Saturday Afternoon #ERRE Links

A bit of electoral reform material for your weekend reading.

- Nathan Cullen points out how the Special Committee on Electoral Reform's report (PDF) serves as an effective road map to make every vote count in Canada.

- PressProgress highlights how the Libs are attacking their own campaign promises in order to preserve an unfair electoral system, while Jonathan Sas compares the Libs' scorched-earth approach and incoherent response to the remarkable level of consensus and success achieved by members of all parties on the committee.

- Craig Scott generously calls the Libs' approach one of "noble failure" - and that may have been the intention initially. 

- But the "noble" part seems to have been sorely lacking, as Michael Stewart calls out the Libs' mockery of both the MPs who worked on a broad consultation process, and the tens of thousands of Canadians who participated in it. Althia Raj notes that the Trudeau government's insults are particularly egregious since they're directed at people trying to fulfil their own promises - while also reporting that Trudeau and his inner circle would likely have been happy to accept a committee recommendation for a ranked ballot which was rejected by all parties. And Ryan Maloney points out the Libs' aversion to inconvenient math when it would help to achieve improved representation.

On threshold questions

Althia Raj is predictably dispensing Lib talking points about the potential outcomes of the NDP's leadership review. So to set the record straight, let's examine what the numbers actually mean.

There's exactly one threshold which produces a binding outcome:

3(a).v
At every convention that is not a leadership convention; a secret ballot vote will be held to determine whether or not a leadership election should be called. If 50% plus one delegate supports the calling of a leadership election, such an election will be held within one year of the convention vote.

So yes, 50%+1 is indeed the standard to set in motion a mandatory leadership election process.

In contrast, any other threshold being thrown around within the pundit class is simply a matter of judgment. Any leader has the discretion to step down at any time - and talk of 70% or any other number represents pure speculation as to whether Mulcair might choose to resign his post, even though he's won in terms of the formal requirement to stay on without further review. And whatever numbers anybody else throws out, we wouldn't necessarily expect a matter of personal judgment - as distinct from voting process - to be defined in advance.

At the same time, nothing in the NDP's process suggests that a leader could lose on a majority vote, but deny the vote has any significance after the fact by claiming uncertainty about voters' intentions. Because that would just be asinine.

On oversimplification

One could hardly design a more stark contrast between the complex realities of politics and the media's tendency to portray them in appallingly simplified terms than Althia Raj's report on the NDP's conference calls with party members last week. But for those willing to look past a misleading headline and lede, there's plenty in the points raised by members worth considering in advance of the Edmonton convention.

Meanwhile, it's also worth noting the significance of the call itself. As has often been the case, we should see it as a potential first step toward greater engagement with the public - but one whose value likes mostly in the prospect that it could be followed up with far more effort in the future.

On the bright side, the calls reflect a noteworthy willingness to talk to people about (and indeed allow the media to report on) their actual views on the campaign. And I'd consider that important opening lines of communication between members and the party structure at least for the moment.

That said, the greater potential for significance lies in what comes next. Here's the follow-up anticipated on the call:

Blaikie told the more than 1,000 callers on the first phone-in that their feedback would be sent to regional party representatives who would compile the information for a mid-March draft report. The final product would be released publicly at the NDP convention a few weeks later.

Ideally, I'd hope to see members' concerns today paired with some involvement in the further development of the election report - particularly given the limited number of people able to participate in a particular call.

More importantly, though, we shouldn't see this type of member engagement as merely a one-off opportunity for people to let off steam following last year's election.

Instead, it should represent a first step toward normalizing what Raj wrongly treats as a "gotcha" moment: the honest expression of views by members which may include constructive criticism of a party's choices (without necessarily leading to anybody being thrown under a bus). And the more the NDP can do to foster and meet the expectation that it will be unique among Canada's major parties in its responsiveness to members, the more likely it will be to avoid the type of disconnect that contributed to its disappointment at the polls.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Linda McQuaig discusses how the interests of big banks ended the Cons' willingness to consider postal banking which would produce both better service and more profits for the public:

(C)ompetition is the last thing the banks want. And given their power (straddling the very heart of the Canadian establishment) and their wealth (record profits last year topping $30 billion), the banks tend to get what they want from the Harper government.

