Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Jim Hightower writes that the risk of technology displacing workers is ultimately just one instance of the wider problem of corporate greed. And the New York Times is examining how the principle of total corporate control is the basis for the Trump administration's handling of regulation.

- Ed Broadbent highlights the options which will open up for Canada in a post-NAFTA policy environment.

- Tom Ayers reports on the Nova Scotia NDP's push to ensure that workers are at least able to make ends meet with a fair minimum wage. And Meagan Fitzpatrick discusses the spread of precarious work in post-secondary education.

- Andrew Coyne weighs in on Bill Morneau's flawed judgment in failing to recognize the connections between his cabinet authority and private wealth while falsely claiming to have avoided conflicts of interest. But Nick Fillmore points out that the real scandal surrounding Morneau is his inescapable ability to use public policy to add to the riches which already place him at a distance from all but the most privileged Canadians.

- Finally, Bruce Anderson suggests that our regulation of election advertising is far behind the times - and calls for all parties to work on catching up.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Lana Payne writes that by finally recognizing the unfairness and ineffectiveness of Alberta's regressive tax system, Jim Prentice may be starting a needed national debate:

Alberta Premier Jim Prentice talks up taxes for individuals including a sales tax (Alberta is the only province not to have one) and adjusting income taxes. But what about those oil companies? This might also be an ideal time to consider how the province can receive a bigger piece of the oil revenue when prices do bounce back. The prep work should start now.

When oil prices boom, provincial economies dependent on those boom times have to be able to take advantage of skyrocketing prices. This is one way to build a rainy-day fund that can help through the tough times.

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Paul Davis has hinted that everything needs to be considered - both revenues and expenditures - in confronting this province's ballooning deficit. The key here is not to panic. Panic results in poor decisions.

Canadians should demand a tax conversation at the federal level, including a hard look at how tax cuts to the wealthiest in Canada are now being paid for through deficit-financing.
...
Taxes are all about values. They are how we build a better society. Let's have a conversation about that.

- David Sirota comments on the disastrous effect of the U.S.' regressive tax system. And Szu Ping Chan reports on Mark Carney's observation that the tech companies who are rendering substantial classes of workers obsolete should be paying a larger share.

- Andrew Jackson compares the respective merits of meaningful industrial policy as opposed to indiscriminate corporate tax slashing:

The Harper government has proudly put corporate tax cuts at the very heart of its so-called growth and jobs agenda. Since taking power in 2006, they have cut the general federal corporate tax rate from 22.1% to 15%. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, each one point reduction costs $1.85 Billion in lost annual revenues, so the total annual cost is some $12 billion.

Corporate tax cuts certainly boost after tax corporate profits, but have had a negligible impact to date on actual business investment in machinery and equipment and in intellectual property which are the key building blocks of our future prosperity. The latest national accounts data show that real business spending in these vital areas has been flat for the past three years, and remains below the pre-recession level, both in dollar terms and as a share of the economy.
...
(G)overnment funds are (shock) being invested as equity in specific areas of the economy such as high tech, IT and health care where start-up capital is much more scarce than in the United States.

Progressive economists see these interventions as broadly justified and cost effective given market failures which limit the willingness of the private sector to undertake or finance risky but potentially highly productive investments. The federal government's own advisory panel on the funding of innovation led by Tom Jenkins recommended more targeted and strategic interventions.

This begs the question of how much money should be funnelled to the private sector through costly across the board tax cuts as opposed to more targeted programs. The fact that even the Harper government has retained and even expanded some strategic interventions strongly suggests that they are needed.

- Meanwhile, David Parkinson, Richard Blackwell and Iain Marlow write that no matter how low interest rates are pushed, we can't expect the global economy to begin any sustained recovery until governments get out of austerity mode. And Nadia Alexan discusses some of the more productive options we could be pursuing to turn concentrated wealth into social and economic development.

- Finally, Bruce Anderson observes that the Cons' choice to fund self-promotion rather than anything which could actually benefit Canada's people serves as a compelling indicator of a government that's completely lost its way.

On political evolution

Both Chantal Hebert and the combination of Bruce Anderson and David Coletto have written recently about the state of federal politics in Quebec, with particular emphasis on what we can expect as the Bloc Quebecois appears to crumble. With that in mind, I'll offer a quick reminder as to one of the more subtle factors behind the 2011 Orange Wave - and how things have changed less than we might think at first glance.

As I've mentioned before, the NDP's relatively strong push into Quebec happened to coincide with an election where both the Cons and Libs had obvious reasons not to put much effort into the province - based in large part on the Bloc's success in campaigning against their preferred themes.

