Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Smriti Mallapaty reports on new research suggesting that vaccines provide only partial protection against the spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19. Sarath Peiris asks when Scott Moe and his minions will be held accountable for sacrificing hundreds of lives and thousands of people's health to science denial and wishful thinking. And the Maple examines the failure of both Moe and Jason Kenney to take steps to protect public health in the face of record case and hospitalization counts. 

- Jim Stanford writes about the importance of frontline workers in a pandemic - and the economic forces trapping them in precarity and deprivation. 

- Alec Salloum discusses how the Moe government's changes to Saskatchewan social programs are depriving the people who most need housing and income supports of those basic building blocks of a healthy life. And George Eaton points out how cuts to pandemic supports look to increase poverty and inequality in the UK. 

- Cole Hanson highlights how Canada has chosen to legitimize tax evasion rather than making it a priority to ensure the wealthy pay their fair share. And Adam Ramsey similarly writes about the UK's role in the Pandora Papers and the global system of tax avoidance, while Peter Oborne discusses the partisan connections between tax evasion and big-money donations to the UK Cons. 

- Meanwhile, Umair Haque and Doug Saunders each discuss the self-inflicted damage the UK faces as a result of Brexit. 

- Finally, Magdi Semrau explores how the U.S.' media distorted coverage of withdrawal from Afghanistan in favour of a frame of permanent war with no regard for consequences. And David Pugliese exposes how Canada has trained far-right extremists in the Ukraine. 

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Derrick O'Keefe makes the case for much-needed regime change in British Columbia, while Nancy MacDonald notes that such a result is far from guaranteed despite the Christy Clark Libs' gross abuses of the public trust. And Christopher Pollon examines the close link between political donations and the distribution of Site C contracts, while Maximilian Kniewasser reminds us that Clark's LNG promises turned into nothing but an expensive failure.

- Azfar Ali Khan and Randall Bartlett discuss the complete lack of a business case for the federal Libs' planned infrastructure bank (that is, as long as one recognizes that enriching the financial sector isn't a justification worth accepting). Andy Blatchford reports that the Libs have received - and are apparently ignoring - the same advice from the public service about the dangers of privately-proposed infrastructure. And Bill Curry reports on the control capital has held over the process of developing the bank proposal.

- Meanwhile, the Canadian Press also points out that Ontario's Libs are the latest government to use Donald Trump as an excuse for yet more tax giveaways to the corporate sector.

- Bruce Livesey examines how Canadian spies have been used to undermine citizens raising questions about the fossil fuel industry. And Alex Boutilier and Tonda McCharles' report on the use of CSIS' powers of disruption under Bill C-51 reveals that new authority are not only being used (contrary to the unfortunate lede), but are being systematically used only in ways which avoid judicial oversight.

- Finally, Tom Parkin notes that the controversy over Harjit Sajjan's role in Afghanistan is particularly significant as a reminder of the questions which have never been answered about Canada's complicity in torture.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- Thomas Walkom comments on the Cons' preference for low-wage, no-rights immigrant labour as a means of avoiding good jobs for Canadians:

Theoretically, temporary work visas are supposed to be reserved for those with unique skills.

But increasingly, the notion of skill has been stretched to the extreme. In Alberta, some temporary skilled workers serve coffee in doughnut shops. Others heave around beef carcasses in slaughterhouses like the Brooks XL Foods meat-packing plant — now the epicentre of an E. coli food scare.

In the fruit and vegetable fields of Ontario, the unique skill that temporary migrant workers from the Caribbean or South America bring is their willingness to do back-breaking work for low wages.

Employers say they need foreign temporary labour because they can’t find Canadians willing to work. What they mean is that they can’t find Canadians willing to work at the wages being offered.
...
A wise government wouldn’t create two classes of immigrants but would treat equally all who enter this country legally to work.

This government just authorizes more temporary migrant workers, knowing full well that — regardless of their formal rights — they are in no position to complain.

It’s one thing for the Harper Conservatives to return us to the status of a resource economy. It is another for them to insist that we become a low-wage resource economy.

- Meanwhile, Public Values catches the McGuinty Libs laying off labour investigators to match the number of enforcement officers they hired to much fanfare earlier this summer.

