Sunday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to end your weekend.

- Doug Cuthand makes the case for First Nations resource ownership as a matter of historical right:

When the numbered treaties were negotiated in Saskatchewan in the 1870s, the resources under the ground were never discussed. At the time the government had no idea that Western Canada was a treasure trove of oil, potash, uranium and base minerals. The only mineral it was interested in was coal, which was the fuel for the railways.

The government's vision was to open the West to agricultural settlement. The oral history on the First Nations side includes a question from a chief in the Treaty 4 negotiations, who asked about what lay under the ground. He was told that the government only wanted land to the depth of a plow, and his question would be dealt with at a later date.

The issue was never discussed in any other subsequent treaty negotiations. So, ownership of the minerals and the wealth that lay under the earth remained unaddressed and wasn't part of the treaty agreements. Any lawyer will tell you that if an item is silent in a contract, it remains with the original owner.
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Successive federal governments have simply assumed they owned everything. The 1930 Natural Resources Transfer Agreement gave the mineral rights to the three Prairie provinces, without any consideration of the rights of the First Nations. At that time our leaders raised the issue, but they were unable to get a fair hearing. They were basically ignored.
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As far as First Nations people are concerned, we own 100 per cent of the mineral wealth in Saskatchewan. However, we're willing to negotiate the province's share. That sounds reasonable to me.

- TC Norris points out Ari Berman's critique of the austerity class looking to punish society at large for the (supposed) benefit of creditors:

Taken together, the various strands of the austerity class form a reinforcing web that is difficult to break. Its think tanks and wonks produce a relentless stream of disturbing statistics warning of skyrocketing debt and looming bankruptcy, which in turn is trumpeted by politicians and the press and internalized by the public. Thus forms what Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent calls a Beltway Deficit Feedback Loop, wherein the hypothetical possibility of a US debt crisis somewhere in the future takes precedence over the very real jobs crisis now.

Even President Obama’s new jobs plan—a long overdue break with austerity-class orthodoxy—has been pitched in the context of deficit reduction. Every debate over measures to improve the economy begins with the question “How much will it cost, and can we afford it?” rather than “How many jobs will it create, and how will it help the country?” Far from possessing the solution to our economic crisis, the austerity class represents a major impediment to finding one.

- Mark Sumner traces how a corporate bait-and-switch has served to eliminate secure pensions, then use talk about "ownership" to lock workers into worse and worse alternatives.

- And the Cons are facilitating both that process and a systematic upward redistribution of wealth with their tax-free savings accounts. But hey, it's at least reassuring to know that at least some of the Cons' actions achieve their intended results.

- Finally, the first decision in the Canadian Union of Postal Workers' effort to challenge the Harper Cons' draconian back-to-work legislation doesn't deal with the substance of the law to a great degree. But it's still noteworthy to have a judicial pronouncement that the union has "overwhelmingly established the existence of irreparable harm" as we continue the political debate over the Cons' anti-labour policies.