Which isn't to say that the NDP was obviously ahead of its competitors at the start of the campaign (see: polling prior to April 2011 passim). Instead, its increased strategic focus figures mostly to have counterbalanced the Libs' and Cons' historic advantages. And with no national party going into 2011 with much expectation of winning over a substantial amount of Bloc support, the outcome might be seen as reflecting two factors: not only the popularity of Jack Layton, but also the growth of natural voter preferences in a rare case where political targeting played a relatively small role.

Of course, that's all changed going into the next federal campaign. Now that the obvious obstacle to growth in Quebec for all of the federal parties is seemingly disintegrating, every party has an incentive to test its prospects within a much larger pool of available voters and seats. And there's reason to think the NDP, Libs and Cons have all done just that.

In turn, that makes the lack of change in voter support just as noteworthy as any further shift would have been. The NDP's change in leadership from Jack Layton to Thomas Mulcair hasn't affected its massive advantage on that question. And renewed pushes from both the Libs and Cons haven't significantly altered the party standings aside from the Bloc's further decline - which, as noted by Anderson and Coletto, may actually bolster the NDP's position compared to its competitors.

Not that any party can rest on its laurels now: after all, it's the illusion of stability over an even longer period that caught nearly everybody off guard in the last election. But if 2011 showed us what the Quebec electorate looks like following relatively little work to cultivate party interests, the last few years seem to indicate that voters are comfortable with the landscape.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Murray Dobbin points to the oil sector's utter domination of Canada's federal political scene. And Dr. Dawg sums up the problem:

Briefly, the Harperium has now taken to grossly misusing the state apparatus to spy upon and intimidate citizens who dare to disagree with the Prime Minister. The RCMP and CSIS have been improperly deployed against perfectly non-violent folks who happen to oppose the development of the filthy, polluting Alberta Tar Sands—including a story-telling seniors’ group.

The cop-and-spook brigade have, as it turns out, been meeting in cabal with oil company execs, the Department of National Defence and National Energy Board honchos: the last meeting was sponsored by energy heavies Enbridge, Brookfield, and Bruce Power. (Meanwhile, our ultra-secret spy agency, CSEC, has been busy keeping tabs on ordinary folks in airports, perhaps just because they can. They, too, have been attending these top-level meetings.)
...
The Harper regime is now doubling down. In response to a question on the anything-but-random audits, Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty attempted to connect these organizations to international terrorism. And the new budget contains monies to be used to counter this alleged threat to national security.

It’s not hard to connect the dots here. The audits are a deliberate form of harassment. Much of this can be traced back to Environment Minister Joe Oliver’s outlandish claim that environmentalism is a plot by foreign radicals to destabilize Canada. And we now know that Harper will pass legislation on request: all Big Oil need do is send a nice letter.

This is, to put it bluntly, exactly how corporatist regimes operate. Coercive state apparatuses are used to squelch dissent. Political opponents are demonized as traitors, amid grave talk of foreign influences and terrorism. And business and government operate as one to get the job done.

- Meanwhile, Bruce Cheadle reports on the consequences of the Harper regime's view of itself as a fully-owned subsidiary of the tar sands, as climate change and the environment have been wiped out of any government plans.

- Matt Taibbi writes about the financial industry's latest scheme to extract massive profits by effectively placing bets on industries which they control directly - when the result is to favour that extraction rather than productive economic development:

(B)anks aren't just buying stuff, they're buying whole industrial processes. They're buying oil that's still in the ground, the tankers that move it across the sea, the refineries that turn it into fuel, and the pipelines that bring it to your home. Then, just for kicks, they're also betting on the timing and efficiency of these same industrial processes in the financial markets – buying and selling oil stocks on the stock exchange, oil futures on the futures market, swaps on the swaps market, etc.

Allowing one company to control the supply of crucial physical commodities, and also trade in the financial products that might be related to those markets, is an open invitation to commit mass manipulation. It's something akin to letting casino owners who take book on NFL games during the week also coach all the teams on Sundays.

The situation has opened a Pandora's box of horrifying new corruption possibilities, but it's been hard for the public to notice, since regulators have struggled to put even the slightest dent in Wall Street's older, more familiar scams. In just the past few years we've seen an explosion of scandals – from the multitrillion-dollar Libor saga (major international banks gaming world interest rates), to the more recent foreign-currency-exchange fiasco (many of the same banks suspected of rigging prices in the $5.3-trillion-a-day currency markets), to lesser scandals involving manipulation of interest-rate swaps, and gold and silver prices.

But those are purely financial schemes. In these new, even scarier kinds of manipulations, banks that own whole chains of physical business interests have been caught rigging prices in those industries. For instance, in just the past two years, fines in excess of $400 million have been levied against both JPMorgan Chase and Barclays for allegedly manipulating the delivery of electricity in several states, including California. In the case of Barclays, which is contesting the fine, regulators claim prices were manipulated to help the bank win financial bets it had made on those same energy markets.

