But I don't think he deserves the dishonourable trash the Conservatives are throwing his way. What stuck out most on ignatieff.me, apart from the fact that the Tories are using a Macedonian website to instill doubt about Ignatieff's loyalty to Canada, was the following: The site pretends to be a magazine. In order to diss Ignatieff's internationalism (God what a sin that is), the fake logo say, "International Edition". Below there is an American flag, since Ignatieff lived in the USA. There is a British flag, since Ignatieff lived in the UK. There's a French flag, since apparently he also taught in France, though you don't hear much about that. And lastly, there's a Russian flag. Why? Because Ignatieff is of Russian heritage. Yep, that's right: the Conservatives question Ignatieff's loyalty to Canada not merely by questioning where he's chosen to live through the years but also by taking issue with his ethnicity.

In our Canada.

Despicable. Really. Yeah, it's just a flag, but the point is there. Anyway, the Conservatives have a new one, called http://www.ignatieffselection.com. There's an apostrophe before the 's' and a space after it - yeah, I was confused too. Anyway, the new site is a travesty of web design, with a chintzy alarmist font splattering text all over the page like the ugliest of yellow journalism rags. It consists of little more than repeated attacks on Ignatieff and other Liberals. The text is so poorly written and so lacking in subtlety (and the appearance so amateurish) that I was frankly shocked to see "Authorized by the Registered Agent of the Conservative Party of Canada" at the bottom of the page. Sadly, not shocked because I thought such below-the-belt slams beneath the party but because given how much money they can throw at TV ads, I figured they could have tossed a bit more at this site.

A site filled to the brim with mudslinging has the audacity to put the following sentence at the top of each page: 'He is so desperate for an election, he is focussing on personal attacks and innunendo to get what he wants.'

Ahem.

Anyway, the worst is the page that, in true sensationalist fashion, screams 'Michael Ignatieff: Child of Immigrants?' It would seem that the Conservatives have found examples of Ignatieff presenting his background as one of refugees, and have decided to dig into the Russian side of his family to produce as much dirt as possible, blamig Ignatieff for having rich ancestors.

You might argue that Ignatieff has no place trying to gain political points by talking about his ancestors. But at least they are his to talk about. Digging up dirt on the family members of your political rivals is beyond the pale. This suggests a 'win at any costs' war-like approach to politics, and at a time when people are already starting to debate whether or not attack ads are breaching the barriers of good taste, this does indeed cross a line. A line we need to maintain. Civility has a place in politics. And since Harper and his party have demonstrated a contempt for democracy, for honesty and for decorum, you'd figure they'd at least try to hold onto civility.

But I guess not.

L'argent et le vote ethnique

I had a wonderful dream last night.

I dreamt that we did have a spring election, and that under the intensified spotlight that an election campaign can bring, the Conservatives started to wilt in public opinion.

I dreamt that the In-and-Out scandal, where the Tories have shown contempt of election law by funnelling money between the federal office and local riding riding offices with impunity, and Jason Kenney's scandal, where a partisan shill for more money to target 'ethnic voters' was sent out on official government letter head, tainted the Conservative brand so irreparably that the party, who was in no small part elected on the back of umbrage at Liberal scandal, was soundly defeated at the election that we're very probably going to see this spring. A scandal involving money, and a scandal involving the ethnic vote.

And Stephen Harper, red-faced and humbled, strolls in front of the cameras to deliver his concession speech at his riding headquarters in Calgary. Addressing Albertans, who had continued to support him and his party in large numbers, he says, "Let's stop talking about 'Albertans', shall we? Let's talk about 'us'. And it is true that we have been defeated. But by what? By money and the ethnic vote...

L'argent et le vote ethnique... Seems like the downfall of every radical politician in Canada who gets a bit too assured of his victory.

Progressive Talking Point: The Game-Changer

There's been a fair amount of talk lately about the 'game-changer', a big event that could alter the Canadian political scene, shake it out of its statis: presumably to the benefit of the non-Conservative parties in Canada.

A lot has revolved in one way or another about co-operation or co-option between the Liberals and the NDP or other non-Conservative parties. Stephen Harper is so acutely aware of this that he takes every opportunity he's presented to sound off on the evils of parties working together.

He knows more than a little about this. If anyone in Canada knows what a threat to the staus quo inter-party co-operation can truly be, it's Stephen Harper (or maybe Paul Martin). It's strange to see Harper, perhaps the most mercurial and divisive politician in Canadian history, as in any way a 'force of unity', but to the political right in Canada, he has been exactly that, both in his involvement in the initial creation of the Conservative Party and, more importantly, in the subsequent years as its leader.