- Susan Delacourt has some suggestions to replace the current trend of top-down political advertising with more balanced forms of communication:

(I)f we are interested in curing our politicians of their advertising addiction, it seems there are two things we might want to demand.

One would be for some kind of limits on political advertising in between elections. We set spending limits during the formal campaign period so that the playing field is reasonably level; to ensure that no one has an unfair advantage in the bid to pummel citizens with propaganda.

It may be time for us to recognize that the election campaign never really stops in Canada these days — that the ad wars are a permanent fixture on the political landscape.

As for the government’s advertising addiction, that’s harder to cure, or even regulate. But as a start, we could maybe ask that the people in charge of the country spend as much money listening to the citizens as they do in talking at them.

- Tom Blackwell reports on Nipa Banerjee's conclusion that $1.5 billion in Afghanistan aid spending under the Cons bought Canada little beyond a few photo ops.

- And finally, CBC reports on the Sask Party's musings about selling off the Information Services Corporation. Needless to say, answers as to why in the world public corporate and land titles registries would be handed over to private operators (particularly given that the province will plainly need to ensure their continued adherence to legislated standards) do not figure to be forthcoming.

Parliament In Review: September 23, 2011

Friday's session in the House of Commons saw a few themes discussed which figure to be hot topics of discussion for the next little while - with the continued focus on the Cons' anti-refugee bill partially giving way to economic and foreign-policy issues.

Focus on the Economy

While the Cons' legislative agenda of course has nothing to do with the economic issues at the top of mind for Canadians, the NDP's question period focussed nicely on what the Cons' economic choices actually mean. Thomas Mulcair pointed out that no private-sector actor would wilfully pass up low-cost investment opportunities like the possibility of putting money into infrastructure at rock-bottom interest rates, leading to this exchange with Shelly Glover:

Mr. Thomas Mulcair (Outremont, NDP):
...
Will the Conservatives stop making excuses and start investing in the projects that will restore falling infrastructure while putting Canadians back to work and strengthening our economy?

Mrs. Shelly Glover (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what this country cannot afford to do.

Meanwhile, Laurin Liu pointed out the economic and environmental costs of pushing ahead with a plan to extract and export as much raw material as possible from the tar sands. And Mathieu Ravignat highlighted the absurdity of paying premium private-sector prices to do what can be done publicly.

No Refuge

John Rafferty offered up what may be the best summary yet of what the Cons' anti-refugee bill will do, while Irene Mathyssen and Peggy Nash catalogued some of the groups who would be caught by the Cons' desire to target refugees. Alexandrine Latendresse challenged whether the bill would have any hope of being found to comply with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And Kevin Lamoureux and Matthew Kellway were able to agree that the bill needlessly targets the most vulnerable immigrants to Canada.

But perhaps the most noteworthy contribution was this from Helene Laverdiere:

We know that people who fish have developed nets with which they can catch tuna and let dolphins go free. In this bill, we get the impression that if the smugglers are the dolphins and the refugees are the tuna in this analogy, then the government is casting a large net to catch refugees and let the smugglers go free.

War vs. Peace

Two foreign policy issues also found their way into the discussion - with the results of one nicely serving to frame the other.

In question period, Paul Dewar pointed out that the Cons' assurances that Canada's troops in Afghanistan wouldn't be involved in combat had predictably proven to be false. And that typical gap between promise and reality looks like an important part of the backdrop for the discussion of Libya which is set to take place tomorrow.

Instructions from On High

In principle, there shouldn't have been much basis for Yvon Godin's question about the Cons' handling of committee motions to be dealt with in question period. But given that the Cons responded in substance rather than pointing out any difference between government instructions and MPs' actions, it would seem that questions about what the Cons do in committee are fair game.

In Brief

Helene Laverdiere questioned why the Cons are preventing Tunisian nationals now resident in Canada from having a voice in that country's elections. Irene Mathyssen introduced a bill to ensure that benefits under the Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security are indexed to a senior consumer price index. And Deepak Obhrai apparently believes that the Auditor General's G8 report - which was of course not officially released until after May's election - has been officially superseded by the campaign where the Cons consistently declared it to have been off limits for discussion.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Heather Mallick highlights the dangers of the permanent unemployment which regressive politicians around the globe are so vociferously demanding in the guise of austerity:

As we fend off a double-dip recession, we tend to forget about the collateral human damage. This is a great mistake and not just because our own jobs could be the next to go.

