On personal responsibility

Since the Saskatchewan Party's leadership campaign didn't do much to test Scott Moe's track record, it will fall to the rest of us to point out the reasons why his actions need to come under careful scrutiny. And one such reason comes from Moe's actions in threatening the provincial auditor's funding after he was first elected as an MLA - together with his excuse afterward:

Scott Moe, one of the Sask. Party MLAs on the committee, said after the meeting members were acting on their own.

"The questions that I saw in there were more around the scope of the auditor's office and what exactly the office does and questions you might expect from fairly newly elected members in there."

Now, the purpose of Moe's answer was presumably to distance Brad Wall from what quickly turned into a significant public issue. But there are a couple of implications of Moe's message which are of obvious concern now that he's in power.

It's obviously a problem if Moe continues to think it's in any way appropriate to threaten the funding of any organization charged with holding his government to account.

And it's even more worrisome if a new premier thinks it's any excuse for elected officials to barge ahead with actions based on a lack of knowledge after assuming a higher office, rather than taking even basic steps to understand their jobs.

We'll see if those issues surface again now that Moe is both in a new position himself, and responsible for the actions of the people acting at his direction. But his track record gives ample reason to worry.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Sam Pizzigati interviews Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett about the fight against inequality and the next piece of the puzzle to be put in place:

[Pickett:]...In The Spirit Level, we have all these correlations between inequality and social problems, and we have theories and hypotheses about what is driving these correlations. But we didn’t know then whether or not the drivers we hypothesized — things like status anxiety — were actually higher in more unequal countries. Now those kinds of data are being used increasingly in psychological research. So, for instance, there are papers looking at levels of social solidarity in relation to inequality in different European countries.

Wilkinson: Solidarity in terms of whether people are kind and helpful toward each other, whether people are willing to help old people or their neighbors or the disabled.

Too Much: Your upcoming new book, which I hear has the working title, Crisis of Confidence, will go into much of this new psychological research?

Wilkinson: Yes. I worry that many people think that these things we’ve been writing about — like violence or poor educational performance — all go on out there in “society” and have nothing to do with what they think matters most to them, like their own personal and emotional ups and downs and the well-being of their friends and family. So I’m rather keen to show how inequality gets into our intimate worlds.

- Meanwhile, Rick Noack looks at how inequality has undercut economic growth in numerous developed countries including Canada. And Joseph Stiglitz writes about the damage ineequality has done to the U.S.' youth.

- Keith Reynolds discusses Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk's findings about the gross waste resulting from the use of P3 structures based on unfounded assumptions:

Risk transfer is the magic bullet that is used to justify spending more money on public-private partnerships. The thinking is that the private partner absorbs large amounts of risk that would otherwise be carried by the province and that this justifies additional costs. In the Ontario example, the AG says the government uses calculations that assume there is five times as much risk from public procurement as there is from a public-private partnership.

How much risk is actually involved? The Dominion Bond Rating Service published a document in February outlining how it rated the credit worthiness of P3s. It concluded most P3s were "of low to moderate risk." If this assessment is good enough for P3 investors listening to the DBRS, maybe we should be listening too. As a specific B.C. example, a Finance Department memo obtained under Freedom of Information looking at the Fort St. John Hospital P3 questioned the return the company was getting for taking on risk. The Internal Rate of Return (IRR) is the return the company expects to get back on its invested capital. The government memo said that the IRR the company was demanding in return for accepting "risk" was ridiculous given that:

• There is no revenue risk in a hospital project.
• Counter-party risk is the province, so as long as the proponent manages the projects minimal equity risk.
• Only political risk, which is relatively low.

The Ontario auditor general went even further questioning the whole underpinnings of the "risk transfer" justification.  She found that there was absolutely no "empirical data" supporting the valuation of the cost of risks transferred to the private sector by P3s.  The risks to justify the enormously higher costs, she reported, were anecdotal.

- But perhaps even more telling than the strength of Lysyk's findings is the weakness of the counterargument - and Paul Boothe for one isn't going to let the fact that the argument for P3s relies on wishcasting stop him from keeping up a steady stream of fact-free anecdotes and reliance on an incestuous consultant industry to evaluate itself.

