Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your long weekend reading.

- While some of us may recognize that there's little reason to lend much credence to the talking points spewed out by any Con spokespuppet, others have tried to give the benefit of the doubt as long as possible. But Lawrence Martin notes that even by those standards, John Baird is losing any pretense of credibility. And Susan Delacourt notes that the Cons - while never known for maturity or reasonableness - are getting more childish by the day.

- Doug Saunders offers a look at what a Canada of 100 million people might look like. But let's recognize as well that we're far less likely to reach that point following the Cons' path of preferring disposable temporary foreign labour to an immigration policy that actually allows families to settle in Canada.

- Bruce Johnstone laments the fact that he's being proven right as to the harmful effects of eliminating the single-desk Canadian Wheat Board on western agriculture. 

- David Climenhaga classifies Dutch disease alongside climate change as areas where the Cons and their oil-sector allies are trying to shout down inconvenient truths.

- Finally, Tabatha Southey comments on the G20 report from Ontario's Independent Police Review Director:

(T)he G20 was a weekend of excess in every way. It seemed as if too much money had been spent on the whole affair. I was reminded of parties I once attended in the mostly unfurnished, newly rented homes of freshly successful film directors. Sometimes I’d think, “What is it that does this to people? A man earns some decent money and all of a sudden there’s an ice swan on the table.” A 30-year-old guy starts making $2-million a year, and suddenly he’s throwing his 50th wedding anniversary party. He forgets himself. He forgets the demographic he will be serving that weekend.

Close to $1-billion was spent on security for the G20 gathering. It was as if the officials won policing a summit in a lottery. Ostentatious displays of policing were everywhere – hundreds of riot-gear-clad officers charging repeatedly through peaceful crowds, banging their massive riot shields like so many big-screen TVs ordered in bulk for the guest bathroom.

Like the ice swan, these expenditures bore almost no relation to the events at hand. 

...

The G20 was the result of an unparalleled level of co-operation between federal, provincial & municipal governments. This would be inspiring had it not been three levels of government working together to deprive Canadians of their rights.

Some senior Toronto police commanders are expected to be charged shortly for a variety of misconduct offences. Currently 28 front-line officers face disciplinary hearings on complaints including unlawful arrests and use of excessive or unnecessary force.

We owe it to the protesters who marched peacefully, holding up signs with which I frequently did not agree, to get answers. Those protesters are placeholders for the time when a cause moves me, or anyone else, to demonstrate. I am grateful to them.

We also owe those answers to the many decent police officers who realize that the role of the police is never, as one officer interpreted his directions from superiors that weekend, to “own the streets.”

Parliament in Review - April 24, 2012

Tuesday, April 24 saw a day of debate focused on a relatively non-contentious piece of legislation: a citizen's arrest bill which largely reflected Olivia Chow's work after charges were laid against David Chen of the Lucky Moose.

The Big Issue

When it came to the substance of the bill, there was little disagreement among the three parties in Parliament. Leading off the discussion was Con MP Robert Goguen, who recognized that by working with the opposition parties in committee the government had managed to improve the initial wording of the legislation - raising an obvious question as to why they aren't interested in doing the same more often. Jinny Sims carefully distinguished between the limited expansion of citizen's arrest provisions and any danger of vigilantism, while Linda Duncan and Charlie Angus highlighted the Trayvon Martin case as an example as to why we should be careful about encouraging anything along those lines.

The one dissenting voice was that of Elizabeth May, who not only questioned the inclusion of a single provision allowing for an arrest after a reasonable time, but indicated her intention to vote against the entire bill as a result. And Jack Harris recognized May's sincere concerns, while suggesting that an associated proliferation of private security firms might need to be addressed by the provinces.

The Wrong Prescription

Full credit goes to Con MP Terence Young for questioning the overuse of statins to reduce cholesterol. But Young's party-approved remedy looks like a bizarre way to counter the undue influence of big pharma in pushing its choice of profit drivers:

Most patients can lower their cholesterol with diet change and exercise without the risk of serious adverse effects from statin drugs. Since doctors generally ignore safety warnings from regulators, patients should get the best available evidence on statins from their pharmacists and by doing their own research.