There’s a difference between unemployment that is relatively brief and perhaps driven by one industry, and the permanent unemployment that results from recessions, particularly in this global economy. People look for work until they utterly despair and give up. These people are tracked in “labour force participation” numbers but not in the unemployment numbers sent out each month.
...
Permanent unemployment (as North American manufacturing erodes, never to repair itself) is known in economic terms as “hysteresis.” It kills health, marriages, stability and parents’ ability to send a child to university. It destroys cities and neighbourhoods, and sends young people into the workplace with mortgage-level debt. Those children, raised with self-esteem, will lose it in the most painful way possible.
...
Relations between the sexes sour, between everyone. Status anxiety rules. So we lash out — against workers with pensions, for instance — and vote against our own long-term interests. Irrational thinking prevails.

I will leave you with Peck’s story of a senior financial analyst laid off at 59. After a year of humiliation, he found a part-time cashier’s job at Wal-Mart for $8.50 (U.S.) an hour. He rang up purchases for some neighbours recently, he said, people who had not lost jobs. “They didn’t greet him, and he didn’t say anything,” Peck wrote.

The man looked down at the table, paused, and then looked up again. “I know they knew me,” he said. “I’ve been in their home.” They had cut him dead.

- And not coincidentally, Abacus Data finds a stark division between Con supporters who want to see continued slashing even if the economy takes another nosedive, and Canadians in general who recognize that stimulus might be needed again.

- Boris recognizes yet more reason for hope in Jack Layton's farewell to Canada:

If Jack Layton's inheritors are smart, they will use (his) final quote as the party motto and set the country on fire. If they're wise, they will embody this in who they are and how they act.

It could work. The comment stands as white light against the darkness of today's politics. Just observe the contrast between the sentiments contained within the letter and expressed by well-wishers and the the impropriety coming from the other side of the aisle.

There is morality at work in Canadian politics now well beyond the simple ideological or technical differences over economics or social policy. Prisons, exported torture, tar sands, expeditionary wars, asbestos exports, are all built on unkindness by people who at best do not recognise shared humanity, or at worst find it uncomfortable.

This amorality and misanthropy cannot compete with the sentiment in Mr. Layton's farewell. There's a momentum in the emotion generated by his passing that must be put to good use in the coming years. I'm not sure I agree that Harper benefits most from Layton's passing. Harper's brand of attack politics works only on the living. and as the reaction the Blatchford column suggests, speaking ill of the dead earns you few votes.

The one-trick pony Conservatives may well find themselves facing a significantly empowered opposition operating from a clearly defined and incontestable moral position. And that, my friends, is reason to hope.

- And Paul Dewar writes about Layton's foreign policy legacy:

Jack's contribution to politics was never about mere opposition. He was in Ottawa to advance his propositions. In 2005 he was presented with a rare opportunity to rewrite a Liberal government budget. He cancelled billions of dollars in corporate tax cuts and invested the funds in priority areas including a major boost to Canada's official development assistance.

In fact, Jack's NDP is the only party in Canada that remains committed to former prime minister Lester Pearson's aspiration of dedicating 0.7 per cent of our gross national income to development funding.

Afghanistan was the primary foreign affairs file during Jack's leadership. One of his most courageous political propositions came in the summer of 2006 when he called for an end to the war in Afghanistan and recommended entering into negotiations for ceasefire and peace-building with the different warring factions in the country.

Today, his plan is accepted in capitals the world over as the only workable approach to the Afghan conflict. But in 2006 Jack faced a massive backlash from the conservative establishment in Ottawa. He was derided with accusations of naiveté at best and treason at worst. He was not deterred.
...
We have lost, as Canadians and as social democrats globally, a man from a rare breed of political leaders who truly believed in the concept of the human family. He saw the suffering of a human being anywhere in the world as an equally important political problem. He understood the global nature of the threats against our collective existence and looked to global cooperation to address the immense challenges before us.

