Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading...

- While I agree with Murray Dobbin's latest to a point, I'd think it's worth clarifying exactly what kind of fight we can and should expect from the NDP over the next four years.

To the extent one considers a "culture war" to mostly involve the U.S. issues normally linked to the term (abortion, gay rights, separation of church and state, etc.), I'd think the deciding factor in the NDP's strategy will be the Cons' actions. And while any attempt at backsliding in those areas needs to be met with a furious response, I wouldn't see the NDP getting any further than the Libs if it tries to focus on them at the expense of what's being discussed by the Cons and the media.

Which means that for the sake of clarity, I'd think the better term for the NDP's ideal plan is a "values war" - consisting of a clear clash of ideas including, but not limited to, what's normally considered to be cultural conflict. And I'll certainly agree with Dobbin that the measure of the NDP's success will be its ability to build a movement to overcome the one the Cons have developed on their side of the spectrum.

- Will Verboven highlights some of the extra costs of tearing down the Canadian Wheat Board:

The privatization of the Australian Wheat Board has set a bad precedent of what might happen once monopoly powers are removed. That marketing entity couldn't compete, was subsequently sold to private companies and has disappeared. Most anticipate a similar fate will face the CWB once its monopoly powers are removed.

Time will tell if eliminating the CWB monopoly will put an extra dollar in a grain grower's pocket. Those located far from the U.S. border and seaports will find their grain shipping costs dramatically increased. And as with so many surplus farm commodities, producers may well find themselves competing for the lowest price. At least the CWB was able to mitigate and average out that all too usual practice.

The surefire loser in this change will be the taxpayer. When the U.S. launches its inevitable trade actions against an anticipated flood of Canadian grain into American border grain elevators, it will be the Canadian government that will have to pay the bill to fight those actions, not the diminished CWB.

The CWB also carries liabilities of millions on past sales that went bad, and of course, it carries employee pension and severance liabilities that could exceed $100 million. The government may try to prop up a new CWB to avoid facing those realities, but somehow you just know the taxpayer will be on the hook. I guess for a few, it's a small price to pay for one of the founding ideological goals of the Reform and Conservative parties.

- Michael Geist continues his coverage of the CRTC's net neutrality/UBB hearings with this observation:

While the arguments about network congestion from dominant providers such as Bell remained much the same, as the week wore on it appeared the commission was beginning to realize that congestion claims may be overstated and being used to mask fears of competition from the independent ISPs.
...
The CRTC commissioners appear to have recognized that proposals based on limiting the volume of Internet use are not only bad policy — discouraging Internet use benefits no one — but are ineffective in dealing with network congestion. The reason is that the amount of data consumed has very little to do with whether the network is congested.

Consider a four-lane highway that can comfortably accommodate 24,000 vehicles per day. If the vehicles are spread evenly at 1,000 per hour throughout the day, there is no traffic congestion. But if 20,000 of the vehicles attempt to use the highway over a four-hour period, the highway becomes very congested during that time frame. The aggregate volume of traffic may be the same, yet the congestion implications are very different.

The same is true of networks, which can be used to capacity without congestion concerns.

It is only when there is simultaneous demand — called peak periods — that there is the prospect of congestion and the need to augment the network. Pricing to peak periods is precisely what the independent ISPs have proposed, noting that volume pricing hurts their competitive flexibility and does little to address congestion.

After years of debate, that message may finally have resonated. In her questioning of Bell, CRTC Commissioner Candice Molnar said, “We all, I think, can hopefully agree that there is no marginal cost to using the network when you are not causing augmentation.”

- Finally, Erin picks up on the fact that the TILMA which the Wall government promised not to sign is has been entirely rolled into Wall's WEPA.