In Brief

Ruth Ellen Brosseau offered a statement on Montreal's massive Earth Day rally, while Megan Leslie slammed the Cons for restricting media access to environmental scientists. Chow questioned the erosion of Canada's rail capacity under Lib and Con governments alike. Ted Hsu's question on the actual net impact of closing prisons was met with the remarkable response from Vic Toews that it would cost not a single penny to house the same prisoners elsewhere. The Cons pushed through their ways and means motion on the budget. Hedy Fry spoke to a private member's bill on cyberbullying, while Dany Morin asked whether more should be done to prevent rather than punish such harm and Goguen noted that the list of offences included in Fry's bill might be incomplete. And in adjournment proceedings Jamie Nicholls sought answers about a long list of Con patronage appointments, while Randall Garrison followed up on the Cons' air travel regulations which discriminate against transgendered travellers.

Saturday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- Lana Payne tears into the Cons for being interested solely in developing a junk labour market where both work safety and income security are sorely lacking. And Chris Selley offers his own rebuttal to the "no such thing as a bad job" mentality:

Mr. Flaherty’s sound byte might live longer than that, though. It certainly begs for inclusion in an NDP attack ad. If an Old Princetonian with a $235,000 public salary and a lavish pension is going to stand up and tell Canadians that “there is no bad job,” then at the very least he should probably have something a little grubbier on his CV to offer reporters than taxi-driving and hockey refereeing. I’ve led a fantastically comfortable and privileged life, and even I can trump taxi driver. There is most certainly such a thing as a bad job.

A bad job doesn’t have to be smelly, hot or noisy. Most people would define the term to include a job for which one is ludicrously overqualified, either on paper or in one’s heart: a plumber working security in the middle of the night, a carpenter slinging crullers, a cardiologist driving a taxi. It’s demoralizing and inherently wasteful, and this government says exactly that when it comes to immigrants. It quite rightly wants to ensure professionals don’t pack up and move to Canada only to toil miles below their station, and it quite rightly talks up the value of skilled trades. And yet here was Mr. Flaherty, whose big mouth seems to be enjoying majority governance, suggesting Canadians should be happy with any pay cheque they get.

- Dan Gardner neatly sums up the possible interpretations of the Cons' utter failure to match rhetoric with action on climate change:

(W)hat can we make of all this? There are two possibilities.

First, Stephen Harper and Company may be sincere about tackling climate change. In that case, they are grossly incompetent. Their policy is a mess. They have accomplished little or nothing. And there’s no reason to think they will do any better in the future.

The other possibility is that Stephen Harper and Company are lying. They do not have any intention of tackling climate change. They never did. Their only real goal is to manage the file so it doesn’t become a political liability, which they have done with considerable success.

And it surely isn't a positive sign that the Cons are yet again trotting out their all-too-familiar "next year" timeline for greenhouse gas emission regulations with a straight face.

- But of course, the Cons have been plenty busy with such important tasks as siccing the RCMP on anybody who reveals inconvenient truths, and trying to shut down any further discussion or investigation of their own electoral fraud.

 - And Carol Goar points out that the latest budget includes plenty more nasty surprises for Canadians. Which means there's plenty of reason why even previously loyal Con supporters have ample reason not to trust them.

[Edit: fixed formatting.]

Musical interlude

Big Wreck - That Song

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- No, there was never any doubt that any statement which could possibly be interpreted as insufficiently jingoistic in favour of the oil industry was going to give rise to a backlash from the Cons' oilpatch base. But it's well worth noting that Thomas Mulcair has had little trouble defending his argument that the cost of environmental damage needs to be priced into all industries - and the "polluter pay" principle looks to be one which can stand up to even the most well-orchestrated spokespuppet attack.

- Which stands in stark contrast to the Cons' brand of controversial policy proposal, where we've just learned that they've been suppressing facts for years in an effort to sell unjustified cuts to seniors' retirement security.

- Public Radio International discusses the fair tax movement in Canada, while Barbara Ehrenreich notes that the poor are all too often preyed upon as cash cows rather than human beings as part of corporate calculations.

- Impolitical highlights what looks to be one of the next frontiers in the Cons' oil obsession: offshore Arctic drilling, with all the environmental dangers that figures to create.

- Finally, Bruce Cheadle discusses a report released by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada on the collection, use and disclosure of personal information by political parties.

