Monday Afternoon Links

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- I wouldn't go as far as he does in suggesting a need for austerity. But Barrie McKenna nicely highlights the waste involved in the Cons' self-promotion blitz:

You can’t turn on a TV these days without seeing one of the government’s messages.

The problem is that the Action Plan money is all but gone, making the term “action plan” a bit of a misnomer.

The government’s plan is more than two years old and the once-yawning federal surplus is now a deficit. Ottawa is borrowing money on your tab to explain where the cash went.

Surely, it’s just a coincidence that the ad campaign matches the Conservative government’s political message in the lead-up to the next federal budget, and a possible spring election.

Put aside for a moment the fact that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is running his next campaign with your money.

The message is also disturbingly disingenuous. The reality presented in the ads obscures the financial condition of the federal government and the major fiscal challenges that lie ahead.

- Meanwhile, David Olive writes about the reasons to doubt that a major part of the deficit will produce any positive results:

The non-financial sector of Corporate Canada already is sitting on $489 billion in idle cash, awaiting certainty that it’s not in danger of a double-dip downturn. In the U.S., that figure is more than $2 trillion (U.S.) What business needs is a recovery in consumer and export markets, not an additional taxpayer-financed windfall at the expense of other social priorities.

The Tories’ own finance ministry economists aren’t alone in regarding corporate tax cuts as the weakest of stimulus tools. Most economists prefer infrastructure spending as a powerful short-term job creator. Which incidentally provides the schools, hospitals, roads and water systems that businesses rely on, too.
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Even without the tax-cut regime the Tories launched in 2007, Canada’s 25 largest publicly traded companies alone created 112,564 new jobs between 2005 and 2010. (The last two of those were Great Recession years.)

Yet many of those new jobs, notably in the case of the Big Five banks, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion and Bombardier, have been created outside Canada as our firms increasingly expand beyond our borders. And many companies restored to pre-recession profitability have spent heavily on efficient machinery that reduces payrolls. Or they’ve been lavishing their restored profits on dividends, share buybacks and executive bonuses.

There are better ways to stimulate the economy.

- In reporting on the Cons' smears against critics of their fighter-jet disaster in the making, David Pugliese serves up a quote nicely suited to stories about most of the Harper government's personal attacks:

In the e-mail Hawn says Defence Department officials working on the JSF project have integrity and experience while suggesting those who question the aircraft program are ill-informed.

“We also have a guy named Mike Slack, who has been exclusively involved with JSF for close to 10 years, and who knows the BS that former ADM (Mat) Alan Williams is spreading,” Hawn writes.
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Neither Hawn, Slack, nor the Defence Department could provide details about the “BS” that Williams was allegedly spreading.

- Finally, it may be of limited use as long as the Cons feel free to thumb their nose at access to information law in any event. But a review of the use of cabinet confidences would figure to go a long way in eliminating the rationale for centralizing power over both substantive decisions and information in the PMO for the sake of avoiding any public accountability.

On channels worth watching

Obviously the Greens seem to have felt they needed to include some NDP content in their meta attack on attack ads.

But the NDP content they've chosen to criticize is drawn from this ad. And it's well worth asking whether the Greens hope to paint themselves as an alternative by making the remarkable case that Canada's political system would somehow be better served spending less time dealing with, say, child poverty and the damage caused by the oil sands (both of which are visible in the screen shots attacked by the Greens).

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Alex Himelfarb nicely highlights the need for citizens to get involved in driving political activity rather than counting on parties to handle it for them:

Preston Manning recently wrote an insightful piece on the limits of political parties and the importance of an independent civil society. Political parties, Manning says, too easily become machines designed only for winning, more skilled at identifying and avoiding risk than at developing public policy. Parties increasingly treat us not as citizens but as consumers. It’s easier. Rather than engaging us in honest but risky debates, they market themselves, pandering to our preferences, feeding our prejudices, and smearing their opponents. Manning argues that grassroots social movements are key to getting unstuck. They are, he says, an essential element of our “democratic infrastructure” and have been at the heart of most important social and political change here and throughout the world. He has a point. Big change involves risk and difficult trade offs, exactly what governments prefer to avoid and political parties typically duck.

Put simply, we only get Parliament that matters if citizens force the issue. Absent an engaged and independent civil society, we get the politics of banality and brutality, pretending that we can balance the books without real sacrifice, that climate change will right itself, that crime policies that have never worked anywhere will make us safer, and that there’s just not much we can do about growing inequality so why talk about it. And here lies the Catch-22: Citizens become further disenchanted; elections and parties lose their hold. And we stay stuck, unable even to begin to address the big issues.
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Surely, sooner or later, we will say “enough”. Surely, sooner or later, we will stop waiting for inspiration from a new political saviour. Sooner or later, we will say we cannot simply stand and watch. We are talking more these days about democracy. We seem increasingly to understand that however fortunate we may be, we cannot afford to be complacent. And, most important, some Canadians, often young Canadians, are getting involved, increasingly taking responsibility, not waiting for our political leaders or political parties, both locally and globally, independent of government, to do what they can to make things better.

But if we are to make our democracy stronger, we need new forms of association, new ways to engage citizens in defining the Canada they want and the options for getting there and for making our democracy work.

Which isn't to say that parties don't have important choices to make as well in determining how much (or how little) to engage with the public and with grassroots participants. But those decisions are far more likely to come down on the right side if citizens are already working to make sure they get heard.