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Plenty of observers have noted the Cons' complete lack of a reasonable explanation for standing in the way of a global consensus to at least ensure that asbestos is accurately labeled as a hazardous substance. But you'll find the best examples of sheer, evidence-free spin documented by Sarah Schmidt (on the media side) and Nathan Cullen (on the parliamentary side).

- And Susan Riley discusses how the Cons' asbestos stance conflicts with their self-image when it comes to foreign policy:

(T)here is ample evidence developing countries, like India, pay no heed to safety, and that Indian workers, like the young Chuck Strahl, are being directly compromised. But Harper seems to imply it isn't our concern.

His indifference is strangely at odds with his moral, even moralistic, approach to foreign policy generally. He famously refused to remain silent on China's human rights abuses despite potential trade repercussions, yet is prepared to isolate Canada internationally to prop up a dying industry.
...
Two Conservative MPs - Mark Warawa and Patricia Davidson - have also been discreetly questioning asbestos exports, which suggests the Harper decision isn't resting easily on every Conservative conscience. Even federal Liberals are belatedly opposed.

Unlike the seal hunt, which harms no one but the seals, or the tarsands, which are environmentally damaging but economically important, there is no justification - moral, political or economic - for continued federal support for the asbestos industry.

But we should never discount one man's stubbornness.

- Terry Milewski points out that as part of its role in helping the Cons to cover up the facts, the now-defunct Afghanistan torture documents panel managed to redact information which was already on the public record. And Greg Weston notes that such an outcome fits perfectly with the Cons' normal modus operandi.

- And finally, while the Cons try to avoid any actual analysis as to how neutering the Canadian Wheat Board will affect farmers and others, the groups who stand to lose out are starting to go public - with the town of Churchill looking like one of the major victims if the Cons decide to push ahead.

Stonewalled

Not that it should come as much surprise that the release of the first report (PDF) from the Afghan detainee document panel fits the pattern of delay and distraction from the Cons. But this declaration (italics added) looks to take the stonewalling to a new low:

Status of the Panel’s Review of Cabinet Confidentiality Claims

71. The government provided the Panel only recently with its claims of Cabinet confidences in relation to the documents provided by the government to date. The Panel’s intent has been to complete its review of the redactions based on these claims as expeditiously as possible.

The report isn't clear on how "recently" the Cons bothered to make one of their supposedly vital claims to confidentiality. But it's hard to see how their refusal to so much as present one of the main claims to be evaluated by the panel can be squared with the regular assurances from the Libs and Bloc that the process was humming along to be completed at any moment. And that delay, combined with the complete suppression of the legal advice which lies at the heart of the underlying issue, makes it all the more clear that the NDP was right not to put any faith in a panel process where the Cons never had any incentive to act reasonably.

Update: And in case there was any doubt, the Cons are treating their delay tactics as having permanently ruled out any evaluation of their claims of cabinet privilege. (At least, that's what their repeated message about the process being "over" would seem to want to emphasize.)

Spot the pattern

Yes, the individual stories have been covered by plenty of others. But it's well worth taking a step back and noting the consistent theme coming out of Wikileaks' revelations about the Harper Cons as seen through the eyes of our closest international ally.

When it came to Copenhagen, Harper and company claimed both that the outcome was a major step in addressing climate change, and that they'd had some significant role in its coming to pass. But behind closed doors, Harper didn't want to be there at all (and didn't do much while he was).

When it came to Afghanistan, Harper continued to pretend through most of 2010 that he planned to stick to the promised 2011 pullout date. But behind closed doors, he promised NATO that his Canadian positioning was a lie - and indeed committed to a training extension as soon as the Libs gave him an opening. [Update: And at other times, even an extension to a combat mission was on the table even as Harper pretended otherwise.]

And when it came to Arctic relations, Harper has constantly pointed to Canadian sovereignty as an excuse for all kinds of military spending and posturing, particularly his government's stubborn insistence on buying F-35s no matter how implausible their price promises look. But behind closed doors, Harper made clear that he doesn't see defending our sovereignty as a serious issue.