- Finally, Laura Payton finds that the Cons' excuses for eliminating anything resembling voter turnout from Elections Canada's mandate lack any basis in fact - as motivation, not information, is the main current obstacle to voting (though of course the Cons want to make accessibility a problem for more voters as well). And Bruce Anderson wonders whether voters will rightly punish the Cons for rigging the electoral system for partisan gain rather than the public good.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Karl Flecker discusses how the Cons' push to encourage employers to use temporary foreign workers will affect wages for everybody:

In fact, what Kenney said was untrue. He has conveniently forgotten that his government significantly changed the wage rules for employers hiring high-skilled migrant workers. On April 25, 2012, after direct consultations with a select group of employers, Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources Skills Development Canada, announced a new "Accelerated Labour Market Opinion" to provide employers with "greater flexibility." "Wages," she said, "that are up to 15 per cent below the average wage for an occupation in a specific region will now be accepted."

Later in May, her department issued a backgrounder clarifying that employers would also be able to pay low-skilled migrant workers five per cent less than prevailing wage rates, and that the Accelerated Labour Market Opinion process "may gradually be expanded to include risk-based processing for all occupations and components of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program." Simply put, this means the Conservative government plans to implement a pay-less wage structure across all streams of the program. Given that migrant workers are now present in every sector of the economy, this change will create the means to lower wages for all workers.

Minister Kenney's public assurance that the Temporary Foreign Worker Program requires employers to pay at or above the prevailing wage rate of any occupation does not hold water.

- Meanwhile, James Keller reports that the Cons are now "vigorously defending" the use of "temporary" foreign workers for upwards of a decade - even in the case of HD Mining where Diane Finley had to admit to problems with the use of that type of labour.

- Both Chris Selley and Bruce Anderson make the point that the Cons' refusal to consult or listen to anybody when it came to their omnibus budget monstrosities has only made it impossible for them to feign any willingness to work constructively with First Nations.

- Finally, Scott Sinclair writes about the possible effect of CETA on fisheries regulation. But without diminishing the importance of our fisheries, the most significant takeaway is that every other sphere of government action figures to be similarly affected.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your day.

- Frances Russell nicely sums up the effect of the Cons' bevy of anti-democratic trade deals:

Don’t be fooled. The innocuous language used to describe the avalanche of so-called “trade” agreements raining down on Canada under the Harper government — the TransPacific Partnership (TPP), the Canada-European Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Canada-China Foreign Investment Agreement, not to mention the plethora of single-country trade deals — aren’t about trade at all.

Their real purpose is to repeal democracy, to elevate investor/corporate rights over the democratic will of the people. Corporations — not governments — become the decision-makers, the de facto rulers.

This corporate coup d’etat is being accomplished through Orwellian investor rights clauses empowering corporations to sue governments, often for astronomical sums, should governments enact any laws for the public good that constrain corporate interests.

- But at least one of the deals mentioned by Russell looks like it may not come to pass - if only because the Harper Cons can't bear to see human rights protected in the process of handing more power to investors.

- Meanwhile, the NDP's position on trade has been receiving plenty of press lately - with Bruce Anderson pitching a focus on supporting some trade deals as a move toward the centre, while Murray Dobbin worries that it's becoming "Liberal-lite" in the process. But while at least some shift was to be expected after a leadership campaign where Tom Mulcair regularly defended NAFTA, I'd think there's ample room to fit a targeted set of possibilities into a message of multilateralism and social gains, while continuing to drawing a stark contrast to the corporatist tendency to trample all else in the name of marketization.

- Sandra Cuffe discusses how resource exploitation is destroying traditional First Nations and Metis territory in Western Canada.

- Finally, SOS Crowns weighs in on the Sask Party's ill-advised determination to privatize ISC after it had promised for two consecutive election cycles to leave our Crowns alone.

Wednesday Evening Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Frances Russell comments on the Canada which the Harper Cons are determined to destroy. But the more important point looks to me to be less any theory of constitutionalism than the desire to have governments be as ineffective as possible at all levels:

Harper, the man who co-authored the infamous 2000 Alberta firewall letter, abhors the 1982 Canadian Constitution and its Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He is a strict constitutional constructionist. He believes in the Canada of Confederation in 1867 when Ottawa managed defence, foreign affairs, fisheries, the currency and penitentiaries and the provinces looked after matters of a local nature.

Unfortunately for Canadians, what were local matters 145 years ago now constitute government's biggest, most expensive and important programs -- health, education and social assistance. The notion that 10 provinces and three territories of vastly different size and wealth can be left to finance them on their own assisted by an equalization program whose future is now in doubt as it comes under increasing attack from the right, is simply a prescription for growing disparity -- and disunity.