This could explain the government’s otherwise baffling decision last fall to reject an option that would have allowed a serious competitor to enter the banking sector, offering financial services to hundreds of thousands of Canadians who currently lack a bank account and often end up paying triple-digit interest rates to payday lenders (otherwise known as loan sharks).

Canada Post had put together a lengthy file supporting the case for “postal banking.” Under such a scheme, Canada Post would offer banking services through its 6,400 postal outlets — stepping into the vacuum left after the big banks closed more than 1,700 branches across the country in the last two decades, leaving hundreds of rural and remote communities without a bank.

What’s more, by entering the lucrative field of financial services, the publicly-owned postal service could have earned significant profits. A management report done for Canada Post concluded that postal banking was a “win-win” strategy.

...

The Harper government’s resistance to the idea is at least partly ideological. Postal banking would essentially create a public banking system — something that would be repugnant to hard-right Conservatives who have spent years dismantling Canada’s public systems and turning them over to the private sector.

- Meanwhile, the Winnipeg Free Press concludes that the CPP represents by far the best option to offer Canadians improved income security in retirement. Which naturally means that the Cons are instead planning to demolish any form of defined-benefit plan, to be replaced by more risky plans intended to be run - and exploited - by the private sector.

- Mathew Paterson debunks the Fraser Institute's sad attempt to pretend that unregulated corporate dominance is anything but a disaster for the environment. And Andrew Flowers tests the business lobby's attempts to demonize unions in the name of "competition" - and finds that countries with greater union density are actually better placed to compete internationally.

- Frances Russell laments how even Canada's elections rules (along with budgets and other policy decisions) are being developed based solely on the Cons' partisan calculations. And Althia Raj points out that the Unfair Elections Act is designed to give special advantages to wealthier candidates.

- Finally, Carol Goar discusses the total lack of accountability or morality among Canada's right-wing political leaders - and recognizes what's needed to end the culture of cult conservatism:

There is nothing new about scandal in Canadians politics. History is replete with tales of ministers on the take, greedy public officials and corrupt mayors.

What has changed is that wrongdoers are no longer required — or even expected — to take responsibility for their actions. They don’t offer to resign. They don’t acknowledge they forfeited the confidence of the public. What they do instead is lash out at the government watchdogs who caught them, the journalists who exposed their malfeasance and the judges who applied the brakes.

To maintain this state of affairs, three conditions are necessary:

The first is an unprecedented level of secrecy or obfuscation by public officials.

The second is a sizable bloc of voters that can be counted on to support a besmirched leader no matter what he or she does.

The third is an electorate so unconcerned — or jaded — that it does nothing.

All three of these conditions currently exist in Canada; not in every jurisdiction but in several of the most prominent centres of government.

The antidote to what ails the body politic is obvious: eradicate the conditions that allow it to thrive.

Demand straight answers from those who are paid to serve the public and make it clear their jobs are on the line. Summon up the will to outvote the “bedrock supporters” who keep discredited politicians in power. Care a little more about Canada.

Saturday Afternoon Links

This and that to end your Saturday.

- As pointed out by Paul Krugman, Kathleen Geier recognizes an obvious possible cause of a declining life expectancy for some less-wealthy Americans:

I will offer an alternative hypothesis, one which is not explicitly identified in the Times article: inequality. In the U.S., the period between 1990 and 2008, which is a period that saw such steep declines in life expectancy for the least well-off white people, is also a period during which economic inequality soared. Moreover, there is a compelling body of research that suggests that inequality itself — quite apart from low incomes, or lack of health insurance — is associated with more negative health outcomes for those at the bottom of the heap. One of the most famous series of studies of the social determinants of health, Britain’s Whitehall Studies, had as their subjects British civil servants, all of whom health insurance and (presumably) decent enough jobs. Intriguingly, these studies

found a strong association between grade levels of civil servant employment and mortality rates from a range of causes. Men in the lowest grade (messengers, doorkeepers, etc.) had a mortality rate three times higher than that of men in the highest grade (administrators).