Parliament in Review - April 23, 2012

Monday, April 23 was the first day back in the House of Commons following the Easter break. And it featured some of the most lively and telling discussion we've seen yet on the Cons' anti-refugee legislation as the second-reading debate reached its end.

The Big Issue

As part of the refugee bill debate, Craig Scott made his first speech as the NDP's MP for Toronto-Danforth. And he wasted no time in showing what he'll add to the NDP's caucus:

One huge difference is that the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act requires that a person be a permanent resident before the person is able to sponsor family members, such as the person's spouse, children, or parents, to immigrate to Canada. Thus, under Bill C-31 irregular refugees would have no hope of reuniting with family in Canada for at least five years.

 

Currently, family class applications in this country are often processed at a snail's pace. It is not uncommon for it to take three years for a child or a spouse to be admitted and sometimes up to six years for parents. It is no stretch to say that a refugee who started out as a designated foreign national may have to wait 10 years for family members to join him or her.

 

If that is not enough, a designated foreign national refugee will not even be able to travel outside Canada to spend time with family, for example, in a country other than the country of origin which the refugee fears going back to. Why is that? Bill C-31 decrees that such a refugee will not be given travel documents until he or she becomes a permanent resident, that is, until at least five years have passed, despite the fact that the refugee convention requires that travel documents be issued to refugees once they are “lawfully staying” in the host country. Fortress Canada thus becomes prison Canada for the designated foreign national refugee. If he were still alive, Kafka could not have written Bill C-31 better if he tried.

Other speakers including Kevin Lamoureux also questioned why the Cons are so determined to keep families apart for a period of up to a decade. Kirsty Duncan pointed out how quickly patterns of human rights abuse can emerge and render obsolete the "safe country" designations the Cons want to use to attack refugees' rights. Guy Caron and Andrew Cash criticized the Cons' pattern of placing large amounts of power over individual rights in the hands of unaccountable ministers. Caron also lamented the politicization of refugee claims. Libby Davies highlighted the fact that organizations familiar with refugee issues were lining up against C-31, then observed that the bill would allow the Cons to retroactively attack refugee status if circumstances changed in a new immigrant's country of origin. Elizabeth May asked about the cost of locking up refugees rather than allowing them to contribute to Canadian society. Jinny Sims queried how refugees would take the Cons' admonition to play by the rules seriously when the 300,000 who did so in the current skilled worker program queue are being arbitrarily deleted. Anne Minh-Thu Quach and Massimo Pacetti pointed out that there's plenty of reason why refugees can't be expected to meet the ridiculous requirements placed on them by the Cons.

Meanwhile, for the Cons, Jason Kenney took umbrage at any suggestion that his party wanted to get tough on refugees - only to admit that part of the bill's purpose is deterrence to keep them from coming to Canada. And while Patrick Brown offered a boilerplate defence of a plan to require biometric information from new immigrants, Dan Harris rightly criticized the fact that the Cons were refusing to hear from a committee already assessing the use of biometrics.

But as tends to be the case, the Cons simply decided to ignore every valid criticism of their legislation, and voted down the NDP's proposed amendment before forcing the bill through.
 Pop Quiz

Caron received a response to his order paper question (#489) as to the criteria used to decide to close a processing centre in Rimouski and set one up for the primary benefit of Christian Paradis in Thetford Mines and the reason why the change was made. Your challenge: spot anything in the answer that amounts to an explanation of the decision beyond "because we damn well said so, that's why".

In Brief

Merv Tweed spoke to his bill to prevent Canada Post from hiking rates on books delivered between rural libraries. And the idea received multi-party support - though it's worth asking how Tweed's initial can be reconciled with the Cons' constant demand that Crowns be run as revenue-maximizing businesses or sold off to be turned into just that.