It was all predictable. During his years with the libertarian National Citizens' Coalition, the prime minister seldom hid his disdain for Canada and Canadians. "Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status," he told the National Post in December 2000. In 1997, he asked an American audience not to "feel particularly bad" for Canada's unemployed. "They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance."

Most ominously in light of Thursday's budget, he told an NCC audience in 1994 that: "Whether Canada ends up with one national government or two governments or 10 governments, the Canadian people will require less government no matter what the constitutional status or arrangement of any future country might be."

- If there's anything the Cons can abide less than public broadcasting, it's Rights and Democracy. Which is why the former is merely being cut, while the latter is meeting with a wrecking ball.

- Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne, Bruce Anderson and John Ibbitson tear into the Cons for their combination of deception and incompetence in continuing to push F-35s long after they should have been well aware their talking points were utterly nonsensical.

- Paul Wells comments on the hidden release of another report on Afghanistan as a symptom of all that's wrong with a government more focused on propagandizing than discussing what it's actually doing - and a media far too willing to play into that choice.

- Finally, Murray Mandryk notes that while the Cons can never expect the facts to be on their side, they can usually expect the Wall government to come to their rescue in the PR department.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Mia Rabson comments on the dangers of eliminating any public debate over Canada's future direction - as the Cons are trying to do:

This is one of the most important committees in Parliament. It looks at all government operations and examines spending estimates reports in detail.

To push all the discussions except witness testimony out of the public eye is to allow MPs a free ride and reduce the kind of scrutiny good government requires.

Wallace's motion was postponed on a technicality but it will resurface.

And it's not the only one of its kind.

Also on Tuesday, Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett wanted a debate on her motion before the aboriginal affairs committee to hold two emergency meetings to discuss the housing crisis on reserves. The Conservatives on the committee forced the debate on the motion behind closed doors.

That same day, a motion to go in camera was also introduced at the official languages committee.

Apparently, open and accountable government means Canadians don't get to see or hear what their elected officials think about whether it is worthwhile to debate the housing crisis on reserves. There likely are legitimate arguments on both sides of the debate. We wouldn't know because the debate took place in camera.

The trend to have more and more committee business conducted out of earshot of anyone but members of the committee is something that should concern all Canadians.

When government doesn't operate out in the open, there is no accountability.

When there is no accountability, democracy is harder to achieve.

- Meanwhile, Chantal Hebert is more concerned that the media didn't pry more into Jack Layton's health during this spring's election campaign. But it's at least worth noting in hindsight that the media was indeed far too slow to give the NDP coverage as anything more than a curiosity.

- Meanwhile, Bruce Anderson is horrified to discover that the NDP's leadership candidates are actually running to lead the NDP rather than the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation.

- Finally, Stephen Hume pinpoints the source of the state of deprivation facing Attawapiskat and other remote First Nations:

Let's be clear about what reserves are. They are a government invention. Reserves were created by government to concentrate, for administrative purposes, peoples who roamed those landscapes and exploited their resources.

So perhaps the reasonable question is: Why is Attawapiskat not viable?

It's not viable because the community was separated from the economic resource base that would otherwise sustain it.

Could Prince George be viable if it were denied the vast forest hinterland that sustains it? Arguing that Prince George is viable because its economy is sustained by forest resources appropriated from around Fort Ware, while Fort Ware is by some magical thinking then declared economically unviable, begs some re-thinking.

The forest, mineral and energy resource base surrounding Attawapiskat was appropriated by the Crown, which receives the rents from its exploitation by corporations. A minuscule proportion of those rents is returned to the original occupants.
...
Perhaps the question that Canadians should be asking of their federal government is why, after a century of responsibility for aboriginal communities that are entirely creatures of Ottawa, is the system such a disgraceful, chaotic, festering mess of bungling, red tape, bureaucratic incompetence and political prevarication? Why are we still blaming the victims of our policies?

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your weekend.

- Bruce Anderson worries that the Cons might think they face no restriction on their ability to get away with dirty tricks. But Noah Richler suggests that the best way to fight back against the Cons' disdain for democratic debate is to treat them as a joke. And Dr. Dawg and deBeauxos start with an apt one.

- But Jeffrey Sachs reminds us that we shouldn't use justified cynicism over our current government to make the right's case to eliminate the concept of public service altogether.

- And Livio Di Matteo notes that if it weren't for the Cons' reckless tax-slashing, we'd never have faced the federal deficits which are now being used as an excuse to attack social funding.

