Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Jordy Cummings exposes the shady side of Justin Trudeau's shin persona. Dimitri Lascaris interviews Nora Loreto about Canada's relationship with the U.S. And Michal Rozworski challenges Trudeau's decision to serve as a prop for Donald Trump rather than defending Canadian values:

The point to remember is that there would be intense pressure from within the US business world to prevent a trade war in the first place. Given today’s highly integrated supply chains, even a proportionately small volume of trade can still be crucial. It matters less that trade with Canada accounts for just 5% of GDP if some of that 5% is specialized parts and inputs that can cripple production. And it’s not that easy to replace Canadian-made goods in this case: doing so would require long-term investments with considerable fixed costs in plant and equipment. It could be done, but it won’t be the result of one critical statement.

Nevertheless, Trudeau acts as if that’s a real risk. Even if there might be no personal love lost between our cosmopolitan neoliberal leader and his nativist protectionist counterpart, officially this week it was all smiles and handshakes. Trudeau ducked questions from reporters at his joint press conference, stating, “The last thing Canadians expect is for me to come down and lecture another country on how they chose to govern themselves.” This condescension misses the fact that a majority thinks that even worsening trade relationships would be a price worth paying for standing up to Trump—nevermind that fears of a worsening are overblown. Past prime ministers have been willing to stand up to US presidents over smaller things despite the trading relationship.

Trudeau has to be aware of Canada’s unequal standing in its relationship with the US but he doesn’t have to cower in the corner waiting for a strike from the bully that may never come. Being in less powerful in a trading relationship doesn’t equate to moral paralysis in other spheres. Economic disruption cannot be a cover for lack of spine. My hunch is that Trudeau knows this—that his failure to stand up to Trump is cowardice that has its source in political calculation not economic necessity.

- Brent Patterson comments on the need for Canada to seriously evaluate the dangers of the CETA and other corporate control agreements. And Stuart Trew and Scott Sinclair map out the road ahead as CETA undergoes scrutiny from the EU's member states.

- Alex Hemingway and Iglika Ivanova examine how the B.C. Libs have gone out of their way to impose a regressive tax system. And Marco Chown Oved reports on the Conference Board of Canada's study showing that Canada may be missing out on up to $50 billion every year in uncollected taxes.

- Meanwhile, the Economist notes that one of Trump's first major moves has been to facilitate bribery and corruption by allowing resource giants to conceal payments to foreign governments.

- Finally, Dan Durcan and Faiza Shaheen take a look at the realities of work in the U.K., where reasonable surface numbers of jobs are outweighed by the fact that the new work is generally low-quality and precarious.

On non-solutions

Tammy Robert thoroughly documents how Brad Wall's billion-dollar deficit has nothing to do with either resource revenues (being Wall's primary excuse for blowing up the budget), or public services (which are his first target for attacks):

I can’t consider the way the Saskatchewan government has handled the prospect of streamlining public service – or even this deficit – credible, because all they’ve demonstrated so far is that they’re primarily interested in brazenly protecting their political tails by dividing and confusing the narrative, instead of even pretending to consider well-planned or strategic spending decisions.

What I know for sure that the mess we’re in is not just about reduced resource and taxation revenue (the latter of which has been at a record high, thanks in part to both increased population numbers and a run of successful years in agriculture).

No, the financial dumpster fire we’re fighting has everything to do with the fact that this government has jacked up spending – even with the best of intentions – to unsustainable levels, and has simultaneously ran out of money trees, aka the GFSF and the Crown Corporations, to continue to fund their spending habits.

Meanwhile, in case anybody was under the illusion that the Saskatchewan Party's current spin about a sudden budget crisis represents anything but an excuse to open up a new front in Wall's long-running war on public servants, here's his finance minister (emphasis added):

Doherty said the goal would be to hold compensation costs steady or reduce them if possible.

The austerity measures would be maintained over the long term, not just for the upcoming year, he said.

If Wall wanted to deal with the full range of options to improve Saskatchewan's fiscal picture, provincial employees would be well down the list of logical places to look. (On that front, CBC's look at the revenue effect of tax changes shows that merely mirroring Manitoba's PST could pay for all of the province's public service salaries another time over.)