- Meanwhile, it's also worth noting what parties can do to encourage - or discourage - citizens from. And on that point, I agree generally with Stephen's take on the B.C. NDP's social media policy debate.

Simply put, a party that puts more of its energy into filtering out interested members based on mere image issues than defending their right to participate is one which is unnecessarily limiting the number of people who can possibly see themselves getting involved. And the current argument over Nicholas Simons' refusal to turn over personal passwords looks like a classic example of risk-averse party figures erring on the side of the former consideration.

- Michael Lewis points out the windfall that banks have received from corporate tax cuts (with little if any indication that it figures to result in any associated economic growth):

Banks paid as little as $2 billion in total tax in 2008 when their profits were hit by the financial crisis and as much as $8.7 billion in 2010 when their earnings recovered sharply, according to Statistics Canada. Banks including TD and RBC, Canada’s most profitable corporation, reported record earnings this week, with TD paying out its first dividend to shareholders in more than two years.

Banks will gain half a billion dollars alone from cuts in Ontario’s corporate income tax and elimination of the provincial corporate capital tax, said Armine Yalnizyan, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, also based in Ottawa.
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Economists estimate the finance industry as a whole will save $1.5 billion annually once planned reductions in the federal corporate income tax rate from 18 per cent last year, to 16.5 per cent in 2011 and 15 per cent in 2012 are in place.

That $1.5 billion, coincidentally, is exactly what the federal government estimates it would have cost to temporarily expand benefits for Canada’s unemployed, an extension that is being eliminated this month under the Harper government’s plan to phase out its stimulus package.

“Instead, (Ottawa) will now spend $1.5 billion per year to enhance after-tax profits in the financial industry,” said Jim Stanford, an author and economist at the Canadian Auto Workers union.

“Incredible.”

- Charlie Smith notes that a more diverse group of candidates could help the B.C. NDP in seats beyond those occupied by the new recruits.

- Finally, Heather Mallick highlights yet another reason to be wary of the Harper Cons' attempts to redefine Canada's political landscape:

George Orwell, wintry conscience of the English language, said that the great enemy of clear language was insincerity. “When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims,” one turns one’s claws on language. Harper has always been a spiteful man, a yeller at work who was forced to tone it down in public.

But he cannot help himself. The terrorizing of officials and the rewriting of language are revealing the malevolence that lies beneath Harper’s hair. It is ungood, to use Orwell’s Newspeak. It is crimethink.

On bright ideas

One of the key proposals worth highlighting from the Saskatchewan NDP's policy review is a Bright Futures Fund which will ensure that one-time resource revenues are reserved for the longer-term benefit of the province - making for an ideal contrast against the short-sightedness of the Sask Party. But don't take my word for it when even Bruce Johnstone is on board:

Another NDP bright idea worth looking at is the Bright Futures Fund, which was contained in a draft policy paper released this week that will form the party's 2011 election campaign platform.

The Bright Futures Fund would be modelled after Norway's sovereign wealth fund, which has been investing a portion of the country's North Sea oil and gas production for the last 15 years.

The fund now has $518 billion in investments, or one per cent of global stocks, and allows the Norwegian government to spend about four per cent of its value every year on services for its citizens.

Alberta's 35-year-old Heritage Fund is another example of a 'legacy fund' that collects about 30 per cent of the province's non-renewable resource revenues and has generated about $32 billion in investment income since 1976.

The Bright Futures Fund will "maximize the benefits of our non-renewable resource revenues for current and future generations of Saskatchewan citizens," the NDP says.

The key word is here "future" generations. As stewards of the province's resource riches, we have no right to spend non-renewable resource revenues as if they were ongoing sources of revenue. By definition, they're not. They're sales of assets that should remain on the province's balance sheet, not shovelled into the maw of government spending.

Therefore, we should save a portion, say one-third, of those resource revenues in some sort of fund to be invested solely to generate income for future generations.
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It's not only good public policy; it's the right thing to do.

(Your Colour Here) Libs

John Ibbitson's latest is worth highlighting mostly for a distinction which I'd think deserves more attention:

There are a great many voters who are socially liberal but fiscally conservative. In the past, they have supported the Liberal Party, in part because it won elections and in part because these voters distrusted the strain of social intolerance they detected within the Progressive Conservative/Reform/Canadian Alliance/Conservative parties.

We could call these people Manley Liberals, in honour of John Manley, the former Chrétien cabinet minister who is currently the head of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.

Many Manley Liberals will have noted that the Liberal Party no longer wins elections, and that it reversing many of its own former policies.

As it becomes increasingly clear that Mr. Harper is keeping whatever socially conservative tendencies he might have in check, the temptation for Manley Liberals to switch to the Conservatives grows.

So what's important about Ibbitson's description? I'd argue that he takes a step toward ending the usual "red Lib/blue Lib" dichotomy - even as he misses the significance of the distinction by painting them as properties of blue Libs generally.

On the one hand, there's certainly reason to separate out blue Libs as normally described, being those who hold an ideological position favouring economic conservatism and (in some cases) social liberalism. And there's not much doubt that such a wing would naturally be attracted to the Cons if the Libs become weaker - which is where the Cons' efforts to split up the Libs' coalition make sense.

But there's also a third group which I'd describe as the (Your Colour Here) Libs, being the substantial element of the party which is mostly attracted to the prospect of playing a significant role in winning power regardless of what policies get implemented as a result. (The current litmus test for this group: anybody who's arguing as fervently against corporate tax cuts now as they argued for them back when the Libs were the ones proposing them.)