So Harper has spent the better part of his time in office providing one message to Canadians in public, and another one to the international community in private. And all indications are that we're the ones getting played for fools when the truth comes out.

On issue identification

For all the talk about the NDP's surge to Official Opposition status being based primarily on Jack Layton's popularity, the reality is that there's much more to the upswing - including strong party-based issue identification that significantly predates any improvement in voting intentions. And in keeping with the lessons learned in 1988 about focusing too much on personality in a "big issue" election campaign, one of the challenges for the next four years will be to take ownership of as many issues as possible in building toward 2015.

And on that front, the first post-election push on pensions has been followed up by a concerted effort on ethics and accountability, featuring both a proposal to protect whistleblowers and an appeal for the Cons to follow through on releasing Afghan detainee documents.

Of course, there's no longer any ability to even theoretically compel the Cons to respond as long as they're prepared to stonewall. But the answer to "or else what?" is that if we don't see any action in the wake of a persistent opposition message, then the NDP to be able to take the upper ground in areas which have served the Cons well in the past. And if the party can build a strong enough connection to the issues where it's already managed to build a positive image, that will figure to benefit the NDP for a long time to come.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- There doesn't seem to be much doubt that the Cons' main focus during the election campaign has been on strictly restricting access to the people they're looking to have elected to office. And the latest addition to the list deemed unfit for interaction with their Con betters is...an advocate for homeless veterans.

- But that doesn't mean anybody has taken a break from working to suppress the facts about Afghanistan, both through continued fights against the Military Police Complaints Commission, and through the detainee document suppression tribunal. (And there, the Libs are apparently just now starting to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, the Harper Cons might not be acting in good faith - only a year after the NDP recognized the same.)

- Rick Mercer deservedly slams Mike Duffy for serving as the Cons' point man in attacking Jack Layton's health:

Jack Layton didn’t reveal personal information about his health because the gallery wanted to know, he did it because, earlier that day, Conservatives had fanned out across the country and were practising the dark arts. The whisper campaign about Jack’s health they had been carrying on in the shadows was stepped up a notch.

Conservative Sen. Mike Duffy, who can perhaps kindly be described as the most amoral partisan hack to ever draw a breath, went on radio in Nova Scotia, a province of potential growth for the NDP, and in a hushed tone usually reserved for a palliative care unit told the radio audience that he personally saw Jack on the Hill and “up close it doesn’t look good, Jack doesn’t look good… he is a valiant man for carrying on.”

It takes a certain kind of man to gleefully trade on a man’s battle with cancer, and Mike Duffy is that man. It is why Stephen Harper appointed him to the chamber of sober second thought.

- Finally, Alice tweets that the NDP is on the verge of reaching the threshold of 40% female candidates, becoming the first Canadian party to do so in a general election. Of course there's plenty more left to both to balance the numbers within the party and to work on the number of women elected - but it's without a doubt a plus to be headed in the right direction.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- thwap points out what needs to happen for a change in government to lead to more meaningful changes to our federal political system:

We shouldn't become bullies. But we shouldn't be the cynical enablers. We should make sure that the Liberals don't behave like US Democrats, "looking forward, not backwards" and allowing past crimes to go unpunished and past anti-democratic excesses to become incorporated into Canadian politics as capitalism unravels.

One can be law-abiding, classy, and principled, without being a doormat.
...
My point is that after we take power, we should step up our demands for accountability. We can play by the rules and still be absolutely ruthless in destroying the harpercon mentality and setting the precedent that blatantly undemocratic and blatantly criminal behaviour is not tolerated in this country.

- Aaron Wherry rightly points out that the Afghan detainee document process doesn't contain a clear disclosure process when the House isn't sitting to allow documents to be tabled. Which raises the question: have the Cons ever allowed anything embarrassing to be made public when faced with anything short of an absolutely clear obligation?

- In case anybody thought the Cons might have made their nomination processes somewhat more democratic in open seats than they allowed for their incumbents, think again.

- Finally, Jim Stanford's thorough takedown of John Manley's spin on corporate tax cuts is too consistently on target to excerpt - so go read if you haven't already.

[Edit: fixed attribution as per pogge's comment.]