And if he was acting reasonably in response to budget problems which he thought were temporary, he'd be asking for "sacrifices" which fit that bill - rather than demanding permanent reductions in the standard of living experienced by the people who keep Saskatchewan running, while asking nothing of his corporate benefactors other than that they keep funneling copious amounts of money into his political machine.

Instead, Wall is making abundantly clear that he sees his own billion-dollar deficit as nothing more than one more excuse to keep slashing away at Saskatchewan's workers. And it's about time that both the blame and the responsibility for fixing Wall's mess were placed squarely on his shoulders.

Musical interlude

Matthew Good Band - Strange Days

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Jonathan Charlton interviews Danielle Martin about the health benefits of eliminating poverty. And the Equality Trust studies expenditures by household income level, finding among other areas of gross inequality that the rich are able to spend more on restaurants than the poor are able to put toward housing and energy.

- Bruce Livesey, Robert Cribb and Marco Oved report on the precedent set by FINTRAC in allowing a bank to break the law with total anonymity. And Neel Kashkari looks at capital requirements as another area where banks are allowed to operate under different and more favourable rules than mere people.

- Tyler Kustra examines Justin Trudeau's broken promise of electoral reform. And Colin Walmsley highlights how it figures to facilitate the rise of the Canadian Trump by keeping in place a system which artificially consolidates power based on a minority of votes.

- Meanwhile, the Star's editorial board recognizes a developing crisis of trust which can only be exacerbated by Trudeau's self-serving politics.

- Finally, Martin Regg Cohn discusses why we shouldn't treat the Trump administration as an excuse to back off of action against climate change.

New column day

Here, on Brad Wall's choice to cover up the truth behind the Saskatchewan Party's Global Transportation Hub scandal - and the most plausible (if still inadequate) explanations for that decision.

For further reading...
- Again, the latest public revelation was Geoff Leo's reporting of political pressure to pay inflated prices for land. And Leo also reported on the role of Saskatchewan Party MLAs in the coverup, including by refusing to allow people who were actually involved in dubious land deals to answer questions about them. 
- And Murray Mandryk writes about the GTH deal as a precedent for other land acquisitions. But I'd think its significance goes much further in demonstrating the utter lack of judgment of the Wall government - particularly at a time when it's asking the province to accept massive cuts.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Tom Parkin calls out the Libs' latest laughable excuse for breaking their promise of electoral reform - being the threat that a party like the one which just held power for 10 years might win a few seats. Andrew Coyne notes that we shouldn't accept Justin Trudeau's bogeyman as an excuse for doing nothing. And Abbas Rana and Derek Abma report that the focus of Lib MPs is to avoid political fallout from their party's betrayal of voters, rather than to try to live up to their commitment.

- Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt sees the electoral reform farce as a prime example of the Libs using a surface consultation process to paper over their basic lack of interest in actually listening to the public.

- Ellen Smirl examines the conservative voting patterns of many rural residents despite their commitment to co-operatives, credit unions and other collective alternatives to domination by the market. 

- Conor Dougherty hypothesizes as to how our economy would be different - and fairer - if we didn't rely so heavily on housing as an investment.

- Finally, Carole Cadwalladr interviews Daniel Dennett about the costs of declining co-operation and trust. And Trevor Hancock comments on how increasing inequality eats away at both:

“When inequality becomes too great, the idea of community becomes impossible”. If you want to create a healthier community, you need to address this issue head-on.
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It’s hard to imagine the super-wealthy, or even the wealthy, having much shared understanding of the situation of their fellow citizens. This is compounded by the deliberate strategy, coming from the right, of labelling people as taxpayers rather than citizens. As taxpayers, people focus on their taxes, and are encouraged to resent paying them; this makes tax dodging and even tax-evasion socially acceptable.

Yet the whole point about community is a sense of shared identity and interest. But when the gap between the wealthy and the poor becomes so great there is no ‘we’, just ‘them’ and ‘us’. And pretty quickly ‘we’ don’t want to pay for ‘their’ children’s education, ‘their’ health care, ‘their’ public transit, roads or pavements.