Now, some within the third branch may wish to take the easiest path to power via the Cons. And indeed at least a few have already done so.

But those who have stuck with the Libs thus far figure to be more attracted to a party which offers the chance to stake out a position within a developing governing coalition, rather than one with a top-down structure which reserves plum positions for those who have demonstrated past loyalty. So there's reason for hope that if the Lib coalition splits, enough of its component parts might well gravitate toward a progressive alternative to give the NDP (or other left competitor) a strong chance at winning power in short order.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Content goes here.

- Pay no attention to mere pesky Nobel laureates with their baseless concern about Canada's consumer debt levels and housing prices. As long as Stephen Harper is sitting at a desk feigning concern, what could possibly go wrong with Canada's economy?

- Meanwhile, the Star tears into Harper over his party's contempt for Canada's election laws:

The Conservatives only invite more scorn by persisting with their threadbare claim that they are the victims of an “administrative dispute” and differences over “interpretations” of the law. As Liberal Dominic LeBlanc slyly noted in Parliament, “Mr. Speaker, there will be a lot of people in federal prisons tonight who will think they had an ‘administrative disagreement’ with the federal government.”

A party that campaigned to restore ethical governance cannot be comfortable being likened to criminals in denial, with election speculation in the air. Harper would do better to cut his losses, bow to Elections Canada’s better judgment, and accept responsibility for a sad chapter in the party’s history. This just gets worse.

- In case anybody was operating under the illusion that the Cons' Senate interference with the will of elected MPs was a one-time problem, no such luck:

Supporters are now optimistic the bill will pass when it comes to a vote Wednesday. The New Democrats and Bloc Québécois are solidly in favour, as are most Liberals and even a handful of Conservatives.

That doesn’t mean it will become law, however. MP Glen Pearson, the Liberal critic for international co-operation, says Conservatives have told him it will be killed in the government-controlled Senate. It could also die if there’s an early election.

But that should serve as reason to turf the Cons as soon as possible - since the longer they have to stack the Senate, the more time it will take for any alternative government to be able to actually pass legislation.

- Finally, great news out of my home riding of Wascana, as U of R professor Marc Spooner has put his name forward as the NDP's candidate for the next federal election. There's plenty of work to be done in both winning over votes which currently default to Ralph Goodale and working to boost turnout in parts of the riding which see woeful participation at all levels of government, but Spooner's profile and focus on housing issues should make him an ideal candidate for the effort.

Deep thought

"Yeah, but at least we didn't take kickbacks!!!" was a nice Con talking point while it lasted. I look forward to the transition to "Yeah, but we're no worse than the Libs were!".

Reason to reevaluate

Yesterday, I figured it should be obvious why it would be reckless for the Sask Party to figure that it can coast on policies that haven't been given any thought since 2003. But in case there's any doubt whether anything has happened in the meantime that would cause any remotely competent government to reconsider its economic model...

So the Irish government bailed out the banksters, cut public spending, and their economy is in the (#@*^&).

Unemployment is up to 13.8 percent (it was as low as 4.2 percent as recently as 2005); public spending has been savagely and repeatedly cut since 2008; the deficit has risen to 14.3 percent; and current predictions suggest that 100,000 people will emigrate in the next several years, from a population of 4.3 million. The bill from the struggling banks may, in the end, total upward of $135 billion 100 billion euros, in an economy with a G.D.P. of $220 billion 160 billion euros.

Truly, the Wall government doesn't plan to settle for any mediocre failure when it can instead continue down a road which leads to an all-out catastrophe. But the rest of us don't seem to have much reason to want to go along with a plan to turn Saskatchewan into the next Ireland - and if Wall isn't willing to learn anything from the mistakes of his ideological cousins elsewhere, then our only chance is to make sure he's not in a position to set the province's direction.

Fair game

Jeffrey Simpson's column on Stephen Harper's controversial views which form a matter of public record is well worth a read. But the point worth taking away is the opposite of what Simpson wants to suggest:

In 1999, a right-wing doctor, David Gratzer, wrote a book, Code Blue, that tore apart medicare, suggesting it should be replaced by U.S.-style private medicine and medical savings accounts. Dr. Gratzer now advises Republicans on health care.

Commenting on the book, Mr. Harper said: “Gratzer proposes a workable solution for the biggest policy problem of the coming generation – government-controlled health-care monopoly. Canada needs Gratzer’s solution.” Mr. Harper’s praise appeared on the cover jacket of Code Blue.

As Canadian Alliance and Conservative leader, Mr. Harper never repeated those views. On the contrary, he has repeatedly said he favours Canadian-style medicare. Would it be fair to run an attack against him for views he held in 1999?
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Mr. Harper once favoured Canada’s participation in the invasion of Iraq (Mr. Ignatieff, then at Harvard, favoured the invasion, too). He was part of a political party, Reform, that cast doubt on the science of climate change, a position his government’s websites don’t support today.
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It would be just as inappropriate to tie him to long-abandoned positions as it is for the Conservatives, in their disgusting attack ads, to tie Mr. Ignatieff to positions he’s since rejected.

Of course, the problem in these cases is that Harper's actions in government are broadly consistent with his previously-expressed positions, even if they're presented in such a way as to scare voters less than the previous stances.

