Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Chantal Hebert offers up the definitive response to the Cons, Libs and media outlets still going out of their way to attack the NDP for winning support in Quebec:

Given the context, to retroactively portray Layton’s party as a fallback vehicle for Quebec nationalism amounts to rewriting election history.

That rewriting excises the inconvenient fact that the voters who gave the NDP its sweeping Quebec victory on May 2nd already had a road-tested nationalist option on the ballot in the shape of the Bloc.
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For the moribund Bloc, the best hope for revival lies with a successful demonstration that there is no room within Canada’s national parties for nationalist Quebecers — or at least not unless they are willing to atone for the way they exercised their voting franchise in the past.

It looks like sovereigntist strategists can count on outside help to achieve their purpose.

Alone of all members of Parliament, Quebec’s New Democrats are being asked to account for their past political leanings.

Some self-appointed high priests of federalism have gone as far as suggesting that a public recanting of anything that smacks of a sovereigntist belief is also in order.

Presumably, they rather than the voters who elected those MPs to the House of Commons would be the judges of what amounts to a high enough level of federalist rectitude.
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Many of the Quebecers who supported the Bloc until last May did so out of a sense of rejection of their collective difference that stemmed from the 1990 demise of the Meech Lake Accord.

Now, as then, a Quebec oui to Canada is getting lost in translation.

- Jessica Bruno points out yet another set of supposed cost-cutting measures by the Cons which figure only to ensure a steady flow of public money into private hands:

Attrition won't help many of the 687 employees at Public Works who were told in June that their jobs will be cut over the next three years, says Claude Poirier, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees.

Mr. Poirier said that he is in "almost daily" contact with union representatives at Public Works, and judging by the information he's seen on the affected workers, most of their jobs will not be eliminated because public servants are leaving of their own will.

In total, 300 employees will be laid off this year across Public Works.
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(C)onsulting services is a special operating agency that runs on contracts for work from other departments.

"It's not really to save money that they've been dismantled. I'd say it's more of a principle for this government. They see a better government as being a smaller government so less government is better government to them," said Mr. Poirier.

The work will now be contracted out to the private sector, though Mr. Poirier noted that there should be limitations to what sort of information is disclosed to outside contractors.

"If you were to provide advice on strategic decisions for the government, you don't want those decisions, and that advice being provided by outside people, it doesn't make sense," he said.

- For those who haven't yet read Warren Buffett's op-ed on the need to stop coddling the super-rich, it's well worth a look:

Our leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

- Finally, the Star highlights the glaring need for some real child care support:

Regulated daycare shortages across the country are so severe that families pay to put their names on multiple waiting lists long before their children are even born. For low-income families, the situation is even worse. Not only do they need to find a daycare space in their neighbourhood, they need to be lucky enough to get to the top of the waiting list for a subsidy so they can afford it.

In Toronto alone some 20,000 families are waiting for a subsidy. That list could grow if city hall’s current cost-cutting efforts lead to the elimination of some of Toronto’s subsidized spaces.

Outside the cities, the situation is little better. More than 8,000 kids in rural and northern Ontario are in danger of losing their child care with hundreds of licensed centres on the verge of closing.

No wonder Canada tied for last among developed countries for providing affordable, quality daycare in a United Nations study.

Rather than deal with this crisis, which causes financial havoc for families and keeps women out of the workforce, the Harper government prefers to proudly blow out the candles on yet another year — we’re at five now — of handing out $2.6 billion in taxpayers’ money without producing any new daycare spaces or enabling parents to afford existing ones. That’s cause for shame, not celebration.