Meanwhile, Malcolm Allen offered a statement on cuts to food inspections through both the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Canada Border Services Agency, then followed up in question period. Francoise Boivin served notice that the NDP won't hesitate to defend a woman's right to choice. Megan Leslie wondered about the minders being sent to accompany civil servants to a conference and report on their activities. Irene Mathyssen's question about how much money was being cut out of OAS was met with Diane Finley's response that her government's attacks on seniors' standard of living have nothing to do with deficit reduction. Carolyn Bennett slammed Leona Aglukkaq for singling out aboriginal health for massive cuts. And Caron asked adjournment questions about the Cons' lack of a realistic plan to foster research and development in Canada, while Jack Harris wondered what exactly the Cons plan to do with the influx of prisoners created by their dumb-on-crime strategy (especially as they indicated they planned to close some facilities).

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Drew Anderson comments on the support the NDP is winning among groups which have historically supported the Cons:

Seniors and men. Until now they formed the rock-solid base of the Conservative Party. But they’re trending towards Mulcair, and that should have Harper’s team reaching for the panic button.

Why the sudden shift, particularly amongst two demographics that are often the hardest to move?

New Democrats launched a TV ad that, to say the least, bypassed soft and fluffy.

The ad has trucks and dogs and country music and power tools. It played in heavy rotation, not on Grey’s Anatomy, but during Jays games and the hockey playoffs.

The entire campaign was designed to reach out specifically to those holdouts from the last election campaign, particularly men.

And early indications is that, at the very least, it’s got them joining in the water cooler conversations.

Nobody should get ahead of themselves. Polls go up, and polls go down. There is a lot of real estate between now and the next election. And as Mulcair’s team no doubt learned this past week, honeymoons don’t last forever.

But in politics as in football, it’s always easier to be playing in the other team’s end.

 - Sarah Schmidt reports on UN special rapporteur Olivier De Schutter's fully justified outrage at the lack of food security facing many Canadians:

"It's even more shocking to me to see that there are 900,000 households in Canada that are food insecure and up to 2.5 million people precisely because this is a wealthy country. It's even less excusable," said De Schutter.

"It's not because the country is a wealthy country that there are no problems. In fact, the problems are very significant and, frankly, this sort of self-righteousness about the situation being good in Canada is not corresponding to what I saw on the ground, not at all."

 - Meanwhile, Michael Laxer fits De Schutter's review into a wider pattern of attacks against poor Ontarians.

- Finally, Frances Russell wonders whether some well-placed political theater might be needed to call attention to the Cons' disrespect for Parliament.

New column day

Here, on how the Cons' imposition of an economic policy which benefits a few at the expense of people who get no say in the matter is just the latest (if worst) example of their becoming everything they once claimed to loathe.

For more on the economic argument (which in other corners has mostly focused on the question of whether to characterize the Cons' bias in favour of the oil industry as an element of Dutch disease or not)...
- Peter O'Neil reports on what Thomas Mulcair is actually saying about the resource sector - including that the real costs of production (including environmental effects) are being deliberately kept off the balance sheet through lax regulation, with the Canadian public left to pay the bill later.
- Erin neatly deconstructs how the Institute for Research on Public Policy's report actually supports Mulcair's concerns about the effects of a high dollar. 
- Dean Beeby reports on federal efforts to test how to push workers out of their home regions.
- And while I'm skeptical of the Star-Phoenix' attempt to turn the resource discussion into a "they're both equally bad" line of criticism, it's well worth noting that Brad Wall's spin isn't accepted as gospel even in his home province.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Andrew Jackson raises an absolutely devastating point to refute anybody trying to use "it's all about growth!!!" as an excuse for slashing social supports and handing free money to the rich:

In this age of austerity, we are constantly told by governments that we have to tighten our belts. Tuition fees have to go up; public pensions, Unemployment Insurance and social assistance benefits have to be cut; universal public health care is no longer affordable, and so on ad nauseam.

But, as my friend Peter Puxley recently reminded me,  it is passing strange to argue that we can no longer afford what we could afford thirty years ago, when we were, as a society, much less affluent.
...
(T)he growth rate of real per capita GDP has slowed considerably in the age of austerity – which deserves extended comment – but it has by no means ground to a halt.  This suggests austerity flows not so much from the lack of growth, as from the fact that more and more of that income growth has gone to the top 1% who just don’t want to share it with the rest of us.