No, Harper doesn't talk anymore about replacing health care with a private system. But his government has chosen to end what little enforcement of the Canada Health Act ever took place, helping to make it even easier for provinces to move in that direction on their own.

No, he doesn't want to get into Iraq anymore. But he's extended Canada's compensatory combat mission in Afghanistan at every opportunity, including by forcing it through as a confidence measure. And he's wasted no chance to serve as an international voice of the American right even as the U.S. itself has shifted its position under Barack Obama.

And no, his government doesn't dare to admit to climate denialism. But it's produced exactly the complete lack of meaningful policy one would expect from a party which genuinely refused to accept that climate change is an issue worth addressing.

So the end result isn't that we should ignore Ignatieff's past statements just like far too many people have been willing to ignore Harper's. Instead, we should recognize that Harper's views likely haven't changed even if his framing has, with his government's actions in power serving as compelling evidence. And indeed we'd be well served to pay more attention to what Harper really thinks as evidenced by his statements when they weren't under a microscope, rather than focusing solely what he wants the public to believe he thinks today.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted material for your weekend reading.

- Armine Yalnizyan discusses how free-market economic theory fails to take into account the realities of human (and other animal) behaviour:

Observing a group of chimpanzees she had trained to use currency to trade for food, Ms. Santos found monkeys don’t like to save. They often steal from one another and from the market “salesman”. And they display a tendency towards greed. Sound familiar?

There’s more, and it speaks profoundly to what makes rapidly expanding markets so prone to increasing risk. Confronted with complex decisions we make mistakes, panic and revert to basic instincts. One such instinct is a bias towards thinking in relative, not absolute terms. Another is a bias towards loss aversion.

Both lead to a simple and potentially disruptive truth: Humans don’t like to lose anything of value that they’ve obtained, and will actually take on more risky behavior with the object of value in a misguided attempt to save what they already had.

The research gives the lie to the notion that markets are rational. It sheds important light on ways to reduce risk and improve performance. And it suggests why markets tend towards greater concentration, an inherently unstable distribution of resources and power because it reinforces both greed and fear.

- Meanwhile, it's a day ending in "y". Which means that Erin has once again exposed a Jack Mintz tax-slashing screed as containing a typical combination of factual errors, questionable assumptions and non-disclosure.

- I've supported competing candidates in each of the last two municipal elections. But it's still a plus to see Fred Clipsham pursuing the NDP's nomination in Regina Qu'Appelle - particularly since the incumbent manages to stand out even among the Cons' invisible Saskatchewan MPs for sheer uselessness.

- Let's give due credit to the Sask Party for at least one form of democratic participation that's been excised from all other parties besides the NDP, as it actually saw a sitting MLA defeated in a nomination contest. Though that type of competition would have far more meaning if it wasn't limited to changing the individual responsible for defending policies not set by the party's membership.

- I don't dispute that it would be a plus to see usage statistics for SaskConnected - both to see how it's working now, and how it can be improved. But otherwise, David Seymour's attempt to sell the service off looks to be based on little more than the usual desire to hand free assets to the private sector rather than any valid reason why wireless Internet access can't practically be treated as a freely available public good.

- Finally, pogge nicely points out what's most frustrating about the current federal landscape:

This last extended break from blogging was originally prompted by illness but more recently I've simply had difficulty getting my enthusiasm for it back. Weighing in on the endless election speculation doesn't do a whole lot for me when I don't expect the outcome of an election to make a lot of difference in the direction the country takes. And I don't. When the rallying cry "Blogging for a Harper-free Canada" first surfaced a while back, my initial reaction was to ask myself why we should set the bar so low. I still think it's a good question.

And the likes of Thomas Walkom aren't helping matters by looking to keep the bar in position through the next election campaign.

On goal-setting

Rick Salutin is partly right in describing the gap between the developing labour protests in North America with the ones that led to massive changes in decades past:

(L)abour’s high points in the past didn’t occur because unions thought they could help out progressive causes or buck up the GDP. Those were byproducts. The fuel was a moral convicition of the rightness of its own cause, as in its anthem, Solidarity Fovever: “It is we who ploughed the prairies, built the cities where they trade. . . Now we stand outcast and starving ’mid the wonders we have made/But the union makes us strong.”

That was heady stuff. It justified bold tactics and sacrifice because “we” workers, who created wealth, had seen it stolen by the owning class and doled back to us in meagre portions. “We” were creating a movement to reclaim our rightful inheritance, and that of all the dispossessed.

Canadian poet Milton Acorn wrote, “I have always treated the working class as kings in exile.” It was a moral myth (i.e., leaving aside how true it may be) that led to confidence and courage.

The current labour resurgence, so far, lacks that motivational grandeur. “No more givebacks,” “Don’t dilute our pensions,” “Save collective bargaining,” are all very defensible, but also defensive. They miss the urgent moral sense of justification in those earlier versions.

One component in the current crisis does have that moral intensity. It’s the widespread rage against the arrogant, greedy behaviour of big business and especially finance: the banksters and hedge fundies who demanded deregulation, peddled their useless monetary “devices” that brought on the apocalypse, then demanded a bailout, then more bailouts, while continuing to gobble bonuses and call for cutbacks in underfunded basics like education to pay for their own bailouts.

It’s revolting. It’s not even their original sins that elicit the disgust, it’s their subsequent graceless ingratitude. There’s some of the moral fury in reactions to this behaviour that was also found in the passion that fuelled the rise of labour in earlier eras.