There was a time, not too long ago politically, when the animosity between the Reform Party and the Progressive Conservatives was palpably strong. When initial 'unite the right' debate occurred in the aftermath of the 1993 election, polls showed perhaps unsurprisingly that more PCs would vote for the Liberals than would vote for a united PC/Reform party. yet more surprisingly, polls showed that a majority of Reform supporters said the same thing (perhaps, in their case, ironically).

The nineties tempered that opinion, and the last decade has encouraged Conservatives to sweep that opinion entirely under the carpet. For better or for worse, political power has turned the Conservatives into a party with an amazingly impressive image of solidarity. It's to Stephen Harper's credit that he's managed to keep these disparate threads together.

But Stephen Harper's not going to be around forever. One wonders when Harper will step down as leader of the CPC. It's an unknown: it's not something the party seems to want, and it's not something Harper seems to want. But it's got to happen sooner or later. And just as Mulroney's unstable coalition of disparate interests fell apart so spectacularly... well, I don't think that'll happen, but I do think we'll see a schism reappearing in the party.

I don't want to say west vs. east. I don't want to say Blue Tory vs. Red Tory. I don't want to say Reform vs. PC. But these three really do overlap, in a way it's foolish to deny. I think that to a certain extent both sides feel they've compromised, for the good of the party. Objectively, it feels from the outside as if most of that compromise has been from the Red Tory side, but that's really just appearances: in certain key areas, harper has driven his party far away from the Reform ideals which he once touted.

I think it's a fair bet that any post-Harper leadership convention would see at least one candidate from either camp, and would most probably end up a showdown between the two main forces. One reason Maxime Bernier is so frequently mentioned as a possible successor, apart of course from the fact that he's from Québec, is the fact that he represents in many ways an alternative to this dynamic: he's tough to pin down on the Red-Blue Conservative spectrum and in some ways is a successor to the Créditiste tradition that at one point in time made unlikely allies of Albertans and Québécois. He was a member of neither pre-merger party.

But that may not happen. And if it does happen, one wonders how far the dyed-in-the-wool Reformers that still make up the main organisational body of the party in Western Canada will go in supporting a Québécois.

Atlantic Canada will be interesting to watch. At the moment, Atlantic Canada is the only region in the country where the Liberals are leading. They were also the only region in Canada in 1997 where the PCs led in the election. Both of these stats say the same thing: Blue Toryism does not go far in the Maritimes. It's been a long time since the Atlantic Provinces have mattered at all in Canadian politics, and one doesn't get the feeling Stephen Harper loses too much sleep at night wondering what they think of him in Halifax, but they are important enough to shake up a leadership convention, especially if Peter MacKay chose to run.

If MacKay did run, and if he faced a Reform-minded candidate from the West (ideally someone complaining that Harper had moved the party too far away from its core values), one really wonders what would happen to the party. Ontario and Québec would be crucial - and particularly in Ontario, Conservatives might be reminded of the fact that they support a party built around two poles one of which they don't support very much (in Ontario, pre-merger, Reform-minded people were distrustful of PCs and vice-versa). The fight in Ontario would be largely urban vs. rural, as it might also be in Québec.

I really don't know who would win. It might be an avowed peacemaker seeking to carry on Harper's successful tightrope-walking act. But if it isn't, and even perhaps if it is, it'll leave suddenly a good number of traditional conservative people newly alienated by 'their party'.

The fray would really shake up the Conservative Party. To a certain extent, this ought to mean nothing to progressives, as a good working definition for 'progressive' could perhaps be 'someone who would never under any circumstances vote Conservative'. But it would certainly make Canadian politics interesting again. The Liberals, as is their nature, would redefine themselves accordingly, shifting to a more Ignatieff-right to sweep up disaffected Red Tories should a Blue Tory win (I can picture Ignatieff on a podium praising Robert Stanfield) or shifting to a more Dion-left should a Red Tory win. Everyone to the left of the Liberals ought to spend a while just sitting back and enjoying the chaos.

Stephen Harper and the Bare Majority of Emotion

Image via WikipediaSo I was thinking... I was thinking not merely that Stephen Harper is a conniving, manipulative, self-interested control-freak - because that's hardly news. No, it occurred to me that believing that Harper is conniving, manipulative, self-interested and a control-freak is the great non-partisan equaliser: it's the one thing that Canadians of all stripes can agree on. There is no-one, forget even partisans but probably not even family members, who would disagree with this assessment. It just so happens that Canadians are divided between the 65-70% who believe Harper is a conniving, manipulative, self-interested control-freak and as such would not vote for him, and the 30-35% who believe Harper is a conniving, manipulative, self-interested control-freak and nevertheless (or perhaps even thus) would still vote for him.