 - Meanwhile, Trish Hennessy comments on Jim Flaherty's inclination to kick out-of-work Canadians while they're down (plenty of other Cons have the good sense to repudiate). Les Whittington reports on the CLC's recognition that the main theme of Con economic policy is to drive down wages for everybody. And Scott Stelmaschuk writes about the difference between jobs and careers in light of the Cons' apparent plan to eliminate any hope of the latter:

(C)areers and jobs have very different meanings. Jobs are the sort of thing we do to gain experience as a bridge to a career. Jobs are a stepping stone, and are meant to be a way of improving our skills and forging connections that allow us to transition into a permanent career. Careers are things that pay above minimum wage, offer benefits (health insurance/dental/optical, retirement plans) and allow a person to pay down their debts while allowing enough financial fluidity that a single major emergency won't break the bank.

Careers are disappearing in this economy, and now our finance minister is telling Canadians that they need to bend over, close their eyes, think of Canada, and take the nearest thing resembling employment they can find.

Implicitly, Flaherty has admitted some defeat in the turn about of Canada's economy. While he won't come out and say it, Flaherty is telling us that this is now the new normal for the average Canadian. Gone are the days where a person who has worked towards improving their lives through college and professional development can find a career with financial security. Instead, regardless of the steps taken, a person is now doomed to forever dwell in the lower rungs of the economy.

- In one of its final reports before being axed as unhelpful to Stephen Harper's political prospects, the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy confirms that the Cons' delays in doing anything about climate change will impose severe costs on business (based on the need to react in short order rather than having time to meet the 2020 targets the Cons still claim to want to reach) as well as on the rest of Canadian society.

- And finally, Pat Atkinson recognizes that Saskatchewan will need a far better plan for housing than we've seen to date in order actually attract and retain newcomers.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Personable cats.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your day.

- Kayle Hatt's blog looks to be a must-read from here on in. And his post on what to draw from the latest polls is particularly worth a read:

Every poll that has been released since Thomas Mulcair was elected leader of the NDP has showed the NDP on an upward path but there was some debate about if that was just a ‘Honeymoon Blip’ or a new reality. While time will always be the final judge on political predictions, I’d suggest this poll (which has a large enough sample size to break down in depth) suggests a big shift is underway in the Canadian Political landscape.

The poll reports not just minor ‘across-the-board’ increases for Thomas Mulcair’s NDP but sizable shifts in key demographics than have historically trended more Conservative. If this was just a honeymoon, we would expect to see slight increases everywhere but not large swings. Large polling swings are hardly ever ‘blips’.

- John Ibbitson points out that the Cons' lack of an industrial strategy - and worse yet, their claim that catering to the whims of the oil sands is all the economic strategy Canada needs - has led to inevitable clashes between regions of the country. And PLG is duly incredulous that a province which has spent decades talking about building a wall around itself seems shocked that the rest of the country hasn't meekly agreed to abandon any hope of economic development for its sole benefit.

- Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail editorial board is the latest to recognize how worrisome it is that the Cons are determined to suppress the speech of anybody who doesn't share their cheerleading proclivities.

- Andre Picard chimes in on how the Cons' move to deprive refugee claimants of health care is as counterproductive as it is mean-spirited.

-  Finally, we can only hope John Ibbitson is right in speculating that the Cons' latest attempt at online surveillance legislation is indeed dead for now.

No tough choice

Back here, I discussed how ridiculous the Cons' "tough on crime" model would look if applied to any other area of policy - and used that comparison to question why we'd handle criminal justice any differently. But after a minority government period where the Cons mostly limited their shows of faux bravado to attacking unsympathetic figures, it's now becoming clear that they're entirely eager to apply the same principles in places where they're obviously inappropriate.

Most of us might learn of a friend or neighbour who has lost a job and think our political leaders should be looking for ways to help. Instead, Jim Flaherty's message is that we should get tough on those seeking work - finding new ways to kick the unemployed while they're down.

Most of us might hear about the plight of a refugee seeking to escape repression and figure we should offer a reasonable opportunity to build a new life in Canada. Instead, Jason Kenney is pushing the line that we should get tough on refugees in order to dissuade them from seeking to join Canadian society.

And most of us might think of the work of environmental groups and other charities as something to be encouraged. But the Cons are insisting that we meet their idealism with tough punishment to keep them from inconveniencing corporate polluters.

Now, it could be that the Cons figure that building toughness as a brand is at worst a wash politically - that it at least appeals to a certain authority-seeking base while serving to silence what might otherwise be strong critics of an uncaring government.