Now, I'm in agreement that there's a need to harness the justified public outrage over the behaviour of the corporate sector toward greater ends. But the larger point seems to be that both of the parts of the current protests are largely oriented toward preserving something seen as a status quo from a policy perspective - whether it be the rights and benefits of union members and public employees, or the obligation of big business to contribute at least something considered its current fair share to the society which makes its profits possible.

What's lacking, though, is the sense that there are some realizable gains which are both consistent with the moral message, and within reach from a policy standpoint. Yes, there are some issues being discussed which have the potential (a guaranteed annual income, pharmacare and child care ranking high on the list) - but there's been precious little connection so far between the lack of contribution from those with the most, and the failure to make any progress for everybody else.

Of course, there are separate issues involved in trying to determine which issues to then present as the main goals of a movement. But even if we can't agree in advance on what to push, it's well worth placing a far greater emphasis on what a reasonable tax structure and labour policy would mean in terms of public benefits - and making the case that such changes are morally right as well as beneficial to voters.

[Edit: fixed typo.]

Saskatchewan Party Cancelled Due To Lack Of Interest II: This Time We Mean It

After the Sask Party showed its near-complete lack of member participation with a policy-free convention in 2010, I figured it would make sure to avoid similar stories in an election year.

Well, it's certainly changed something about its handling of policy resolutions:

(W)hile the Sask. Party convention is focused on the upcoming election, one thing that won't be seen is policy development for the party's platform.

There are no policy resolutions to be debated by delegates.

Wall said there are other ways of developing policy and the Sask. Party has focused on developing its plan through consultations by MLAs with Saskatchewan residents.

He dismissed concerns that the policy process could appear non-transparent or top-down, saying party members would not "countenance" policies that didn't represent them.

After a lengthy policy review, the NDP recently released a 65-page draft report that will be debated at a convention at the end of the March. But Wall said the Sask. Party had done a complete policy overhaul after its 2003 election loss.

Now, Wall seems to be making two separate excuses for the fact that the organization he's leading has ceased to be a political party in any meaningful sense of the term. But both look highly dubious under the circumstances.

Chronologically, the first claim is that the Sask Party hasn't had any need to develop new policies in the last 8 years. Which is obviously enough absurd on its face - but looks to be wrong even on Wall's own account. After all, he himself recognizes a need for somebody to set his party's current policy through some means rather than being able to sleepwalk through a decade at a time.

That leads to the claim that consultation through MLAs is enough to meet the Sask Party's top-down policy-making needs. But even leaving aside the principle that it's probably best to have multiple forms of engagement with the province, Wall also has to face his party's track record of hand-picking those whose input is acceptable and going out of its way to ignore the rest of the province. And a convention focused on policy would seem to be exactly the place to determine whether that kind of selective consultation had led the party astray.

That is, for a leader who placed any value on member and citizen engagement. But rather than looking to increase his own party's interest in policy from embarrassingly low levels, Wall has apparently decided that it's easier not to countenance any policy debate inside or outside an election campaign. And if public participation is the last thing Wall wants to encourage going into an election where he hopes to coast to a second term on general apathy and disinterest, then that surely doesn't speak well as to whether we can expect Wall to listen to anybody if he gets what he's after.

Musical interlude

Gandharvas - Downtime

On prior knowledge

From Jennifer Ditchburn's story on the Cons' conscientious objectors to the in-and-out scheme, a reminder that one of their supposed law and order stalwarts knew all too well the dangers of similar ruses:

Mark's former campaign manager, Debby Sorochynski, said she recalls being asked to receive money and then have the funds withdrawn quickly afterward.

Sorochynski said she remembers the issue because it sounded similar to a case involving Conservative cabinet minister Vic Toews, who pleaded guilty and was convicted of electoral overspending in a Manitoba provincial election.
Three other candidates in that election were also convicted of the breach of electoral laws.

The provincial Progressive Conservative party had asked candidates shortly before the 1999 election to sign an authorization to absorb $7,500 each in central campaign expenses, according to the Winnipeg Free Press' account of court testimony. Toews' lawyer said at the time that Toews initially did not want to participate in the plan.

"That was a well-known, documented story in Manitoba, so when the national office offered an opportunity to get involved in something that sounded similar to that, we just said No," said Sorochynski.

So what does it say about the Cons' central command that its apparent source of ideas for campaign management came from a scheme that managed to get a prominent Con (among others) convicted of breaching the law at the provincial level?

On disciplinary problems

Come to think of it, this can probably be summarized in "shorter" form. So here's shorter Gerry Nicholls, Age 10:

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!! Mr. Mayrand gave me detention for starting fights again! But it's not my fault. He only hates me 'cuz I call him Mr. Doodyhead!!! No fair!

On projection

Gerry Nicholls' latest most certainly demonstrates a pattern of interaction between Elections Canada and right-wing organizations. But it's the exact opposite of what Nicholls is trying to pretend.

Here's the sum total of Nicholls' evidence of a supposed "vendetta" by Elections Canada against Stephen Harper and the NCC:

Now before you write me off as paranoid, consider the background. Before the charge was laid against us, the NCC had long been a vocal opponent of Elections Canada's attempts to impose free-speech stifling third-party advertising laws on the country. We called them election gag laws.

In fact, in 2000, our president at the time -who happens to be current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper -went so far as to publicly call the then head of Elections Canada, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, a "jackass."