There's a lot you can draw from that conclusion, mostly about how little we expect from our politicians. Or about how desperate we are for solid leadership that we'll take anything we can get. But what occurs to me is that it shows something remarkably aware about Harper, and as much as anything else it'll be the one thing that gives him the best chance of capturing his longed-for minority. It is this:

All politicians realise, though few will admit it, that in any specific riding, once you've secured 51% of the vote, you're wasting your time trying to do anything with the other 49%. A win scraped by is as good as a landslide. When Harper's Conservative candidates in Alberta rack up votes in the 70th percentile and higher, it looks good on paper but means nothing in the House of Commons. Squeak by at 51% - or, in a multiparty electoral battleground, the mid-thirties will probably do - and forget the rest. All politicians know this, but Harper alone seems genuinely comfortable with it.

More to the point, though: just as it's a waste of time trying to win over any more than 51% of the electorate, it's a waste of time trying to be loved when being liked is enough. Or not even liked so much as 'respected enough to give your vote to'. People like Pierre Trudeau and, in his own way, Brian Mulroney had this kind of need to be loved: harper doesn't seem to have that. Once a voter accepts him enough to cast his vote for him or his party, any more effort on that voter is wasted. Who needs love? Love doesn't earn more votes than merely liking. Harper is loved by very few people in this country, yet he's managed five years in the PM's chair.

The obverse, of course, is that on a vote-by-vote basis, just 51% is enough and any more is a waste, 49% is no improvement over 0%. A riding that cannot be won is worth no time whatsoever, and a person who cannot be made to 'like' Harper on the most elemental of levels might as well loathe him. There's no difference between mere dislike and outright revulsion: neither transfers to a vote. Harper is probably well aware that there are large areas of the country where he is hated with a vehemence. The thing is, though, that - having sat down with a map of Canada, a calculator and a team of advisors, has decided that he just doesn't care. Not merely in the terms of 'acceptable loss'. Trudeau was probably aare that he'd never win over Alberta, for example, and developed a strategy accordingly. But I would bet that it still bothered Trudeau, on that basic level where humans just want to be loved. I'm sure Trudeau at his most megalomaniac moments dreamed of being loved from coast to coast. Harper, a different kind of megalomaniac, simply doesn't. I am sure he harbours no such dreams and is comfortable with being hated, so long as he's able to hang on to power.

This might be no newer than Niccolò Machiavelli, but it still feels new to have a prime minister so brazenly beholden to Realpolitik principles that he's completely forgotten to have human emotions. But still, if anything will, it's that that will get Harper his majority.

Related articles

• Voting NDP or Bloc is a vote for Harper: Ignatieff (ctv.ca)
• Ignatieff hopes to lure NDP, Bloc voters sick of Conservatives (theglobeandmail.com)
• Control Freaks (flynnsblogs.wordpress.com)
• Ottawa's big red control freaks (fullcomment.nationalpost.com)
• Ashamed, today, to be Canadian as Conservative-dominated Senate connives to kill Commons-passed climate bill (cleanbreak.ca)
• Old ways die hard, even for Senate critic Harper (canada.com)

Hypocrisy and the Long-Desired Majority

Image by jcbear2 via FlickrJust reading The Globe and Mail discussing Stephen Harper's strategy for getting a majority. Essentially it boils down to targeting urban ridings with a 'tough on crime' message while targeting the remaining rural ridings he doesn't already have with a 'long-gun registry' message.

He might just get away with it. Which is frustrating, because it's cynical as hell. I mean, given that the long-gun registry was implemented to combat crime in the first place. Now, one may not agree on its effectiveness, but to be truly 'tough on crime' is, certainly, to consider all options out there for fighting crime. Not merely those ones that are politically expedient.

After all, the RCMP themselves came out in favour of the long-gun registry, calling it an effective way to fight crime. A prime minister doesn't have to follow RCMP recommendations (self-evidently), but not doing so certainly ought to come at the price of a loss in legitimacy for a 'tough-on-crime' stance, right?

Or, if nothing else, certainly flouting a 'tough-on-crime' stance and screaming 'they want to take your guns away!' at the very same time is self-evidently hypocritical, isn't it? Ah, but it might well work. Conservatives can always scream 'tough on crime' louder than the other parties. And the emptiness behind the rhetoric, sadly, gets overlooked. Again and again...