But citizens, seeing themselves as part of a community, focus on their shared interests, common purpose and the common good. They understand, as US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it a century ago, that taxes are the price we pay for civilisation.

Revolution is an understandable response to exclusion and unacceptable inequality. Arguably, what we have just seen in the US is a revolution, although in this case a revolution from the right, as was the case in Germany in the 1930s. But it’s not the best or healthiest way to change society. Here in Canada, we still have time for evolution and reform. If we want healthier communities and a healthier society, we need to embrace that opportunity.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Feline flops.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Martin Kenney comments on Canada's continuing role in "snow washing" offshore tax evasion. The Conference Board of Canada examines the massive gap between what Canada should receive in public revenues, and what's actually taken in to keep our society functioning. And Kamal Ahmed highlights how employers are avoiding their responsibilities by relabeling work relationships.

- Joe Romm points out that Donald Trump's obsession with coal power - like that of other right-wing politicians - is doomed due to the ready availability of more efficient energy sources. Andrew Nikiforuk points out the $30 billion liability for inactive wells which may be absorbed by Alberta's citizens due to the lack of any requirement for the oil sector to clean up its own messes. Carol Linnitt notes that the Libs' promised tanker ban on British Columbia's north coast is anything but. Zoe Todd reports on still more research showing the connection between fracking and earthquake activity. And Melissa Davey discusses new research showing that the impact human activity on our changing climate far outweighs any natural effects.

- Nicholas Kristof reminds us how the trumped-up threat of terrorism pales in comparison to risks we think nothing about facing every day.

- Evan Dyer reports on the Libs' plans to sacrifice national sovereignty along with travellers' privacy and security in the interest of appeasing the U.S.' irrational fears. And Stuart Trew examines the lamentable track record of cross-border deregulation which has harmed the public in Canada and the U.S. alike. So suffice it to say that Michael Harris' hope that Justin Trudeau would doing anything besides go along with Donald Trump to get along is sadly misplaced.

- Finally, Sam Wong points out that even monkeys and dogs judge humans based on how well they treat others - making it all the more bizarre that so many voter pools seem to have decided to do otherwise.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- David Suzuki discusses the merits of a four-day work week in improving both working and living conditions:

 It’s absurd that so many people still work eight hours a day, five days a week — or more — with only a few weeks’ vacation a year, often needing two incomes to support a household. Our economic system was developed when resources seemed plentiful if not inexhaustible, and physical infrastructure was lacking. We need an overhaul to meet today’s conditions rather than those that existed decades ago when we were unaware of many of the potential negative consequences of our actions.

Research points to many advantages of reforms such as reduced work hours and universal basic income. In Gothenburg, Sweden, workers at a care home for the elderly were put on a six-hour workday as part of a two-year controlled study. Although hiring 15 new employees to cover the workload drove costs up by about 22 per cent, spending was reduced in areas like covering sick leave, which dropped by 10 per cent. Workers reported health improvements at rates 50 per cent higher than workers at institutions with regular working hours. Patient care also improved. Women with children benefited substantially.
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A better work-life balance also brings many individual and societal advantages. Family life is strengthened, people have more time for creative or educational pursuits, and happier, rested employees are more productive. As more people share in available jobs, social service costs go down and more people are able to contribute to economic prosperity.

A lot needs to be done to reform our economic systems and to address critical issues like pollution and climate change. Reducing work hours is one way to make substantial gains.

- C.J. Polychroniou interviews Ha-Joon Chang about the myths of neoliberalism, including the belief that it's either inevitable or desirable to continue imposing burdens on workers to benefit the wealthy.

- Thomas Frank highlights how Donald Trump was able to harness the understandable frustrations of workers - due in no small part to the impression that other politicians weren't willing to pursue meaningful change of any sort. And Andrew Sullivan discusses the disastrous results for the U.S. of allowing a reality-averse megalomaniac to take power, while Andrew Coyne comments on the need for collective action internationally to stand up to Trump.

- Warren Bell examines the undemocratic implications of Justin Trudeau's broken promise of a more fair electoral system.

- And finally, Simon Enoch tears into Brad Wall's obsession with privatizing SaskTel by pointing out how a selloff would be disastrous for Saskatchewan's residents as citizens, consumers and workers alike.