Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Carol Goar criticizes the tax giveaways that have blown a massive hole in the federal budget:

But there is one area of government activity that will escape (Tony Clement's budget-slashing) scrutiny. Every year Ottawa gives up billions of taxes in deductions, exemptions, deferrals, credits, rebates and concessions. Because no money actually goes out the door, these tax breaks don’t count as spending. But they cost the federal treasury billions.

Opposition MPs would like to know how much revenue the government is forgoing. The auditor general would like to do a cost/benefit analysis. Taxpayers would like to know who’s actually paying the freight in this country.

They’re unlikely to find out. The government refuses to provide a tally. All it offers is an annual compendium of all its “tax expenditures” with a warning not to add them up.
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here is the value of all the tax expenditures in the 2011 report, released this week: $152 billion.

To put that in perspective, the government’s total program spending in 2011 amounted to $248 billion.

Since Prime Minister Stephen Harper took power in 2006, tax expenditures have grown by $20 billion. Part of the increase was beyond his control; the child tax benefit is programmed to increase annually and the aging of the population drove up the cost of retirement support. But that’s only half the story. The Tories have created a profusion of new tax expenditures.

Here is a sample: the children’s fitness tax credit, the children’s arts tax credit, the universal child care benefit, the public transit tax credit, the first-time homebuyers’ tax credit, the volunteer firefighters tax credit, the working income tax benefit, the family caregivers tax credit, plus two sheltered-savings vehicles, registered disability savings plans and the tax-free savings accounts.
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At a time of austerity, does it make sense to sacrifice badly needed revenue to give parents tax breaks on sports equipment and dance lessons? Given its dismal success rate, is it smart to keep pouring $2.7 billion a year into the scientific research and experimental development investment tax credit? At a time when an affluent minority is acquiring an ever-greater share of the nation’s wealth, do corporations need a tax deduction for meals and entertainment?

These questions are never discussed in Parliament. They are not open for public debate. They are not part of Flaherty’s budgetary consultations. They are not part of Clement’s spending review.

- Alison catches some familiar right-wing dirty tricks at work in trying to contaminate the list of intervenors in the Gateway pipeline with false names. [Update: Though see BCL's clarification that one of the environmentalists involved has confirmed plans to participate in the process.] Andrew Nikiforuk replies to Joe Oliver's embarrassing attack on democracy in shilling for the tar sands. The Globe and Mail points out that the threat of attacks on charitable status may serve as one of the Cons' strategies to silence the environmental movement. And Susan Riley sums up the effects of the Gateway project:

Since we're using strong language, let's call the Conservative government's eagerness to ship tarsands oil to China through the Northern Gateway Pipeline what it is: humiliating, irresponsible and short-sighted.

That may sound "radical," perhaps; unpatriotic to some. But our government, in our name, is ready to accelerate climate change, imperil pristine British Columbia wilderness, risk a catastrophic oil spill on the Pacific coast - and for what? The almighty dollar. Specifically, for highly uncertain, and certainly exaggerated, economic gains.
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There will be leaks. The Citizen's Glen McGregor uncovered U.S. figures that list 150 leaks from Enbridge pipelines over the years. The most publicized occurred in 2010, when 20,000 barrels of oil escaped, some into Michigan's waterways. There was a small gas leak from an Enbridge pipeline near Louisiana this week.

The Northern Gateway route crosses mountainous territory in central B.C., some of it prone to landslides, and some 600 streams alive with salmon and other fish. No matter how carefully crossings are built, accidents are inevitable - and potentially ruinous to an $800-million commercial fishery, to tourism, and the fresh water First Nations depend on.

As for the giant oil tankers that will ply the shallow, stormy and often fogbound channels and fiords around Kitimat, loaded with oil bound for Asia, that is another disaster in the making. And it only takes one, as the 1989 Exxon Valdez, and the ruinous spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 prove. Claims that tankers safely manoeuvre the Great Lakes daily are irrelevant; these are different, more difficult, waters.

Every megaproject has its environmental costs, but this one is particularly pernicious because it will triple production from Alberta's oilsands, pumping ever more greenhouse gas into the world's atmosphere. And is this still "ethical" oil, when the primary customer is China?

- Meanwhile, the Cons have left absolutely no doubt what they think of actual evidence in environmental policy by hacking away at 60 more scientific and research positions at Environment Canada.

- Finally, the NDP responds to the Cons' declarations that they couldn't possibly have known about federal interventions against the legitimacy of international gay marriages by highlighting the fact that Randall Garrison raised the exact same issue in question period last fall.