Related articles

• ‘Cluster’ strategy puts Tories on track for majority, poll suggests (theglobeandmail.com)
• Fantino ideal tough-on-crime standard-bearer for Tories (fullcomment.nationalpost.com)
• Montreal Massacre anniversary prompts Tory gun policy criticism (canada.com)
• RCMP gun-registry report barely swayed opinion, poll finds (theglobeandmail.com)

Dear Rural Canada

Dear Rural Canada,

As a so-called Toronto élitist, I feel I ought to defend myself against ad hominem attacks by the Conservative Party, a party that is hoping to further its domination of rural Canada at the expense of electibility in urban Canada. The Conservative Party has sat down with a map of Canada and figured out precisely who they can connive into voting for them and who they should give up on. Perhaps this is why they are opposed to the long-form census: they already have all the demographic info they need to suit their purposes.

But let's call their bluff, in part. The fact is that urban Canada and rural Canada have a lot of differences. Hell, our country at the moment is pretty much defined by its polarities: Anglo vs. Franco, West vs. East, male vs. female, rich vs. poor. Seems our actual opinions on the best way to manage the country amount to little more than an extension of our demographics. Or so Ottawa would have us believe. I'm not about to suggest 'in our hearts, we're the same'. The truth is that to a rather frightening degree we are not. It's no wonder our parliament has become so dysfunctional.

The only thing I really want to defend is urban intentions regarding the long-gun registry. At the moment, we're defined by our ignorance of the other side. The newspapers here in the city really make very little effort to present, rationally, the arguments underpinning rural opposition to the registry. This is either because there are no rational arguments or because the papers are too lazy or too politically motivated to bother. I don't know which. But for my part, I think I can speak on behalf of the majority of Torontonians when I say support for the registry has nothing at all to do with urban people putting rural people in their place or any sense of superiority or any such thing. The reality is that I've never held a gun in my life. In the life that I lead, there is no reason at all that I would ever even see a gun that wasn't crime-related. If guns, long or short or whatever, simply vanished off the face of the planet, I would find no reason to complain. In fact, I would sleep better at night and would have a sense that finally something good had happened to make the world a better place.

I suspect you might find that a bit precious. I suspect it might seem like urban ignorance of rural realities. You might think, 'but you're happy to eat the meat of an animal that was shot with a gun'. I can accede that. I don't know how the meat in my supermarket gets there, and the truth is I'm not overly interested in learning. But when confronted with the question of 'how much control should the government exercise over gun control', what you need to realise is that no city person starts to think of the meat in their supermarkets. Immediately they think of crime. It's extremely disingenuous to say that supporters of the long-gun registry are treating law-abiding citizens like criminals. I know of nobody who would say that hunters are criminals. But hunters aren't a part of the day-to-day reality of my life; criminals are. It's not at all surprising that we would frame gun ownership as a crime issue. Realistically how else is a city person to see it?

It's my personal belief that there is nothing to be gained by huffing and puffing about élitism and to frame this debate as city people vs. country people. Now, if you wanted to frame the debate around the extent to which city people are ignorant of country lives, I think that's valid. I think what's been lost in the debate here is a sincere tempt to both explain and to be explained to how guns are used in small-town Canada. Personally, the idea of widespread gun ownership terrifies me, and I'm keen to maintain 'extent of gun ownership' and 'views about the government's right to regulate gun ownership' as critical distinctions between life in Canada and life in the USA. But at the same time I'm willing to be taught; I'm more than willing to be exposed to a different perspective on the issue. At the same time, though, I think rural Canada needs to understand the extent to which our goals and motivations here in the city are noble. Here in the city it really isn't about rural vs. urban, and it's insulting to see it painted as such. Here in the city, we see experts in the police telling us that the registry is a good thing, and we think, "why isn't that enough?" It baffles us that a tough-on-crime party could be so passionate about dismantling something that the police tell us helps catch criminals. And it baffles us that the same party is so willing to make this issue as divisive as possible, that while claiming to have a mandate to govern Canada and represent Canada to the world, they would be so blatant in forcing an us-and-them divide, by attempting to make urban Canadians seem ghoulish for wanting the police to have tools to stop crime.

It may be clear that I have very little respect for Prime Minister Harper and for the party that he leads. But that doesn't mean I don't respect rural Canadians, or generally speaking that I don't respect the people who vote for the party and who support its policies. It's not élitist at all to believe that the Conservative Party is attempting to divide Canadians as much as possible and is attempting to introduce American-style obstructionism. It's not élitist at all to believe that such tactics are ultimately bad and even potentially dangerous for the country.

And trust me - it's not élitist at all to sincerely hope that all Canadians - rural and urban alike - will see the Conservative Party's current rabble-rousing for the cheap partisan shot it truly is and treat it with the contempt it deserves.

And then we can build an approach to weapons regulation that suits both sides' needs as much as possible.