More to the point, the NCC also frustrated Kingsley by ceaselessly fighting his gag laws in the courts at every turn, delaying their implementation for years.

Now, it shouldn't take a particularly close examination of that "background" to notice that it involves absolutely no wrongdoing by Elections Canada.

In fact, the obvious conclusion is that the NCC went out of its way to attack Elections Canada at every opportunity, through both legal means and personal insults. And Elections Canada didn't take the bait: instead of sinking to the NCC's level, it chose only to work on enforcing the law as it stood. Which would seemingly be exactly what one would want out of an independent regulator.

But as far as Nicholls is concerned, his own side's jackassery (to apply the term where it actually belongs) somehow serves as evidence of wrongdoing on Elections Canada's part. Because apparently as soon as somebody is on the receiving end of enough baseless cheap shots, it can't actually do its job without been seen as harboring a vendetta.

Needless to say, there is indeed a parallel between that case and the Cons' in-and-out scandal. But the connection is that in both cases, Stephen Harper has tried to pre-emptively attack an independent regulator which can't return fire in the hope of avoiding being subject to the law - apparently keeping in reserve the ludicrous argument that his own unwarranted attacks could somehow be used to smear Elections Canada, rather than serving as evidence of his own bad faith.

Under those circumstances, the hard-earned "terrible news coverage" arising out of the Cons having brazenly broken the law is still far better than the Cons deserve.

To avoid any confusion

Just so we're all clear on the timeline...

Past: Conservative MP (and former cabinet minister) discovered misusing parliamentary resources to influence the course of a nomination race (and the subsequent vote in the riding).

Present: Conservative MP (and cabinet minister) discovered misusing Parliamentary resources for party fund-raising and organization.

Future: Conservative MPs (at behest of Prime Minister) discovered misusing Parliamentary resources to threaten the complete withdrawal of services from any riding which fails to elect a Con MP.

Always glad to help.

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Pogge is absolutely right to see the Bloc's threatened withdrawal from the Afghan cover-up commission as utterly useless:

(T)he serious consequences expected to result from the Bloc's withdrawal?

"Our withdrawal could weaken the political committee and would take away its credibility," he told La Presse.

I think that train left the station some time ago. So the Liberals and the Conservatives will vow to carry on and we'll never hear another word about it.

- Silly CCPA, bothering to report on massive increases in government outsourcing costs. Don't they know that public money used to enrich private consultants is free?

- There's some remarkable follow-up to Erin's calculations on potash royalties, as PCS isn't bothering to challenge the conclusion that Saskatchewan is seeing less return on PCS' massive mining operations than Trinidad and Tobago take in from a single nitrogen facility:

I suggested that the company may be paying less corporate income tax to Saskatchewan than to Trinidad. PotashCorp could clear things up anytime by simply disclosing the amount of corporate tax it paid to the Saskatchewan government.

Rather than doing so, its spokesman argues that the province of Saskatchewan is not comparable to the country of Trinidad. He has a point: most Canadian corporate taxes flow to the federal government as opposed to provincial governments. That fact underscores the need for higher provincial royalties to collect a fair return on potash, a provincially-owned resource.

- Finally, I'll be hoping to see much more from LeadNow, including some more effort to paint public involvement as downright desirable rather than merely something not to be ashamed of. But this is a great start in looking to normalize political participation:

Of kingpins and pawns

Somehow the reporting on Doug Finley's Twitter outburst has missed a rather remarkable point. So let's note that senior Cons seem to be following up with their new strategy of unveiling policy on Twitter by now using it to undermine their own legal position.

After all, Finley is personally facing charges arising out of the in-and-out scandal. And presumably, one of his defences would seem to have been that he personally wasn't responsible for the shifted costs and fabricated receipts forming part of the scheme - particularly since he didn't play a direct role in the transactions on the public record.

However, it wouldn't make any sense for Finley to say personally and publicly that Harper wasn't in a position to know about the decision-making process surrounding the in-and-out transactions unless he had enough personal involvement to know what did and didn't filter up to Harper. So Finley may have managed to substantially undermine his own defence in under 140 characters.

But does that make Finley's tweet credible in its exculpation of Harper? Let's revisit the Cons' governing philosophy per Paul Wells and John Geddes:

Someone who was there paraphrased Harper’s message to his ministers at his first cabinet meeting in 2006: “I am the kingpin. So whatever you do around me, you have to know that I am sacrosanct.” Harper was telling his ministers that they were expendable but that he wasn’t. If they had to go so that his credibility and his ability to get things done were protected, so be it.

So what implications might that philosophy have for Finley - a Harper loyalist since long before the Cons took power, who presumably had a role in building Harper's own internal message?

To the extent Finley believed his party's own hype, it would seem as likely as not that he'd be willing to throw himself under a modest-sized bus for the sake of protecting the kingpin. And that means there's reason to call the attempt to insulate Harper into question - even as it serves as substantial evidence against Finley himself.

Update: Leftdog has more.

Epic market fail

As part of the new debate over rent control and public housing development, the Saskatchewan NDP has rightly pointed out that Manitoba has done well in keeping rents down while encouraging construction. But the more important point looks to be the flip side, as the argument that we can't interfere with the market rings entirely hollow when the market is so obviously failing on its own.