On empty promises

My first reaction to the theory that some Afghan detainee documents might be released during an election campaign (which doesn't seem to have any backers from the party that's fought hardest to keep the truth about Afghanistan from seeing the light of day) was that if any material is released, it most certainly won't be anything embarrassing to the Harper Cons.

But ultimately, there isn't much that could be released without meeting that standard. Any documents that contain meaningful content about the handling of detainees will be embarrassing in substance, while any which don't will be a source of embarrassment to the extent they've been needlessly covered up.

So there's even more reason than usual to be dubious about the latest round of excuses and promises from the Libs and Bloc. And the smartest bet in the election campaign may be that the detainee documents will stay under wraps until it's done.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday...

- Susan Delacourt rightly questions why any political party would work as hard as the Cons to tell Canadians not to bother participating in their democracy:

It's worth thinking about how we keep being told that participating in the country is a nuisance.

Canada's long-form census is now voluntary, not mandatory, just like our elections. In other words, feel free to throw that census form or ballot in the garbage can, and go back to whatever you were doing before that intrusive question was foisted upon you. And don't forget taxes. They too are annoying, if you listen to the political noise. Parliament -- that thing you elect -- just a place where people play games. The public service -- a burdensome obstacle. Is there anything about the civic life of this country that stands above insults from the political class?
...
The politicians we've elected ought to stop pandering to this democracy-is-so-annoying stuff. It's not consistent with the praise that's repeatedly (and rightly) heaped on the Canadian troops, who sacrifice much for democratic ideals. It also assumes that people, other than the soldiers, are idiots.

The fact that folks got angry about Parliament being prorogued, about the mandatory census being scrapped, tells me that Canadian citizens are not stupid at all, and they don't like being called lazy or uninterested. Besides, practically speaking, insulting the electorate doesn't seem to be the best way to get people's votes.

- But not all the parties are that cynical. And Brian Topp nicely sums up the NDP's position going into the federal election campaign:

Mr. Layton is the most liked, respected and trusted national leader on the opposition bench. The New Democrats are working from the base of the largest caucus of incumbent MPs they've had in two decades. The New Democrats came in first or second in over a hundred ridings in the last election -- excellent room for growth. They will field the best-funded campaign in their history, led by a seasoned team who have worked together in three recent previous campaigns. Given that Mr. Ignatieff agrees with Mr. Harper on substantially all of the key issues before the country, Mr. Layton is, on the issues and in much of the country, the most credible alternative to Mr. Harper.

Which is to say that while Mr. Layton and his party weren't anxious to have this election, and worked seriously to see if Canadians could see some progress in this Parliament, they enter this campaign in excellent shape.

- Now the bad news: the federal election campaign will of course take place under #harperball rules (as per CC's astute idea). Read and contribute for reference during the campaign.

- Murray Mandryk notes that the Sask Party's budget yesterday may be falling into a familiar trap, with overly optimistic projections making it likely that today's promises will again turn into tomorrow's excuses:

Finance Minister Ken Krawetz's 2011-12 budget, presented Wednesday, was filled with pre-election, pie-in-the-sky nonsense, beginning with a predicted 4.2-per-cent increase in real gross domestic product when private forecasters are only predicting 3.9per-cent growth for 2011. Finance officials attribute this to early, more-pessimistic forecasts, but it should also be noted this economic growth number is based on an average crop year. Considering the 10 million unseeded acres last year and similar snowfall this year, that's overly optimistic.

Also overly optimistic is a mere 5.5-per-cent spending increase (to $10.7 billion) in the face of potential spring flooding problems and simply unsustainable spending initiatives. For instance, the budget sets aside a meagre $1.5 million for its 300 rental housing units under the Saskatchewan Rental Incentive Program. (Surely, there's got to be more here?)

And while credit should go to Krawetz and company for the $335-million debt paydown that will slice an additional $10-million worth of interest charges out of general revenue fund (departmental) spending, it's noteworthy that there will (sic) no more such debt reduction for the entire second term of the Sask. Party government (working on the logical assumption that this budget gets the Saskatchewan Party re-elected) and that Crown and overall debt will continue to rise. This government's policy of stripping dividends from all Crown corporations except SaskPower (to the tune of 70-to 90 per-cent this year) to pay for departmental spending and tax cuts is short-sighted. We inevitably wind up paying for it on our utility bills.