- Finally, Bruce Johnstone slams the Cons' refusal to let farmers decide the fate of the single-desk Canadian Wheat Board.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- If anybody hasn't yet seen Bruce Anderson's critique of the Cons' dirty tricks, it's well worth a read - especially in emphasizing how a party supposedly built around morals and ethics is so quick to declare that anything goes when it comes to political manipulations:

Eventually, Government House Leader Peter Van Loan admitted that this was being done on an organized basis by the Conservatives. A sad, cynical enough moment in Canadian politics. Then he took cynicism to a new, jaw dropping level.

No mumbling the normal apologies about “overzealous workers, blah, blah, blah, won’t happen again, etc.” Instead, Canadians were told that this kind of grime should be considered vital free speech – and must be protected, not prevented, by our laws. Efforts to rein it in would have worse consequences than letting it continue. This was the sound of a politician who had left home without an ethical or moral compass that morning.
...
This truly isn’t complicated. If our children tell lies about schoolmates, we punish them not shrug it off. When it happens on the Internet, we call it cyber bullying and bemoan how young people seem to have grown up without decent values. Conservative Christian groups presumably recognize this as something hard to square with the “Golden Rule.”

How exactly does this kind of behaviour, and its subsequent defence, fit within a party that wants to be known as the champion of law and order? I’m not suggesting the acts were illegal, only that it seemed the point of a law-and-order agenda was proclaiming a larger idea along the lines of “We conservatives get right and wrong.”

And this is wrong. Not clever, not amusing, not evidence of a more sophisticated political machine that works all the angles while others are asleep at the switch. Just wrong on every level.

- Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt puts Anderson's comments in context alongside some of the Cons' other defences of shady tactics. And the Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal weighs in on Peter MacKay's sense of entitlement and strategy of deception.

- Sixth Estate unveils the Weekly Flack Award for outstanding achievement in the field of Con PR hackery. But is one award a week really enough to cover the sheer volume of substance-free self-congratulation being generated by thousands of politically-oriented communications staff?

- Finally, Brett Hodnett reproduces Chelsea Vowel's breakdown of the Cons' spin about funding to Attawapiskat, showing that there's been nowhere near enough funding to put even a small dent in the cost of providing housing. And Romeo Saganash comments on the federal government's deliberate choices to assimilate First Nations rather than allowing them to function as communities.

[Update: Fixed attribution to Chelsea Vowel as per comments.]

On value debates

Yes, Bruce Anderson's latest has already been duly mocked. But it's particularly worth contrasting Anderson's claim that no party should date to criticize the Cons as overly right-wing against what Canadians themselves actually want done from a policy standpoint:

(M)ost Canadians balked at jailing people for minor offences such as breaking and entering, saying: "It does more harm than good."

The live-and-let-live views of Canadians came out strongly on sexual morality, with 83 per cent of Canadians agreeing "the lifestyles of gay and lesbian people are just as valid as those of heterosexual people."

However, Canadians aren't opposed to government intervention on non-bedroomrelated (sic) issues. Three-quarters of Canadians want stricter environmental regulations, saying they're "worth the cost."

Another 68 per cent of Canadians believe governments need to provide more financial aid to the poor, suggesting most Canadians don't oppose political action for the common good.

Finally, even though a majority of Canadians supported various tax cuts, only one out of five agreed that "government debt should be reduced, even if it means cuts in health care."

Of course, Harper has thus far avoided any political price for being on the wrong side of the Canadian public on every single one of those issues. But particularly given the rise of an opposition party which has actually fought back on those types of values questions over one which took Anderson's advice to focus on "performance and tone", the obvious conclusion is that Harper is indeed vulnerable on his ideology - just as long as he faces an opponent who offers something meaningfully better.

Parliament In Review: June 20, 2011

Yes, it's tempting to Bruce Anderson's conjecture about the NDP with a direct rebuttal. But I hardly see the need when the next day in Parliament to be reviewed offers an ideal example of the NDP standing up for its principles rather than merely positioning itself as next in line for government. So without any further ado...

Issue of the Day

For its final opposition day of the session, the NDP had a world of policy choices at its disposal, and chose...

That, in the opinion of this House, ending seniors' poverty in Canada is fiscally feasible, and, therefore, the House calls on the government to take immediate steps to increase the Guaranteed Income Supplement sufficiently to achieve that goal.

Of course, the exact cost of ending seniors' poverty was a matter of some dispute during the course of the debate, with the NDP focusing on the CLC's estimate of $700 million per year, the Libs relying on the CCPA's number of $1.2 billion, and the Cons putting forward a $2 billion figure from the Numbers Pulled From Our [Censored] Institute.

Lest there be any doubt, the reference to the proposal being "fiscally feasible" only fed into an extensive clash over the Cons' priorities, with speakers from the NDP and other opposition parties repeatedly challenging the choice to pour money into fighter jets and corporate tax cuts instead.

