From: cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: The partition of Quebec (from an APEC pamphlet)
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Ottawa
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 03:20:09 GMT

In article <schuck.721445040@sfu.ca> Bruce_Schuck@sfu.ca writes:
>clamen+@CS.CMU.EDU (Stewart Clamen) writes:
>>   >What APEC (and some others) forget, is that in a divorce between
>>   >Canada and Quebec, Quebec with ~25% of the population of Canada
>>   >would be entitled to 25% of the assets (including land) of Canada
>>   >and 25% of the debt. 
>
>>   I'm a firm believer in the equality of provinces when discussing
>>   ownership of Canada.
>
>>   Quebec is 1/10th of the provinces, and as such entitled to 10% of the
>>   assets.
>
>>For your model to hold, each province would be required to pay 10% of
>>the federal tax base.  I'm sure you wouldn't want BC to pay twice as
>>much tax per capita as Quebec.
>
>As long as the federal spending was along similar lines. :)

Since the arrangements would be looking at PAST tax structures, it's a
moot point.

Nobody's trying to determine what the federal tax burden OUGHT to be;
what's relevant is what the burden has been in the past.

If Quebec leaves, then their share of the federal tax base becomes 0%.
On a forward-looking basis, they could thereby argue that their share
of the debt is 0%.

>>   When it comes to division of the national debt only, I believe in the
>>   'two nation theory' and Quebec is entitled to 50% of the national
>>   debt. :)

Since there's a smiley, and because that's pretty ridiculous, you MUST
be joking

>>   Those at least should be the opening bargaining positions for
>>   Canada.
>
>>My, you are ruthless.  Obviously you are lacking that Canadian
>>characteristic known as "fairness".
>
>Why did you leave out the only Quebec bargaining position I know
>about, the 18% from one of the post-meech reports in Quebec.
>
>If you have other 'documented' positions from Quebec I'd like to hear
>them.
>
>What does fairness have to do about opening bargaining positions?

Obviously you don't think that opening bargaining positions should be
at all REALISTIC.  50% isn't realistic.  Nor is 10%.

Something in the range of 18% to 30% is probably realistic.  18 might
be on the low side - 30 might be a little high.

>Obviously you want english-Canada to have a bargaining position that
>is generous to Quebec.
>
>Who gurantees Quebecs opening bargaining position would be as generous?

They could come in demanding that Canada pays them to leave.  That
would get laughed out of the room pretty quick.

I don't much care what the OPENING position is - nobody's likely to go
with the opening position.  I care a lot more about the FINAL
position.  And neither 50% nor -50% are likely to be anywhere close to
the final figure.

>When you are talking about distributing 425 billion in debt,
>and trillions? in assets, a tough opening bargaining position is
>necessary.
>
>Obviously you are lacking in the characteristic known as "brains" if
>you think Canada should open up the bargaining with an overly generous
>first 'offer'.

In my last Biz course (some years ago :-(), we did a labour/management
negotiation simulation.

By playing it REAL tough until the end, my group wound up "suckering"
the union side into rejecting the GOOD offer that we gave them at the
end.  We had great fun playing on all of the stereotypes of "cruel
management", making quotes that were quite Dickensian in nature.

The last week, we finally got down to business and decided what we
REALLY wanted to offer them, and went straight in and offered it.
Things were going not too badly the last day, when we found that we
fundamentally disagreed with the union as to the "value" of a
particular clause in the contract, and decided to offer a substitute
whose value we COULD agree on.  They refused the substitute, and
foolishly chose to "strike."

We got a good mark, because the final offer WAS a good one, and
because we didn't get marked on how successful the negotiations
actually were.  We got to laugh at the poor sods on the other team,
that chose to "go on strike," rejecting our final offer, and getting a
poor mark.  They were somewhat ticked off when they found out the
marks.

In real life, I'd never try to pull this if I actually were in
management.  I never wound up taking courses with people from the
union side again, so I never really had any further contact with them,
so "suckering" them never hurt me.

In real life, doing something like this would mean that NEXT time a
contract needs to be negotiated, everybody is suspicious from step 1.

Doing it in real life, I'd try to make an initial offer that's just
good enough that I might have SOME hope of the other side accepting.
It wastes everybody's time if the initial offer is something stupid.
And when time is money, (particularly when we're talking about
negotiating over the way of dividing up a G7 country) wasting time
wastes money.

Making a ridiculously low/high first bid may just anger the other
side, which may make it harder to get to the REAL answer that does lie
somewhere in the middle.

Why are you criticizing people for trying to make up REALISTIC goals?

If I were the Canadian negotiator, I certainly wouldn't go to Quebec
and straight off offer to settle with them taking an 18% share of the
debt - I'd start higher than that.  Maybe by discussing the issue, we
may be able to come up with a ``first approximation.''

Starting with 50%, when that is totally unrealistic, is ridiculous.

When the negotiators meet back in their own offices to make strategy
for the next bargaining session, they ought to discuss what they think
IS a realistic share.  Otherwise, they may either reject a reasonable
offer, not going far enough to get the "happy medium", or may
overshoot, and agree to something that's excessively favorable to the
other side.

What I'm trying to do is to ``shoot the breeze,'' and actually discuss
that "realistic share."  It so happens that it's not terribly private
around can.politics, but then we're not likely to be the real
negotiators either.

I don't want to discuss "opening offers".  I'd much rather talk about
realistic offers.  They're much more informative.

-- 
Christopher Browne                |     PGP 2.0 key available
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca           |===================================
University of Ottawa              |  The Personal Computer:  Colt 45
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Newsgroups: can.politics