- Finally, from the "simple answers to simple questions" department, here's pogge's post title:

Remember the Afghan detainee docs?

Not if the Cons, Libs and Bloc have anything to do with it. This has been another version of "simple answers to simple questions".

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:

On setups

Pogge deals with one of the bizarre parts of the Cons' spin on the Afghan torture cover-up committee. But there's another piece of Bob Dechert's talking points that looks even more damaging:

"I haven't heard anything about that at all, I'm surprised, to be frank," Mr. Dechert told The Hill Times. "I think they came to the conclusion that Canadians weren't interested, and they dropped it and just moved on, but I don't know anything specific about the review. There's obviously no smoking gun or they would have said something about it by now."

Of course, it's precisely because the Cons' inevitable talking point was so easily foreseeable that some of us have warned against any structure which provided for limited opposition access to information while prohibiting any public disclosure. But apparently the Libs and Bloc are just realizing the obvious.

And so here they are now: sworn to secrecy as to the contents of the documents being reviewed, having no say as to which (if any) will ever be disclosed - and facing the talking point that the sworn silence that they so foolishly agreed to serves as proof that the Cons were right all along. And we can still rest assured that if there are indeed smoking guns in the documents, the Cons will claim that the Libs and Bloc now share equally in the responsibility for their remaining hidden.

All of which means that instead of enforcing the ruling requiring the Cons to produce the demanded documentation without costly strings attached, the Libs and Bloc have ultimately ensured that the public pays millions of dollars to grant the Cons political cover. And nobody can say they weren't warned.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday.

- Pogge rightly notes that the cover-up coalition of the Cons, Libs and Bloc has successfully managed to ensure that the Afghanistan documents ordered to be produced by Parliament remain safely buried - and points out whose position is looking more and more astute as a result:

May I once again commend Jack Layton and the New Democrats for walking away from this bit of political theatre. After the supposedly historic ruling by the Speaker in support of parliamentary supremacy, the Libs and the Bloc have joined with the Conservatives in turning the whole thing into a farce.

- Abacus' latest message poll looks to provide yet more evidence that the Cons' party line is sounding less and less plausible among the general public.

- Presumably the Cons' MPs are under even an even tighter muzzle than usual (to the extent that's possible). But if a story is going to be based on nothing but finding "signs of rattled nerves" in the absence of any evidence, would it really be that tough to get somebody to talk about defending a vulnerable Con seat as well rather than referring only to opposition parties?

- Finally, the Cons' decision to respond to public pressure by declaring that the CRTC's decision to allow large ISPs to impose usage-based billing on their competitors will be overturned is undoubtedly for the best. But before the issue fades away, it's well worth noting the hilarity in seeing supposed free marketeers like the National Post editorial board claim without a trace of irony that the fact that large companies have traditionally billed in a certain way should serve as evidence that no other options should be available.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

On lessons learned

Jack Layton's take on Afghanistan has proven prescient in the past. Now, it might be worth taking note of his latest observations before we make matters worse:

The changing nature of Canada’s military mission from combat to training will only mean that Canada will train and equip many who will later join the insurgency, or at best, create a military machine for a corrupt and distrusted Afghan President, Mr. Layton said in a speech at the University of Ottawa.

“Every year, one in five soldiers walks out of the Afghan National Army for good. How many of these become Taliban fighters, taking their training and weapons with them?” he said. “You think you’re training government officers, but then you’re really training insurgents as well.”

Even if the military is loyal, it will serve a President, Hamid Karzai, “that’s very closely tied to rigged elections and rampant” corruption, and discredited with his own people, Mr. Layton said. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he added, is reluctant to send another dime of aid money directly to Mr. Karzai’s government, “but he’ll give him an army.”

On issue management

The Ottawa Citizen's analysis may be exactly the kind of attention needed to redirect attention in question period from news-cycle trivialities to longer-term isues. But it's well worth noting who's already leading the way on that front:

An Ottawa Citizen analysis of question period transcripts shows the opposition asked far more questions about Canada's mission in Afghanistan and government ethics than any other subjects in 2010.

