By the Vector Poll™
For two decades The Vector Poll™ has put opinion and market research to use to trigger ideas for leaders, candidates, communicators and advertisers.
Here are some of the new election-ready policies and plans our polling led us to uncover, reading the public's mind.
Public security, crime, the police
- Require all sellers, dealers and individuals, to record every gun sale and file a report immediately online to the RCMP to build a database of guns in the country (make unregistered guns illegal)
- Enact a law making it clear that someone knew or should have known that a gun owner is mentally unstable is liable to victims, and anyone who transfers guns to anyone (except to gun dealers or police departments) who commits a gun crime is liable to victims
- So that bullets are sold and stored responsibly, compel ammunition manufacturers to micro-stamp serial numbers on bullets and unique bar codes on ammunition boxes so shell casings can be traced to ammunition sellers, and licence ammunition buyers (issue photo IDs to those passing a background check)
- Start a database of police misconduct complaints
- As a means to help prosecute terrorists, add U.S. and U.K. hate groups to Canada's Listed Terrorist Entities compiled by Public Safety Canada.
- Make airlines to maintain "no fly" lists of passengers who abuse flight attendants or engage in other disruptive behaviour (with a right to appeal)
- To increase confidence in the justice system have a single judge hear all of the cases from a neighbourhood instead of separate criminal, traffic, tax and family courts all over a city
- Require targets of ransomware attacks to report incidents to law enforcement agencies
- Make university/college hazing a criminal offence
- Compel taxi companies and ride-hailing services to release their internal data on riders' complaints of incidents of assaults by drivers, injuries, accidents and other allegations of driver misconduct, unsafe driving or improper behaviour
- Extend probationary periods for new police officers to three years to provide a longer review of citizens' complains against new hires and give leaders of police services more time to evaluate officers
- To reduce online sales of stolen property, amend consumer protection laws to require online sellers to guarantee that items they offer are not stolen
Personal safety
- Require car makers selling in Canada equip vehicles that have keyless
systems with automatic shut-off features that automatically shut off
the engine after several minutes (reducing the chance drivers will be
asphyxiated)
- Let neighbours write parking tickets – send cell phone photos to the police
via an app (allowing the police to focus on more urgent and important
infractions)
- Require social media companies to verify the identification of anyone with
a social media account who posts racist abuse or disinformation (do not
let trolls and racists hide behind fake identities)
- Require employers to report employee complaints of sexual and racial
harassment to the human rights commission the way employers must
report workplace accidents
- Require auto makers to equip all vehicles with ignition interlock
breathalyzers (devices that prevent intoxicated individuals from driving
their vehicle)
- To keep children from being locked in overheated cars, require car makers
to equip vehicles with sensors that would sound alarms if children are left
in the back seat when adults get out of the car
- Begin a program to replace traffic signals and stop signs with roundabouts,
which reduce vehicle crashes, injuries from crashes and fatalities
- Require employers in tornado zones to require safe rooms for employees
to use as shelters during hurricanes, tornadoes and violent windstorms
- Require auto makers to design games and other entertainment devices
displaying programs on dashboard screen so that drivers can't use them
while driving
Personal and public health
- Have provincial health insurance cover the cost of health coaches— who
help doctors by motivating patients with skills to improve their own care
(advice on diet, e.g., and managing chronic conditions such as diabetes,
hypertension)
- Launch a coordinated effort to prevent Alzheimer's, organizing health care
providers into teams that encourage patients to adopt proven changes
in lifestyle, in diet, physical and mental exercise that delay or reduce the
incidence of brain illness
- Announce a Canadian-made Covid-19 vaccine, if it's among early, safe
vaccines, will be available at no cost to the public and licenced to vaccine
producers around the world – immediately
- Train all school caretakers in first aid
- Require all stores and gas stations to have defibrillators at their entrances
- Until it's possible to expand provincial health care to provide free dental,
chiropractic, physiotherapy, long-term care, hearing devices, vision needs
and prescriptions, provide every adult with a voucher to let them spend a
fixed amount ($2,000 a year) on any services they like
- Establish personal paid sick leave accounts requiring all employers
and their employees to contribute the equivalent of small hourly payroll
deductions to create individual sick-leave savings accounts employees
can draw on to pay for up to 15 sick days a year
- Require large grocery stores to offer nutritious food and beverages at
their checkouts instead of salt- and sugar-enhanced drinks, snacks (fruit,
vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, dairy, whole grains and other snacks
mints with no added sugars)
- Enact presumed-consent legislation for organ donation
- Require garden centres, florists and other retailers to label common
household plants that are poisonous (Easter lilies, larkspur, foxglove)
- Appoint an ombudsman for long-term care homes and residents
- Undertake regular testing of sewage for Covid-19 — tests provide earning
warnings of the presence of the virus in a neighborhood (researchers
have found that the coronavirus increases in the water a week ahead of