- A new OECD working paper finds that contrary to the Cons' spin, a properly-administered set of environmental regulations doesn't need to cost the economy anything. And Scott Vaughan points out that Canada could easily turn renewable energy into a far larger export industry if we weren't stuck with a government determined to push the dirtiest energy sources available.

- Finally, Jim Stanford offers some good economic news from 2014 (while pointing out that there's still a long way to go). 

#skndpldr Roundup

As expected, the last week has been a relatively quiet one in the Saskatchewan NDP's leadership campaign - representing the break between membership recruitment and voter contact. But there have been a few developments worth noting.

Most obviously, the latest debate took place in Yorkton. Scott has already posted his thoughts, while Twitter coverage at the time was offered by Stephen Moore (with a particular focus on Trent Wotherspoon) and Paige Kezima.

But the development which figures to have the most impact on the balance of the campaign is Ryan Meili's 9 + 1 message: rather than allowing other candidates to take the lead in talking about what it means to elect a leader from outside the Legislature, he's making a highly visible pitch to the effect that the NDP should be looking to build strength beyond its MLAs. And the message looks like a fairly strong one on point - though there will be somewhat of a balancing act need to avoid distracting from Meili's broader vision and policy themes in responding to what's ultimately a relatively minor strategic consideration.

Meanwhile, Wotherspoon looked to answer some of the holiday musings about Cam Broten's relative success in influencing events in the Legislature by speaking out about the treatment of Provinicial Auditor Bonnie Lysyk by Sask Party MLAs. But I'd think that it's even more telling to see the response of the MLAs involved - who tried to excuse their disrespect for Lysyk by saying they don't know what her job actually is:

Scott Moe, one of the Sask. Party MLAs on the committee, said after the meeting members were acting on their own.

"The questions that I saw in there were more around the scope of the auditor's office and what exactly the office does and questions you might expect from fairly newly elected members in there."

As a bonus for Wotherspoon, he looks to enjoy an opportunity to follow up on the first new cycle as the Public Accounts Committee revisits the same terrain this week.

Finally, while Meili and Wotherspoon earned plenty of attention with their most recent public interventions, Erin Weir's latest should have received more. Obviously any news about PotashCorp's low royalties paid in 2012 fits with Weir's campaign message - but the minimal revenues coming in from the extraction of resources by a highly profitable private operator is also highly significant as a matter of provincial public policy.

Monday Evening Links

Assorted content for your evening reading.

- While I'm less than convinced about his desire to break down party loyalties, David Thompson highlights the need for progressives to fight back against decades of corporatist dominance in both political messaging and policy development:

To win over the long run, progressives will need, among other things, each of these three key elements. Policy wonks and activists will need to get outside of the mainstream comfort zone and articulate big ideas that can move the Overton window. They should not fret about whether their policy ideas will be "dismissed" as unthinkable, or that they may be seen as outliers in the political debate. That's their job.

Unions will need to ramp up funding of progressive thought and communication by orders of magnitude, supporting an infrastructure of success. They will need to get out of the comfort zone of immediate, short-term, bread-and-butter work; indeed their survival may require it.
...
Progressives involved in these three areas will need to understand their very different roles and strategies; they are not interchangeable. They will need to co-operate and be mutually supportive, however, which may prove challenging for some. Even more challenging is that they will be operating outside of their comfort zones. Anyone involved in a competitive field will confirm that's what it takes to win.

However, the big question remains: do progressives want to win? Some may prefer to lose and be honourable outsiders. It's certainly easier, and it won't upset anyone. For those who do want to win, there is much work to be done.

- Kathryn May proposes a "moral contract" between politicians and civil servants to ensure that public resources actually serve the public. But of course, the next time the Cons show any particular respect for either will be the first.

- Speaking of which, the Cons have wasted no time engaging in something they themselves know to be an unfortunate surprise.

- Finally, Murray Mandryk (in between his mandatory gratuitous slams at the NDP) expresses hope that Saskatchewan's new auditor general will help keep the Sask Party somewhat more honest than it's been to date.