...
I believe that inequality-related stressors are likely to be the determining factors in declining American life expectancies, as well. I’m surprised, in fact, that the Times article did not specifically identify inequality as a causal factor, because the health risks associated with economic inequality are well-established in the scientific literature. For decades, the United States has been making a series of political choices that has distributed wealth and power upwards and left working Americans not only poorer and sicker, but also feeling far more burdened and distressed, and experiencing far less security and control over their lives. The consequences of these choices have been devastating, and absent a dramatic reversal in our political course, they are likely to get even worse. Where inequality is concerned, Republicans have their foot on the accelerator, while the best the Democrats seem to be able to do is to (temporarily) put their foot on the brake.

- And Adam Davidson-Harden recognizes the need to reverse the trend of social backsliding arising out of increased inequality as a crucial reason why we need fight back against attacks on labour and other progressive forces:

If I was a betting man (which I'm not), I'd put my money behind the idea that the Ontario Liberals thought they could win a majority government out of declaring war on teachers in the recent round of byelections. Of course, they were wrong on that score, but they are still working on a strategy that banks on austerity as a key plank in their platform, from the Drummond report on.

The snake-oil consists of a fairly simple, business and bank-approved message: we can't afford social programs anymore. We need to retrench them and cut everything in the public sector. We don't have the money (repeat that last five times or more to get the general point). Meanwhile, Ontario sports some of the lowest corporate taxes in any developed economy.

Rolling over sends a message to the political prophets and priests of austerity. It says to them: 'well, maybe we have things too good after all. Maybe the rights, benefits and working conditions/learning conditions we've won are too much. Maybe we don't deserve them.' Rolling over under assault is giving up, and giving up is interpreted by employers and governments as simply acknowledging that they're right, that austerity is the default, inevitable, unavoidable, a universal fate of retrenching social programs.   

- Meanwhile, Althia Raj reports that Ontario is just one of far too many provinces with no interest in protecting its interests while negotiating the CETA. But it's worth noting that such agreements are normally designed to ensure the ongoing erosion of democratic power no matter who holds office at any given time: exemptions can't be added without other parties' agreement, but can be permanently destroyed by a single term of a right-wing government.

- Finally, John Geddes' profile of Tom Mulcair is well worth a read.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Andrew Jackson thoroughly demolishes the argument that after three decades of wage stagnation and soaring corporate profits, Canada's economy somehow needs to see workers suffer even more:

The reality is that the pay of most workers has stagnated in real terms over the past thirty years as the profit share of  GDP has increased at the expense of wages, and as wages have become much more unequal with more and more of the total wage and salary bill going to the top 1% made up mainly of senior executives. As the OECD recently reported, since 1990, 6% of total national income has been shifted from wages to profits and the pay of the top 1% combined.

And a recent Statistics Canada study documents the stagnation of real hourly wages of the majority of Canadian workers between 1981 and 2011. Over that entire thirty year period, the average hourly wage of full-time workers rose by just 14% (and that includes the top 1%.) . This compares to growth of over 50% in real GDP per person over the same period.

The view that wages are “too high” boils down to saying that workers have no right to share in rising national income, all of which should go to profits and senior managers. That is, to say the least, a curious basis on which to sell the proposition that workers have any kind of stake in our current economic arrangements.

- Following up on yesterday's column, Mark Lemstra also sees plenty of reason for optimism in the Canadian Medical Association's focus on the social determinants of health.

- Althia Raj writes about the electoral boundary revision process in B.C. (featuring a commissioner's remarkable declaration that public input will be ignored) and Alberta (where there's reason for optimism in a shift toward better urban representation similar to that proposed in Saskatchewan).

- Sixth Estate is far too kind in responding to David Akin's pointless criticism of one of the most useful tools for accountability we've seen in Canadian politics.

- Finally, I'll give Michael Fougere this much: he's absolutely right that at the moment, the City of Regina's core business isn't so much land development or public administration as catering to private land developers. But this fall's election would seem like a rather important opportunity to change that focus.