the rise of confirmed cases)
- Super spreader safeguards: Require social media platforms to fact-check
posts and ban accounts that repeatedly spread misinformation
- Because of the strong scientific evidence that alcohol can cause several
types of cancer, including breast and colon cancers require warning
labels on wine, beer and liquor
- To expand the amount of number of public and private schools with
medical skills on-site offer scholarships to teachers and nurses who want
to cross-train in each other's profession to create nurse-teachers and
teacher-nurses
- Most of the more than 100 kids (under 15) who drown every year don't
know how to swim. Launch a national "Every Kid Swims" program in
cooperation with schools, municipal recreation departments, YMCAs and
other organizations
- Require employers to give employees three consecutive hours of time off
to get a Covid-19 vaccination injection with no reduction in pay (the way
the law requires employers to give workers three hours off to vote during
polling hours, without a reduction in pay)
Corporate Responsibility and Shareholder Rights
- Prohibit companies that receive government emergency support from
should paying dividends or compensating executives with bonuses (or
cap the dividends and bonuses they pay)
- Require all public companies to have at least one female director now, in
five years, at least two female directors (like Norway, Spain, Italy, Germany)
- Require employers to provide anti-sexual harassment training to all
workers using bystander intervention methods
- Require public corporations to issue ½% of their equity in the form of new
stock to an Opportunity Bank, which will distribute shares or dividends to
children in mutual funds they can't cash out until they are 16
- Incentivize corporations to add community and social purposes to their
bylaws (similar to American "B corporations," or "benefit" corporation,
which would allow it to subordinate shareholder interests to other
concerns. sheltering firms from shareholder lawsuits if the corporation
takes decisions that may not protect the bottom line) benefit corporation,
which would allow it to subordinate shareholder interests to other concerns
- Give the federal Competition Bureau the power to prohibit digital
advertising platforms such as Google and You Tube from engaging in
the conflict-of-interest practice of being both buyer and seller of online
ads, steering advertising from other websites to the platforms that sell ad
space
- Enact a law protecting whistle-blowers in the private sector guaranteeing
they can't be fired for exposing unlawful or unethical behaviour by their
employers (and create a fund to pay people whose disclosures help
convict wrongdoers in court)
- Tax breaks for companies with unions (because unions save the
government money by overseeing employment standards regulation and
safety inspection costs)
- Make social media sites pay people with accounts for use of the personal
data on their accounts
- Enact a 1% tax on company share buybacks, which companies use to
drive up their share prices, to encourage executives to raise employees'
pay instead and reduce the gap between the pay of senior executives and
rank-and-file workers
- Require government contracts go only to firms whose managements
remain neutral in union organizing campaigns
- Shareholder democracy: let the millions of people who invest in index
funds vote on shareholder resolutions at the companies they own indirectly
through index funds
- Because social media networks (Google, Apple, Facebook) present users
with targeted content, change the law to consider social media platforms
like publishers who are accountable so social media networks can be
held legally responsible for the content on their sites and networks (to
purge the internet of fake stories and online hate)
- To restrain excessive executive pay, require public corporations to submit
their executive pay plans to binding shareholder votes
Consumer rights and protection
- Prohibit stores, other retailers and government offices from declining to accept cash because low-income people are more likely to use cash and less likely to have credit cards (which usually require having a bank account)
- The Canada Revenue Agency should create — and widely promote — a
website to let people prepare and file their income tax return for free
without having to go to the websites of private tax-preparation companies
- Require investment advisers — like certified financial planners — to work
to the fiduciary standard of what is best interests of their clients
- To protect the public from hackers and cybersecurity attacks that break
into computers, have the government set minimum security standards for
computer software the way government enact other safety regulations
- Require companies that collect personal user data to inform their
customers annual what data the companies collect, how much their data
is worth and what the companies do with customer data
- Prohibit property owners from refusing to rent to people with criminal
convictions (except for a limited number of severe, violent crimes) and
stop employers from asking about criminal convictions while screening
job applicants
- Prohibit so-called "dark pattern" online marketing tactics designed
to dupe consumers into giving up their right to prohibit their data from
being sold and ban features that manipulate consumers such as obscure
unsubscribe buttons, fake countdown clocks, and multiple opt-out screens
- Make tenant screening services register with the government and require
them to pay stiff fines and compensate people for mistakes in reports to
property owners that include inaccurate information such as mistaken
identities that lead to renters' refusing to rent apartments to persons
turned down because of a negative report when looking for apartments
and other homes
- Ban mandatory arbitration clauses (in standard-form consumer contracts)
for consumers with complaints against companies (cable TV customers,
credit card users, etc.)