For anybody looking to make a case that the market shall provide if we just have enough faith, the last few years (featuring a corporate-friendly government, a growing population to occupy any new units, and none of the rent controls that are supposed to make building more difficult) would seem to have offered a golden opportunity. But rather than seeing some influx of innovative builders meeting the obvious demand for rental housing, Regina has seen vacancy rates plummet and rents soar. And aside from plenty of owner-unit construction, the most obvious shift in the housing market has been...condo conversions, with even more rental units being taken off the market and sold off until the City of Regina stepped in with a moratorium.

Now, it's not hard to see how the incentives involved for builders and landlords have led to that outcome. Given the choice as to what to do with a new construction project or existing building, it's entirely rational to look to make quick and easy money in a booming market, rather than waiting for rent payments to offer a return on investment over a period of decades. And with the vacancy rate so low, it's equally obvious why landlords are taking the opportunity to push rents upward.

But the end result is that the market is failing miserably when it comes to the needs of citizens who are either looking for rental units, or trying to afford the ones they now occupy. And the gap between Manitoba's success with rent controls and Saskatchewan's failure without them should signal that it's the height of folly to leave such a basic necessity at the mercy of market-based decision-making.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Simple answers to simple questions

Leftdog:

Does the National Citizens Coalition Also Claim That Canada's Federal Court Of Appeal Is Retaliating Against Harper With In/Out Charges?

Yes. Along with Harper's own Director of Public Prosecutions. And the cursed inventors of paper and e-mail who are to blame for allowing damning evidence to be preserved. And reality in general, with its well-known anti-Harper bias.

Suddenly it all makes sense

No, Sask Party Watch's post documenting John Gormley's refusal to talk to PC Leader Rick Swenson wasn't much of a surprise from the standpoint of civility and openness to debate. But I did find it somewhat odd that Gormley would be refusing to hear criticism of the Wall government even from the right.

Suffice it to say that's one mystery solved.

Wednesday Morning Links

Content goes here.

- Lest there be any doubt, the Federal Court of Appeal's decision strongly rejecting the Cons' arguments about rebates isn't any more conclusive of the individual charges against four key Con insiders than the ruling below. But the fact that Elections' Canada's interpretation of the law it's in charge of enforcing has been found to be correct is still a rather important development - particularly since there's no general right of appeal unless the Supreme Court of Canada chooses to grant leave (which is does only in a small fraction of cases).

- Scott Payne's contribution to Aaron Wherry's series on the current state of the House of Commons is well worth a read. But I'd argue that his general metaphor is part of the problem: while politics are too often seen as a matter of merely hooking in votes on a one-time basis, the true measure of success should be to get people to want to be involved more generally.

- Having already duly mocked Lorne Gunter's inane column on the Senate, let's note that Chantal Hebert's more reasonable analysis still looks to be somewhat off base.

Of course, nobody will dispute the point that abolition figures to be a difficult process. But I'd argue (as the NDP seems to be doing) that the experience of Canada's previous failed attempts at constitutional reform should be taken as a signal that there's more chance of success in seeking a popular mandate on specific issues, rather than trying to cobble together a full constitutional package through complex negotiations with ever-changing parties.

And it's also worth noting that Stephen Harper used to agree on abolition as an alternative (with no such criticism from the likes of Hebert) - that is, until he stacked the upper chamber with enough of his cronies to be able to override the will of Canada's elected representatives.

- Finally, let's start working on the backlog of developments in the potash sector with this observation from Erin:

PotashCorp paid zero Potash Production Tax in 2010. In other words, the company is swimming in writeoffs and had no taxable profits according to Saskatchewan’s profit-tax formula.

The company’s entire $77-million royalty payment was the provincial resource surcharge, set at 3% of sales.
...
PotashCorp’s 2010 Canadian income tax expense of $333 million comprises about $200 million to Ottawa and $133 million to provincial governments. Because the company also operates in other provinces, Saskatchewan is probably getting less than $133 million.

Meanwhile, PotashCorp is paying $113 million of corporate income tax in Trinidad, where it has a nitrogen facility. In the previous year, 2009, it actually paid more corporate tax to Trinidad than to all levels of Canadian government!

On impending giveaways

Remarkably, it doesn't seem to have received much comment yet aside from a mention in James Wood's legislative notebook. But the fact that the Wall government is actively looking to hand free money to oil companies would seem well worth criticizing as the province debates how best to secure and invest its resource revenue:

Saskatchewan is considering competing with Calgary.

Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd says the Saskatchewan Party government could expand head office tax incentives beyond the potash industry, with oil companies a potential target.

In 2009 the government introduced a five-year, $100,000 per employee annual tax credit for each head office job created or relocated in Saskatchewan by potash companies.

Potash was seen as a natural choice because of the size of the industry in Saskatchewan, but others are also being eyed, acknowledged Boyd.

"Would we look at any kind of an incentive for oil companies and try to attract them to Saskatchewan? It might be something we would consider, yes," he said.

Now, it would be hard to blame any company for taking up the offer: after all, they surely can't say "no" to having Saskatchewan pay its employees while being able to reap the profits of their work. But the fact that an incentive program would largely be intended to lure businesses from Alberta only proves that there's no expectation of long-term gain: as soon as anybody else offered a better deal, they'd have an equally strong incentive to bolt rather than actually setting down any meaningful roots in Saskatchewan.

As a result of both that reality and the sheer absurdity of shoving more public money at already-profitable industries, I highly doubt that most Saskatchewan citizens see paying the oil industry's bills as being the best use of Saskatchewan's resources. And since there doesn't seem to be much room for doubt that another term of the Sask Party would see millions upon millions more in giveaways, it's long past time to highlight the Wall government's desire to make sure the proceeds of Saskatchewan's boom are funneled into corporate coffers before it's too late.

