Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- David Macdonald takes a closer look at a Fraser Institute study on income mobility, and finds strong evidence that there's a significant lack of mobility at both the bottom and the top of Canada's income distribution:

What should be very shocking to people is that in the shorter term panels, 50% of the poorest people in 2002 were still in the poorest category five years later (table 3).  That’s a pretty stunning conclusion.  For the second poorest category, a shocking 69% either ended up in the second poorest category or the poorest category (making even less).  So about 60% of the people in the bottom poorest categories were stuck there between 2002 and 2007.  That’s a lot of people living on very little income.  They are a bit mobile, but they are mobile between very poor and poor.  That’s not really the kind of mobility we should be looking for.

While the study focuses on the low end, there are some very interesting things going on at the upper end.  Take a look at table 6 for the top 20%.  The table does a “where are they now?” analysis over 19 years from 1990 to 2009.  For people that were in the top 20% in 1990, how many are still in the top 20% in 2009?  The answer is a whopping 64%.  Six out of 10 people that were in the top 20% in 1990 are still there today, two decades later.  Over a 10 year period between 1990 and 2000, almost 80% of the wealthy stayed at the top.

This is the opposite of income mobility, if you manage to slip into the exclusive club of wealthy Canadians it looks like you get a 10, if not a 20-year membership.  None of the other income groups are anywhere near that level of exclusivity.

- Meanwhile, Allison Jones reports on a Campaign 2000 study pointing out that it's possible to end child poverty in Canada by redirecting assorted tax credits. But I'd note that the contrast between universal benefits and the most narrow focus possible only serves as a means of pitting the currently-poor against the nearly-poor who are likely to lean heavily on the universal benefits - meaning that the real takeaway should be that it's possible to muster enough resources to end poverty in one form or another.

- Anne McGrath suggests applying a seven-generation test to Canada's international agreements, and finds the Cons' planned investor privilege pact with China to be sorely wanting by that standard:

The Iroquois had a rule: when making a major decision, consider its effects on the next seven generations.

It’s a good rule, one the Conservatives would do well to adopt. The reluctance of this government to submit the Canada-China FIPA (Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement) to parliamentary analysis and oversight deepens the apprehension many Canadians feel about the way we are pursuing trade and investment with China. Despite the government’s assurances, many remain unconvinced that the FIPA will be good for Canada in the long-term. Even its supporters acknowledge that further study and debate would be beneficial.
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Given that under the current government Canada has gone from a $26 billion trade surplus to a $50 billion trade deficit, we cannot simply take it as gospel that a trade deal exempt from parliamentary scrutiny is in this country’s best interest.

Critics argue that FIPA promotes corporate rights at the expense of Canada’s democratic, environmental and social rights and may have negative consequences for this country for years to come. In the agreed terms, FIPA cannot be terminated for 15 years. What’s more, any investments made prior to the date of termination will stand for a further 15 years.

The North American Free Trade Agreement, in contrast, can be cancelled with six months’ notice. The impact of FIPA will be felt well beyond its 31-year duration and Canadians deserve to know it in detail.

 - But unfortunately, the Cons look to be applying a rather different lens to their dealings with the world.

- Finally, Bill Curry reports that the Senate is determined to remind people of its existence (and make a wrong-headed claim to relevance) by trashing a bill passed by Canada's actual elected representatives.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Aaron Wherry takes a look at how the NDP caucus has responded to Jack Layton's death and the resulting outpouring of public sympathy:

After Jack Layton had departed Parliament Hill for the final time last week, his flag-draped casket loaded into a waiting hearse and driven away as a large crowd applauded, those NDP MPs who had gathered to see him off fanned out to greet and thank the well-wishers and mourners. “What I kept on saying to people over and over again,” says Libby Davies, one of Layton’s two deputy leaders, “without even thinking, it was just instinct, was, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to keep working.’ ”

While they mourned their leader, New Democrats could hardly ignore the many questions left in his absence: about their viability, direction and meaning as a party without the man who seemed to define them. But if, in the wake of Layton’s passing, there was a certain fear for the future of the NDP—raised by any number of pundits who now deem the party doomed—New Democrats themselves claim only resolve.
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A sense of solidarity was already said to have taken hold amid the June filibuster that delayed passage of back-to-work legislation for Canada Post employees. The loss of their leader and inspiration is now said to have united the caucus all the more. “When you go through a tragedy like this—it’s that old saying, ‘What doesn’t kill you is going to make you stronger,’ ” says Comartin. And in this case, there is, strengthening that resolve, a clear sense of responsibility. “Every single caucus member that I’ve spoken to, there’s the same absolute, resolute feeling that we are united, that we’re together, that we have to carry on Jack’s work,” says Davies.