But I'd think there's a strong case to be made that the Cons have gone a bridge too far in directing the message of punishment, retribution and deterrence toward people and groups who most Canadians rightly see as deserving respect and assistance. And it should be exceedingly easy to see what the political consequences will be if we can make that case to voters.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- I'll very much hope Chantal Hebert is wrong in her conclusion that Canadians are getting ever more doubtful as to whether change is possible through the ballot box. But one can't much argue with her take on why that perception might be developing:

In the national capital, a government elected with barely four in every 10 votes a year ago has since been going out of its way to disenfranchise the majority that did not support it.

Over the opening year of their majority mandate, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have moved to discourage civic dissent — in particular but not exclusively on the environmental front.

They have replaced federal-provincial dialogue with diktats and adversarial litigation.

They have placed themselves on a collision course with the courts over the place of the rule of law in the exercise of ministerial discretion.

The concept of ministerial responsibility has been reduced to a quaint historical footnote and parliamentary accountability is on the same slippery slope.

In the House of Commons, the government has moved to stifle the input of its opposition critics at every turn, systematically curtailing debate on bills or more simply subtracting legislation from competent scrutiny by cramming it inside inflated omnibus bills.

It should surprise no one that governments who treat the rule of law as a pesky inconvenience will eventually breed the same attitude in those that they purport to legislate for.

 - But then, it's also important to make sure that expressions of public interest aren't limited to a vote every four years - and so it's a plus to see that the opposition parties are looking at the budget debate as an opportunity to get more citizens involved.

- Meanwhile, Kady confirms that the one halting attempt to paint the Cons' latest move toward total control over Canada's political debate (by preventing committees from holding hearings in public on anything other than the Cons' choice of topics) goes far beyond the precedent pointed to as an example of "but they did it too!!!".

- Mark Lemstra reviews Ryan Meili's A Healthy Society for the Star-Phoenix.

- And finally, Bruce Campbell discusses what Canada can do to actually manage its resource wealth (as opposed to merely looking for ways to shove it into corporate hands as quickly as possible).

Parliament in Review - April 5, 2012

Thursday, April 5 was the final sitting day in the House of Commons before a two-week Easter break. And the debate was much less sharp than in previous days, as the primary bill up for discussion was supported by all parties.

The Big Issue

That bill was S-4, a bill on railway and transportation issues which had already been substantially debate in early 2011. And Francois Choquette, Kevin Lamoureux and Elizabeth May each confirmed that their respective parties were entirely willing to co-operate on bills which didn't raise as many red flags as, say, the Cons' omnibus budget-and-environment-gutting legislation.

Which isn't to say that the official opposition couldn't find some obvious room for improvement in both the legislation and the process used to pass it. Andrew Cash lamented the fact that the Cons were merely dealing with piecemeal rail legislation rather than development a national transit strategy. Matthew Dube linked transit issues to the problem of urban sprawl. And Pat Martin went into full outrage mode over the introduction of the bill through the Senate.

Counterproductivity

Having apparently learned nothing about the dangers of contradicting one's own message and playing on a governing party's home turf, Geoff Regan and Massimo Pacetti delivered questions encouraging the Cons...to lower the GST on fuel prices and slash taxes on diesel fuel.

In Brief

In the midst of heavy questioning about the F-35 procurement debacle, Malcolm Allen raised a particularly telling point - as the Cons claimed to have "accepted and acted upon" the Auditor General's 2010 report identifying similar issues in helicopter purchasing even as they misled Parliament and the public about the cost of F-35s. Marie-Claude Morin criticized the Cons' $102 million in cuts to the CMHC, while Charmaine Borg followed up on the harm done to young Canadians who had planned to participated in Katimavik. Bob Rae raised the point of privilege discussed by Don Lenihan here, featuring a remarkable disconnect between what the Cons claimed to be departmental and government positions in addition to concerns about misleading Parliament. Jean Crowder's order paper question on a "federal action plan with specific goals and timetables to reduce poverty" was met with the response that the Cons think their austerity budget is close enough. And the Cons went from initially suggesting that their only problem with the NDP's bill protecting against discriminating based on gender identity and gender expression was a matter of clarifying definitions, to Dean Allison's full-on "OMG manly men in the girls' bathroom!!!" hysteria.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Jim Stanford neatly sums up how the Cons' obsession with selling off both natural resources and natural resource producers affects other industries:

There is no doubting the statistical correlation between oil prices and the loonie. Econometric analysis indicates that since the turn of the century, oil prices explain 86 per cent of the dollar’s rise. The precise reasons for this correlation are unclear. It certainly is not due to a strong trade balance. In fact, Canada has experienced a deepening international payments deficit in recent years, because non-petroleum exports are falling faster than our energy exports surge (see graph). My own research suggests it is foreign takeovers of petroleum companies and reserves, not current production and export of the stuff, that is driving the loonie up.

It is equally clear that the Canadian dollar is overvalued, relative to both historical averages and economic fundamentals. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the current “fair value” for the Canadian dollar (based on purchasing power parity analysis) is about 81 cents U.S. Anything higher and Canadian-made products and services look disproportionately expensive (including manufacturing, services, tourism — and even Big Macs, according to the Economist’s famous hamburger index).

...

In my books, the best way to short-circuit the damaging link between oil prices and the loonie would be to carefully regulate foreign takeovers of resource companies. That’s a worthwhile policy to consider for many reasons (not just for avoiding Dutch Disease). And this hardly implies bombing Alberta’s economy back to the stone age; if anything, a more careful and strategic approach to managing this non-renewable resource would allow Albertans, too, to capture more lasting benefits than the current what-me-worry strategy can ever deliver.

Methinks the bitumen boosters doth protest too much, with their loud attempt to suppress any debate over the potential downsides of Canada’s current energy strategy — which consists of scraping as much bitumen, as quickly as possible, and exporting it raw. Are there important national spinoff benefits generated by the petroleum boom in Alberta? Absolutely. But are there also important costs and risks associated with this economic strategy based on the unregulated extraction and export of a non-renewable resource? Certainly. Could we do a better job of managing those costs and risks? Undoubtedly … unless we continue pretending they don’t exist.

Stanford then decries the tar-sands McCarthyism of the Cons and their petro-state allies. And Erin points out Michael Den Tandt as an example of a commentator completely contradicting himself from one column to the next in order to try to attack Thomas Mulcair.

- Meanwhile, Bea Vongdouangchanh reports on the Cons' abdication of any responsibility for Canada's environment. And Tim Harper suggests that as a result, Alison Redford may have to be the one to implement an environmental plan covering the oil sands.

- Barrie McKenna unloads on the Cons' secrecy and misdirection in trying to make it as difficult as possible for anybody to figure out exactly what's being cut in their budget:

Last week, Mr. Clement’s office released its annual “reports on plans and priorities,” which converts the estimates into detailed spending plans for all 97 federal departments and agencies. Typically, these also reflect changes in the budget.

Not this year. Mr. Clement, the Prince of Darkness, specifically directed departments to exclude the budget cuts, even though they have been known for more than a month.
...
Is the department shrinking or growing? Damned if anyone outside government knows. And that, in the bizarro world of federal accounting, just might be the intent.

If Ottawa Inc. were a public company, regulators would probably delist its shares.

Federal financial reporting has become so murky, inconsistent and retrospective that no outsider has a clear picture of what is actually being spent, or cut. Multiple and overlapping reports are produced using different accounting methodologies. Money not spent in one year is quietly shifted into another, conveniently creating moveable baselines for advertised “cuts.”

- And Don Lenihan points out yet another ruling from Andrew Scheer which will serve to insulate the Cons from any accountability whatsoever for lying to Parliament and the public - this one a requirement that anybody seeking to challenge a false statement be able to prove a direct intention to mislead. As Lenihan notes, that ruling fits nicely into the Cons' general preference for one-way "comms" over meaningful debate.

- Finally, Bruce Cheadle reports on the growing doubt about Senate elections from many of the parties and figures who previously pushed the model. But the point most worth highlighting (particularly given the prospect of a Con Senate majority holding at least theoretical power to utterly stymie the efforts of an NDP government in 2015) is the recognition that the Senate can't legitimately interfere with the decisions of elected representatives now.

[Edit: fixed formatting.]