- Require vehicle leasing companies to provide a backup key at no cost
to customers who lose their rental vehicle's key or keyless, remote-entry
fobs (now leasing companies require customers to call their roadside
assistance or the leasing firm's roadside assistance and replace the
missing key at a cost of hundreds of dollars)
- To end deceptive ticket pricing, online ticket sellers, hotels and others
should be obligated to reveal the full cost including hidden mandatory
fees upfront in advance (as a default) before buyers are about to complete
their orders, reservations, and transactions
- Pass an anti-robocall law, requiring phone companies to offer technology
at no additional cost to customers so they can identify and block robocalls
(including from foreign countries)
Protecting privacy
- Prohibit the collection of DNA by the police or other authorities from
anyone except those convicted of crimes (so the government has no DNA
database on citizens)
- Enact of Charter of Digital Data Rights allowing people to opt in to personal
data collection on websites and apps and ask to see their data, demand
that personal data be deleted and not sold, and require that consumers
give their consent to allow companies to track consumers' most sensitive
data (region, location, sexual orientation)
- Ban social networking companies from collecting data from children
without a parent's or guardian's consent
- Make disclosing intimate photos online without the photo subject's
consent a violation of the privacy laws
- Require operators of facial recognition surveillance programs to notify
people captured on video each time authorities mine databases to identify
people captured on video
- The Privacy Amendment: Amend the Charter of Rights to enshrine the
right to privacy
- Make hospitals and other health facilities obtain consent from patients for
examinations conducted under anesthesia (e.g., pelvic examinations)
Affordable housing
- To help tenants stay in their homes, pay have the government provide
them with low-interest loans to pay their back rent
- Make home inspections mandatory before sales close (so buyers are not
forced to forego them when they submit bids or offers)
- To make housing prices more affordable and slow the rate of price
increases, cap real estate agents' fees regardless of the price of homes
they sell (lower fees would increase agents' productivity and offset the
decline in their fee incomes)
- Ban bidding and auctions for house and condominium sales – require
sellers to accept their advertised price (have lotteries when sellers receive
multiple offers)1
- Promote working at home (for instance, with loans, grants, or tax relief for
buying equipment for home offices) because it improves efficiency through
matching jobs and workers, reduces geographic inequality between cities
and declining rural areas. And reduces commuting and carbon emissions
- Provide free home inspections or require sellers to pay for them
- Enact a 2% sales tax on home sales of more than $1 million, allocating
the revenues generated into funds to support for affordable housing for
low-income renters and programs to end homelessness
1 Banning blind bidding was promised by Canada's federal Liberals in the 2021 election.
Employee freedoms
- Ban non-disclosure agreements as a condition of employment (legal
settlements for sexual harassment, for example, that require victims not to
discuss their cases or workplace conditions)
- Add unemployment to human rights codes. Make it unlawful to discriminate
against long-term unemployed, for example, employers' accepting
applications only from the currently employed or recently unemployed
- To help job seekers the government should maintain a centralized
database of school transcripts from colleges and universities and records
of degrees, licenses, training certifications that employers can access
- Ban non-compete agreements (except for senior executives)2
- Make it easier to organize a union (encourage employees to form unions)
— nations with higher rates of unionization have less inequality and higher
incomes
- Ban "captive" meetings during union organizing campaigns where
employers require employees to attend meetings intended to dissuade
them from unionizing
- Prohibit employers from asking job applicants their pay history (a way to
suppress the pay of applicants in groups historically underpaid)
- Ban employers from keeping tips their employees or "independent
contractors" receive
- Ensure that employers who require employees to work from home provide
virtual workers with equipment and reimburse them for a portion of their
home electricity and internet expenses
- Improve the employment laws to allow so-called contractors and
freelancers the same rights as traditional employees to join unions when
they are working under the control of a company (Uber, Lyft, e.g.) and
performing the primary business of the company or online platform
- Permit unions in the same sector to negotiate sector-wide pay and other
working conditions together for all employees in the same sector once
unions have organized at least 40% of the non-management employees
the sector (for example, fast food, retail stores)