When it came time for McGrath to sign one of the books of condolences for her departed boss—a man she had spoken to nearly every day for the last three years—she chose to put her commitment in writing. “I love you, I miss you, I know what you want from us,” she wrote, “and we’re going to do it, you can count on us.”

- And Linda McQuaig notes that Stephen Lewis' eulogy has resonated well beyond the NDP's caucus and membership:

Allowing Layton a state funeral was probably Stephen Harper's most generous prime ministerial act. But it led to a nationally televised scene that will likely haunt him and surely inspire progressives for years to come: Stephen Lewis, the iconic elder statesman of Canada's social democratic movement, standing in front of Canada's most right-wing prime minister ever, speaking truth to power.

Determined that the event be more than just a tribute to the goodness of one man, Lewis used the heft of the occasion, as Layton would have wanted, to drive home Layton's social democratic vision for the country.

With the Conservatives' new hammerlock on power — accomplished with a mere 40 per cent of the national vote — here at least was one joyous moment in which we could watch the country's most powerful orator confront a prime minister who had no choice but to stand every time the rest of the room rose in rapturous pleasure at Lewis's inspiring call for a more equal and generous Canada.

- Meanwhile, Erika Shaker theorizes as to the source of the Cons' constant rage:

I think the rage comes from a place of fear. I think the Conservative bunker mentality requires their constant vigilance to squash anything that vaguely resembles a differing point of view, or even a reminder that although the election is over, the opposition is not going away. Because when that opposition is coherent, passionate, and persuasive, and is accompanied by action…that’s when things get scary. Particularly when those unpredictable youth are involved.

And when political awareness and action is an ongoing process rather than the equivalent of something that resembles a cross between Groundhog Day and Leap Year (you know, when Canadians crawl out of their houses once every four years, haul themselves down to the polls to do their civic duty, then return home to shake their collective heads about how the old boss looks an awful lot like the new boss…but hey, whatareyagonnado?); when those whose sense of order relies on low voter turnout and an uninformed electorate realize that, for a lot of people, democracy is a way of life and not just a spectator sport….then it’s time to panic.
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(Layton's) vision as he articulated it was powerful; it resonated because it felt authentic, and because it was expressed authentically. His closing sentence has already become a mantra because it speaks to a vision of Canada, a way of life, and a set of priorities that people see in their best selves. Within hours, love, hope and optimism blew the “Conservative Values are Canadian Values” ad campaign out of the political and social water.
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Words to strike fear into the hearts of those who like their politics predictable, their youth apathetic, and their worldview uncomplicated by all this “making a difference” or “democracy is a way of life” nonsense. And I think being confronted with a different set of political and social principles that resonates deeply and authentically among a variety of communities only feeds the fear that drives the fury.

- Finally, Nik Nanos points out both why any talk of an NDP/Lib merger misses both the impossibility of completely combining the two parties, and the lack of any particular need to do so.

"We've got more to do"

Aaron Wherry's story on Jack Layton's new cancer diagnosis includes a reminder as to what needs to be done no matter what happens in Layton's latest fight:

McGrath prepared herself to find out what was happening on July 25, when a significant test was to take place, but that test was moved up five days. With those results came a diagnosis and on the evening of Wednesday, July 20, two days after his 61st birthday, Layton called McGrath to tell her it was cancer. “He’s so upbeat,” she says. “He really is. It’s so funny. I don’t get it sometimes myself.”

He told her to tell him that she was going to keep working. “ ‘We started this journey together…and look at how far we’ve come and look what we’ve done,’ ” she recalls him saying. “And he starts going through the things that we’ve been through and everything. He says, ‘And we’ve got more to do.’ He was talking to me about fundraising, about increasing the party’s membership. This is on Wednesday night, you know?”

He was not unmoved by the situation he now found himself in, but he was not shaken from the focus that sometimes seems to be all-encompassing. “He was upset and I could tell that there were tears,” McGrath says. “But again, he’s just very determined.” Here Jack Layton began the latest fight of his life: confronting it, McGrath says, as if it were a political campaign. “He’s the same with his health situation as he is with the party. It’s like, ‘I want the team together, I want to plan, it won’t be acceptable if it’s not this and that and the other thing.’

“He knows,” she says later, “he’s got a big fight on his hands.”