Among the arguments of particular note: Glenn Thibault noted that the corporate tax cuts delivered to banks alone could have lifted every senior in Canada out of poverty; John Rafferty made the point that a more secure retirement for seniors through the GIS would also have broader economic benefits; and Marc-Andre Morin questioned how anybody making $160,000 per year can argue that a senior barely getting by on a small fraction of that just needs to budget better.

And a couple of MPs also fit the GIS debate into broader policy discussions, with Irene Mathyssen comparing the Cons' minimal GIS funding with their willingness to give away substantially more money through income splitting, while Elizabeth May raised a guaranteed annual income as an alternative.

Meanwhile, among the Cons' creative responses...

Alice Wong argued that seniors living in poverty should be happy just to have been spoken to. John Weston tried to pretend that the Cons had done enough through a caregiver tax credit - only to be met with a thorough thrashing by Robert Chisholm, who pointed out that the credit was designed to only help wealthier recipients. And Chris Warkentin argued that it's only because he's so committed to ending it that he couldn't support a motion calling for just that.

And in case that wasn't enough of a focus on poverty for the day, Jean Crowder also introduced her private member's bill to eliminate poverty in general.

Tuned Out

Tony Clement's silencing on the Cons' G8 graft and waste continued - this time to the point that Alexandre Boulerice's question about current Treasury Board cuts (which merely mentioned the Auditor General's report in a preamble) was fielded by John Baird.

In Brief

On behalf of the Cons, Deepak Obhrai took credit for setting Canada's rate of inflation. A stream of alarm and outrage from economists and business leaders alike did not ensue.

Ted Hsu was the latest to work with the theme that the Cons should provide stable funding for the eco-retrofit program - only to be met with a typical attempt to take credit for making it available temporarily. Carolyn Bennett asked whether the Cons' plan to extend human rights law to First Nations reserves would be backed by any funding, only to receive the thoroughly relevant answer that the Cons have extended human rights law to First Nations reserves. Joe Oliver responded to Romeo Saganash's question by joining the Chrysotile Talking Points Chorus. And facing questions about the perpetually changing deadlines and cost of procuring helicopters, Rona Ambrose managed to push matters back by a year in mere minutes.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Rhys Kesselman rightly points out how the populist message that propelled the Cons to power has given way to elitist policy-making:

Once the federal budget is balanced, the Conservatives plan to double the TFSA’s annual allowance to $10,000 and to permit income splitting for couples with children under 18. These are costly schemes, each running ultimately to billions a year.

While these proposals may appear to have wide appeal, most Canadians would gain nothing from them. The tax savings would flow disproportionately to the highest earners. Moreover, the ostensible goals of these proposals would be much better achieved by major changes to their structures.

Consider the proposed doubling of the TFSA annual limit from its current $5,000 level. Low and moderate earners typically can’t save even this amount, so any increase is worthless to them. For most middle-income earners, the tax savings from contributing to RRSPs trump those of the TFSA, and very few are using all of their allowable RRSP limits. Thus, few middle earners will gain from expanding the TFSA.

Only among the highest earners, above $125,000, are the full RRSP limits often used, so this group would be the primary beneficiaries from expanded TFSA access. And for this group, most of the additional TFSA room would be used simply to shield existing taxable assets with little inducement for new saving.
...
Now consider the proposal to allow income splitting by couples with children. One motivation might be the view that couples with the same total earnings should pay the same total tax. But this ignores the fact that a one-earner couple has more effective income (in the form of home-produced, untaxed services) than a two-earner couple with the same earnings. Moreover, this reason would not justify confining splitting to couples with kids.

A more plausible motivation for allowing income splitting but restricting it to couples with children is the desire to give parents the option to spend more time rearing their children. High-earning parents already have this opportunity. Yet, the government’s proposal for income splitting would be of no benefit to couples where neither spouse earns above the bottom tax bracket of $41,500, partners with higher earnings but in the same tax bracket, and single parents. In fact, the largest beneficiaries would be couples with one very high earner – those in least need of aid.

- Which raises the question of how best to counter the Cons' plans. And while I don't agree entirely with Bruce Anderson's take on the state of Canadian politics, there's some reason for hope to the extent his message about the new Parliament takes hold:

(S)o far at least, the tone of this Parliament has changed. It feels like Question Period has gone off caffeine, taken up yoga, become almost Zen.

Questions are still pointed, but not as poison tipped. Response patterns from the government side have been re-engineered, letting ministers come off as smart, decent people. There’s no spiking the ball in the end zone, or other “excessive celebrations” as they say in football.

