Tuesday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your afternoon reading.

- Trish Hennessy's election discussion continues with a review of how the NDP managed to counter the Cons' fear campaign:

Fear can be paralyzing, but fear is usually looking for someplace to go, and sometimes the antidote to fear is hope. It certainly helped some Canadians view Jack Layton differently in this election. Jack, with his warm smile. Jack, with his Canadien hockey shirt, hoisting a beer. Jack, risen from his sick bed to do what we all hope in the face of health adversity: fight the beast down with grace, with pride, with the fortitude it took to become an electoral David to Harper’s Goliath. In Quebec, le bon Jack.

Jack Layton had captured, if for a brief moment in time, the aspiration that resides alongside the slow simmering worry in Canada: the hope that we can overcome adversity and thrive. That cane he hoisted above his head at rallies became a symbol of strength; of defiance against long odds.

And, for a few days, Canadians sat on the edge of their seat wondering whether a phenomenon no pundit or pollster had predicted, this NDP tide of support dubbed ‘the orange wave’, would crescendo into an ‘orange crush’.
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Election campaigns are designed to tap into emotion. In the 2011 federal election, worry was a strong undercurrent – and the politics of fear drove some new voters toward Stephen Harper, in search of economic stability. But it also drove some new voters toward Jack Layton, in search of a counterpoint to the politics of fear.

They voted based on deep Canadian values: pragmatism, fairness, caring. For some voters, Harper tapped into the first value. Layton tapped into the second two.

- Greg points out how eager the Cons and their surrogates seem to be to try to erase Quebec from Canada's map.

- Thomas Axworthy notes that one of the easiest ways to balance the federal budget may be to stop the trend toward hiring temporary and contract workers to do permanent jobs:

The length of time and number of hoops a manager has to go through to make a hire has led to an explosion in the number of temporary workers and consultants. The Public Service Commission in a 2010 report found that temporary help services "were improperly used to address long-term resourcing needs." Instead of coming in to temporarily fill jobs left vacant by a serious illness, for example, nearly 20% of the "temporary" hires were for durations exceeding 52 weeks, with the longest being 165 weeks.

The use of temporary workers to get around complex human resources system is also expensive. I have interviewed several "temporary" consultants, whose daily rates are consistently higher than the normal cost of the job. Expenditures for temporary help tripled in the past 10 years, rising to an annual cost of over $300-million in 2008-2009. Harassed managers needing to fill key spots are judged on the speed and quality of the people they find, not rising costs to the taxpayer. With a budget gap of $28-billion, such perverse incentives for the public service human resource systems are all wrong.

- Murray Mandryk rightly questions the Sask Party's interference with union decisions:

Lost on the government MLA is that union dues and how the union conducts its affairs is none of her business. After all, would Heppner dare tell a businessman how much he should pay his employees or that his social club fees are too high?
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it's the absolutely height of hypocrisy for government MLAs to be criticizing anyone for taking the wages of others "to pay for a political agenda they don't support" when the Sask. Party does the exact same thing with taxpayers' money to pay for caucus political ads. Hell, the very political press release in which Heppner registered her complaints against the SGEU comes courtesy of ever-increasing tax dollars going to caucus staff to produce political propaganda.

- Finally, Dan Gardner points out the consistent test the Harper Cons seem to apply to drug policy:

(H)eaps of evidence suggests Insite saves lives, while the federal government has acknowledged before the Supreme Court of Canada that it hasn’t evidence to the contrary.

From the moment the Conservatives came to power in 2006, they insisted that the decision on Insite’s future would not be guided by politics or ideology. The evidence would settle it. But as the evidence of Insite’s effectiveness steadily mounted, the Conservatives’ hostility to the facility never wavered. They wanted to close it then. They want to close it now.

And so what we witnessed last week at the Supreme Court was nothing less than a naked admission that Stephen Harper’s government doesn’t give a damn about evidence.
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In a paper published a few years ago, Peter Reuter, one of the world’s leading experts on drug policy, summarized the evidence: “Research has almost uniformly failed to show that intensified policing or sanctions have reduced either drug prevalence or drug-related harm.”

No matter. Every year, huge sums are spent trying to deal with illicit drugs and the vast majority of that money goes to law enforcement.

And Stephen Harper is fine with that. In fact, he wants more of the same. But that modest, inexpensive, rigorously studied, scientifically validated, life-saving program in Vancouver? He wants it closed.

Which says so much about Stephen Harper.