Misrepresenting the West

Shorter Lorne Gunter:

Pay no attention to Lorne Nystrom and other longtime NDP MPs who built their base in part on a longstanding and widespread belief in abolishing the Senate. As the official voice of Con-approved Western populism, I hereby declare that the only reform anybody has ever wanted is patronage appointments for Conservative election fraudsters.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Quality control cats.

History repeating

Rarely can a single tweet so perfectly sum up the problems with a political party. But according to Michael Geist, the Libs are apparently offering to speed up passage of the Cons' anti-consumer copyright legislation in exchange for...an end to their attack ads on the issue.

So once again, the Libs are eager to trade off substantive policy for only a bare, temporary political gain. And the Cons can respond by launching similarly inaccurate attacks based on their next legislative priority, knowing that they'll serve only to push the Libs to give in once again.

And what's most sad is that as much as it seems that the deal couldn't be any worse for the Libs, you know they'll find some way to accept less.

Back in play

Keen-eyed readers of this blog may have noticed that since last fall, I've dealt exclusively with federal and international politics rather than provincial and municipal ones. (Some even seem to have managed the feat without noticing the e-mail address which could have been used to follow up on an explanation as to the change in focus, rather than operating under the bizarre assumption that "poll results" were the cause.)

As it happens, I've been under some work-related restrictions on my blogging subject matter since going public with my name last fall. But that work situation has now changed - so from here on in, expect plenty more commentary on the Saskatchewan scene.

Before diving back in, though, I'll point out what looks to be the most significant development of the last few months: the release of the NDP's policy consultation report. For now, have a read if you haven't yet - and I'll follow up with my take in the days ahead.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday.

- Sure, it may not be a surprise that the Star is calling for a G20 inquiry:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Premier Dalton McGuinty have refused to hold the independent inquiry that could get beyond the stories, subpoena officials — both police and their political bosses — and find out how things got so out of hand.

Queen’s Park and Ottawa are hoping to ignore the calls for a public inquiry until they go away. The citizens’ report shows, yet again, why that should not be allowed to happen.

- But can there be much doubt that one is sorely needed when even the National Post joins in?

The new report from the CCLA and NUPGE, entitled Breach of the Peace, claims that rather than a few dozen officers removing their name bars to prevent being identified while using force to subdue protestors, the total was actually in the hundreds. Who told them to employ this trick? Was it senior officers on the ground or did the call come from higher up; Toronto’s chief of police, senior Mounties or perhaps even politicians in the Ontario or federal government?

The report argues, with justification, that overall police strategy could not have been devised by frontline officers. So who told them to round up protestors, some in advance of the protestors even committing any acts of violence or vandalism? Who ordered officers to hold protestors and journalists (including two working for this newspaper) for hours — occasionally in inhumane conditions and without medical treatment?
...
If nothing else, a public inquiry might — given the proper mandate — help police and security bureaucrats devise better methods to distinguish between real threats to public safety and garden-variety demonstrators at future summits. In an ideal world, police would be able to learn such lessons based on their own internal investigations. But so far, all signs from the Toronto police are that the organization is more concerned with circling the wagons and protecting its own than getting to the truth of what happened last June.

No doubt, many activists would use such an inquiry as a platform to criticize the police in scathing terms. But holding our police to account is an exercise in which all Canadians have an interest — especially those conservatives who embrace the principles of limited government and civil liberties. It is on this basis that we endorse the call for a G20 public inquiry.

- But while it's well worth some time and resources to ensure an accountable and effective justice system, the Globe and Mail rightly notes that the return on investment isn't there when it comes to the Cons' dumb on crime posturing:

Canadians don’t trust the courts to get it right on crime. Many would like a tougher approach. But they also don’t see crime or justice as a spending priority. Perhaps this explains the Conservative government’s silence on the costs of their law-and-order agenda.

Since 1994, the Focus Canada poll done by Environics has measured Canadian attitudes toward government spending. In 2010, justice was seen as the second last of 21 priorities, a sharp drop from 15th in 2008. Only 24 per cent said more money should be spent on the justice system. That was the lowest figure recorded since 1994, when just 20 per cent wanted more spent. Getting tough is one thing, paying for it another.
...
But even if the public would like tougher sentences, there appears to be no wish to pay a tab in the billions each year (in combined federal and provincial costs). The federal corrections budget alone is set to rise by $861-million, or 36 per cent, by 2012-13 over 2009-10. The provincial costs will probably rise by at least that much, because of federal sentencing changes.

Ottawa’s position is either that Canadians want a get-tough approach at any cost, or that they aren’t entitled to know what the cost will be. The government should reveal all the costs of the changes, and allow for a reasoned debate on where this country’s real spending needs lie.

- Finally, the NDP's motion on a Senate referendum is well worth some further discussion. But for now, it's particularly worth noting the Cons' actions in switching an opposition day without warning to limit debate on the issue.

Presumably part of the lesson they've taken from their past prorogation fiascos is that they can only afford to delay for so long in order to prevent a countermovement from building. But it still looks highly irresponsible for them to start raising similar issues of silencing opposition voices in Parliament with an election campaign looming in the near future - and if the NDP can direct the result toward a need for better representation in both chambers, then an election on democracy could produce some highly positive results.