Watching Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird respond genially to a pertinent and precise question from NDP finance Critic Peggy Nash last week reminded me of how I felt when I was watching the courtly but very effective Liberal minister Allan MacEachen practice his craft in the House some 30 years ago. Any voter watching last week's Baird-Nash exchange would have come away feeling good about both politicians, I suspect.
...
Strong leaders, with clear ideas for the future, passionately argued: This is the recipe for the success enjoyed in the last election by Stephen Harper and Jack Layton, and on these criteria Michael Ignatieff and Gilles Duceppe fell short. In this Parliament, with Mr. Harper, Mr. Layton and Bob Rae, Canadian voters may see a pretty good contest of will, brainpower and communications talent – one of the best we’ve experienced in years. Based on the Prime Minister's speech to the Conservative Party convention in Ottawa this week, the policy choices of the Tories will provide plenty of room for other parties to differentiate themselves. While a competition on this level may seem less scintillating on a daily basis, it has a far better chance of reversing declining engagement than what has been tried for the past couple of decades.

- It took awhile after the initial report was released, but Postmedia's Doug Schmidt is catching up on the realities of wage theft.

- Finally, I'd consider it a general plus if the Regina Public Library and Globe Theatre end up joining forces in the development of a downtown Regina cultural centre. But to the list of follow-up concerns raised by Carle Steel about the RPL Film Theatre and Dunlop Art Gallery, I'd add a more fundamental concern: surely we'll want to make sure that any project is actually driven by the needs and best interests of the RPL and the Globe, rather than merely serving as an excuse to turn them into cash cows for a private building owner. (And the leaked possibility of a building consisting mostly of commercial space doesn't offer much reason for confidence.)

Tuesday Afternoon Links

Content goes here.

- Yes, the top story in EKOS' polling update is that the NDP's vote has stabilized in a solid second place nationally. But while not much has changed from the weekend's results, let's note that there is one interesting difference: the NDP managed to pick up even more ground in possible second-choice support, giving it a stunning 54.4% of voters rating the party as their first or second choice.

And based on the campaign so far, there's little reason to think that at least a few more of those potential supporters won't turn into actual ones by election day. (Needless to say, this includes the brouhaha over potentially revisiting Canada's constitution at some point in the future - which was apparently never seen as a big enough deal to interfere with Stephen Harper's path to power.)

- Meanwhile, Bruce Anderson explains why the NDP may have managed to catch its opponents by surprise:

(I)n my view a lot of people who aren't normally consumed with politics are looking at the NDP with fresh eyes, as it occupies centre stage in the last days of this election campaign. What do they perceive?

First, a leader with a passionate, friendly, easy manner. A guy who knows his way around a Tim Hortons and looks like he would draw a crowd to his table over a double-double.

They’d hear him say politics has too much mud-slinging and not enough progress on things that count for average folks. They’d listen to him go on about wanting to work with other people and parties, about hiring more doctors and nurses, “rewarding job creators,” “strengthening your pension” and “making your life a little more affordable.” The language is not that of class warfare, and the goals don’t sound weirdly utopian. These voters might compare Mr. Layton’s pitch with the urgings of Stephen Harper to avoid a coalition, to cut taxes, to strengthen law and order. Or the entreaties of Michael Ignatieff to rise up in defense of our democracy. The NDP themes might well compare favourably, as far as themes go.

- The Star rightly notes that a non-vote effectively serves as a vote for both the status quo and vote suppression, both of which play entirely into the Cons' hands:

This time, too, apathy is likely to amount to a vote by default for the Conservatives. That’s because large numbers of disengaged and alienated voters lean to Jack Layton’s New Democrats or to the Liberals. Those who opt not to vote risk becoming enablers of the Conservative victory that Harper claims is in the bag.

After five years of hyperpartisan, divisive minority government, the last thing Canadians need is to end up with a Tory majority by default because people couldn’t be bothered to turn out. As Harper himself observed on the weekend, “voters are never supposed to give absolute trust to anybody.”
...
The Conservatives don’t deserve to coast home again on a wave of voter apathy. Canadians should rouse themselves on Monday to cast judgment on Harper’s governance since 2006, and on the opposition parties’ competing visions. The country’s future is worth that much.

- But fortunately, there's little reason to think the Cons will get what they're after. And in the latest sign of desperation, Saskatchewan's Cons have followed up on their vacant house strategy with a short-lived attempt to use Saskatchewan's legislative buildings as a billboard.

Wednesday Morning Links

Content goes here.

- Bruce Anderson's take on what's ailing Michael Ignatieff looks to dovetail nicely with the recent discussion about brokerage politics:

More fundamentally, he hasn't yet developed clusters of voters who see him as "their guy." I'm talking about groups of voters with common interests: aligned by income or region or gender based concerns, or who hold a particular place on the political spectrum, or who care deeply about a single issue, and who know they can trust him to champion their causes.