- To ease congestion on buses, subways and other public transit vehicles,
require Uber drivers to accept public transit cards and tokens
- Make paying ransomware illegal — criminalize the payment of ransoms to
cybercriminals to avoid ransoms from becoming a crippling problem for
companies and individuals
2 The Ontario government enacted a law in 2021 to ban non-compete clauses, except for executives.
Technology
- Create a national robot strategy to guide the rollout of automation to
service jobs such as lifting patients in nursing homes, assisting teachers,
and making it easier for seniors to live in their homes
- Create a citizens' mutual fund with non-voting shares the government buys
in the most valuable corporations to share profits with the entire public
Economic Fairness
- Require home-school associations to share 10% of the donations they
receive with associations in low-income areas
- Give a $1,000 "baby dividend" in the form of a savings account (or bond)
to each child born to a parent with annual household earnings under
$100,000. Children can access the money, which accumulates in value,
when they turn 16. The government runs a competition for banks to hold
the accounts, placing the accounts with the bank that offers the highest
rate of interest
- Provide free after-school tutoring for students in low-income families and
tutoring at $20 an hour for higher-income families
Government and Voter Engagement
- To remove "dark money" from elections, require anonymous giving
(political donations), like anonymous voting
- Let the public cast votes — non-binding — online on all bills and resolutions
MPs and MLAs vote on in Parliament and the provincial legislatures
- To improve turnout, have major political party leaders appear in the same
government-paid commercial urging people to vote
- Require government employees to whistle-blow and report corruption,
bribes, fraud or waste to independent investigators in their departments
and protect those who follow their duty to report and blow the whistle
- Change all municipal, provincial and federal election days to the weekends,
turning election days into holidays (as most European countries do)
- To avoid appearances of conflict of interest, ban government officials from
owning shares in companies, only passive investments such as indexed
mutual funds
- To encourage voter engagement and improve election turnout change the
voting age to 16
- Require banks that hold government funds to bid for the business (to
increase the interest the government collects on its deposits)
- To improve voter engagement and turnout, distribute campaign donation
vouchers (perhaps $150 each) to every eligible voter to send to candidates
they want to help with a contribution (Seattle, Washington, has a voucher
program giving four $25 vouchers to every registered voter
- Experiment with elections, perhaps in by-elections, with an alternative
proportional rep system that provides voters check that they "approve"
any candidates on their ballot they would accept as winners — the winner
has the most "approve" marks (a system to reduce partisan ship)
Environment
- Pay restaurants to have their kitchen grease collected to sell to refineries
to use as feedstock for renewable diesel fuel
- Add $1 forest fire compensation fund charge to all admissions to national
parks and historic site to compensate victims of wildfires
- To reduce waste and keep appliances, devices, etc., out of landfills, enact
"Right to Repair" legislation requiring manufacturers to make their repair
instructions including tools and parts available to consumers and repair
shops (not just manufacturer-authorized shops)
- Supported by a small increase in the gas tax, provide large discounts
to people buying electric made-in-Canada vehicles when they trade in a
gas-powered vehicle
- To ease congestion in major cities, require taxies, Uber, Lyft and other
ride-hailing services to accept public transit passes and automated
fare-collection cards toward the price of rides
- Start a government program to divert some farm subsidies to city residents
to encourage converting rooftops, lawns and backyards into mini-farms to
raise vegetables and fruit
- To reduce energy consumption, expedite the phase-out of incandescent
bulbs, and to save low-income households money offer geared-to-income
rebates to purchase LED bulbs
Other ideas
- Let Canadians top up their stamps and postage with a small amount to pay
for letter couriers to pick up outgoing envelopes when they deliver mail
(so people aren't required to find mailboxes or go out in severe weather
to mail letters)
- Enact a sustainable clothing law requiring textile and clothing retailers
to label products that manufacturers certify are not produced by child
labour, made in humane conditions and are organic and recyclable
- Establish an Accuracy Doctrine for the news media and online technology
platforms with an independent public fact-checking commissions of
experts and citizens' juries, funded by the media industry
- Mandate auto manufactures that sell vehicles in Canada to certify their
safety tests account for gender equality, for example, using crash-test
dummies that represent female injury criteria and incorporate safety
features not based solely on average male bodies
- To ease the time squeeze for working parents, start school later, 9.30 a.m.
to 10 a.m., to accommodate the most common work schedule, 9 a.m. to 5
p.m.
- Let EI recipients take up to 20 weeks of EI benefits in a lump sum to start
a business
Want to create, test and use more new ideas in your campaigns?
Talk to Marc Zwelling (marc@vectorresearch.com)
or
Adrian Macaulay (Adrian@vectorresearch.com) at
The Vector Poll™
Marc is the author of Ideas and Innovation for Dummies, published by John Wiley & Sons Inc. (2021) and Public Opinion and Polling For Dummies (Wiley, 2012)
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