The Liberals asked about ethics three times as often as they did about the economy, putting the government record on accountability ahead of questions on the G8 and G20 summits. The controversy over the post-politics antics of former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer accounted for many of these.

The Liberals also used more of their question period time to chastise the Harper government on the elimination of the long-form census than on its management of the economy.

Afghanistan topped the list of subjects in questions from the Bloc Quebecois and the New Democrats. The NDP was the only party with health care in its top 10 questions. It also used a higher proportion of its allotted questions to ask about aboriginal issues and pensions.
...
An analysis of key words and phrases used in questions and replies also reflects different areas of concern for each party. The Liberals referred to Jaffer in about one of every 22 questions, while the Tories spoke his name in less than one of 100 replies.

The keyword analysis shows the NDP mentioned health care, child care and poverty far more than other parties. The Tories led the way with references to crime and were the most likely to cite the Liberal sponsorship scandal.

Now, I would consider it a plus that the Libs worked on keeping the census issue alive by dedicating plenty of time to it in question period - particularly since it actually represented an executive decision which was never explained to the public. But with even a modicum of hindsight, it would seem obvious that focusing on Rahim Jaffer to the exclusion of health care, child care and other serious policy issues was bound to be just as much a political loser as it was a waste of time in Parliament. And hopefully the knowledge that they'll be held accountable for the content of their questions will lead all parties to focus more on questions which they can be proud to have asked - and concurrently less on personality-based gossip.

Friday Afternoon Links

To help pass the time until the event apparently taking place at midnight.

- Aaron Wherry's year-end column is well worth a read in general. But it's particularly worth highlighting this piece:

(F)rom the far end of the room, often this year there was Mr. Harris and his gruff Newfoundland brogue (or perhaps it’s more of a twang). Here sometimes seemed a man who would set his teeth into your pant leg and not let go. That he and (the NDP) refused to go along with the negotiated agreement that followed the Speaker’s ruling and that they now pursue the participants from the outside is perhaps the only reason to believe the process will come to anything. Surely, if only to avoid proving them right, the Liberals and Bloc will be compelled to carry out their duties. Such is democracy. Or so we can hope.

Not that there's been much reason for optimism yet, mind you...

- LRT has some ideas on how an effort to offer big political choices rather than the usual microtargeted minutiae could result in much-needed change.

- Kelly McParland nicely illustrates why it's a sucker's bet for a self-identified progressive party to go out of its way to try to please the corporate sector. After a year where the McGuinty government gave business billions in free money by both slashing corporate tax rates and implementing the HST which exempts it from paying consumption taxes, it's treated to this from somebody who would seemingly agree entirely with its direction:

(W)e would settle for an incremental change: If Mr. McGuinty merely ceased forcing the province's corporations to pay for his grandiose ideas, Ontario might once again attract the investment it needs to be the engine of our economic growth.

- And finally, now's the time to get in one last donation in 2010.

Nothing but a game

Plenty of others have already commented on Don Cherry's sad attempt to play a Canadian troop in Afghanistan on TV. But it's worth taking a moment to consider how the latest publicity stunt fits into the Cons' general style of government.

It's no great secret that the Cons' domestic strategy has been based on little more than turning public institutions into a massive photo-op generator. And presumably that isn't a difficult strategy for the Cons to justify to themselves: since they don't consider most government to be legitimate or useful anyway, why not use all of its resources to fuel a PR machine?

For the most part, though, they've tried to act a bit more serious in their treatment of the military, especially where Afghanistan is concerned. And that too sense given their desire to push spending toward the military in the longer term by making it look more important than their farcical mimicry of a government at home.

What's significant about the Cherry bombing, then, is that it exposes the Cons' complete lack of any serious interest even in what are supposed to be their core issues. After years of being told that Afghanistan reflected a battle for civilization itself, we now have compelling evidence that they see it too as nothing more than a game, with Canada's actual mission to be shoved aside on a moment's notice for the amusement of a politically-friendly celebrity guest star. And it's well worth wondering whether voters may start to tell them they should play government on their own time and money.

Update: Thwap adds a must-read post on the subject.