His policy positions are becoming varied and substantive, but their variety is both an advantage and a disadvantage. He has thus far chosen not to crusade for one or two big ideas or speak to a single organizing point of view about the future. Instead, he looks like a smart, rational, pragmatic man who cares a fair bit about dozens of different things. (This is perhaps not surprising given his past life.)

But in the end, for the voter who worries about taxes, or health, or retirement, or fiscal management, or jobs, or the environment, or trade, or foreign policy, or who lives in Atlantic Canada, or economically stressed Ontario, or the lower mainland of British Columbia, there is a sense that he is sufficiently smart but insufficiently passionate about what keeps you awake at night.

- Ladies and gentlemen, start your news alerts. The over/under on Russell Ulyatt's soft landing within the right-wing noise machine (after he was fired for leaking secret documents to lobbyists) is December 1.

- Or maybe it should be earlier based on the federal resources being poured into PR for the oil sands.

- Finally, it's always a plus to see the NDP taking a stand on an issue like the abuse of tax loopholes. But it'll be especially interesting to watch the Cons' response - which normally ranges somewhere between lip service and changing the subject - in such an obvious case of people who play by the rules getting the short end of the stick.

On glaring omissions

Today's column is far from the first time Bruce Anderson has gone to absurd lengths in trying to limit the choices of Canadian voters by serving up only a Lib/Con false dichotomy, then pretending that results reflecting an artificially-limited set of choices should be taken at face value.

But it's worth noting that Anderson's choice to cut the NDP out of the picture was made in areas where it actually tends to perform particularly well, as past polls on second-choice support and "would consider voting" numbers have tended to place the NDP on an equal footing or better as compared to the Libs. And while we may not be able to confirm that the same applies now due to Harris Decima's selective omission, the only part of Anderson's column that should be seen as boding poorly for the NDP in the slightest is his continued refusal to offer respondents a full range of choices.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading...

- Tabatha Southey delivers a thoroughly entertaining smackdown of Stockwell Day's antics over the past week:

I mention all of this as context for my reaction to Stockwell Day’s press conference this week in which he explained that the government must spend $13-billion on prisons, despite statistics showing that crime is down in Canada, because of an “alarming” increase in “unreported crime.”

I'm having trouble sharing and understanding his particular personal vision. I'm not sure that prisons are a good “if you build it, they will come” investment.

In fact, I thought the Treasury Board President looked pretty crazy and scared. I felt like I was watching a man light himself on fire.
...
The strength of the Conservatives for so long was their ability to get inside the heads of ordinary Canadians. Lately, it’s as if they’re bored with that, so instead they are getting inside the heads of the most bashful of property-crime victims and some Cold War re-enactment enthusiasts.

- It's great to see John Rafferty's work on pensions getting some positive media attention. And while I'm less optimistic than Rafferty seems to be about the prospect of getting much done in a Con-controlled Parliament, it's definitely worth working getting C-501 passed to make sure that workers aren't left out in the cold when an employer goes under.

- I've mentioned before that it strikes me as entirely too narrow a focus to view the Cons' gutting of the census as merely a communications issue. But Bruce Anderson is still worth a read from that angle:

(T)he long-form-census debate is almost case-study worthy, as communications goes. Before the announcement, there was no effort to rally interest in the problem that the government felt needed to be addressed. The blow-back was predictable, but from the get go, it seemed that the government kept bringing rhetorical pen-knives to a gun fight.

After the blow-back became a source of political anxiety for the Conservatives, two or three different lines of argument were inflated and trial ballooned, none of which have soared. Net-net, the Harper Conservatives added a public-opinion risk with no reward anywhere in sight. If they wanted a debate about which party best respects your privacy, there is little evidence or prospect of this happening now. The more likely question vexing centrist voters is whether the Harper government prefers ideology over information as a way to make decisions with their money and about their services.

- Which is why the Cons may want to take another look at the Chronicle Herald's suggestion:

In the past month, while Mr. Harper has been largely unseen and unheard, the government has been anything but focused on the economy. It has stirred up a national backlash over replacing the mandatory long-form census with a voluntary one that will cost more and yield less reliable data on which to plan government services and make economic policy. It has expended energy talking "tough on crime" and arguing the need for more prisons even in the face of falling crime rates.

Although the PM has left his ministers to conduct an inept defence of both these diversions, the policies clearly come from his office and wouldn’t be getting their misplaced prominence if he didn’t want it that way.
...
Mr. Harper should accept the compromise he’s been offered on the census and get his attention back where he says it belongs: on economic management.

- Finally, while I've mentioned the Saskatchwan NDP's candidate nominations as they've happened, it's worth noting that the Sask Party has also been carrying out plenty of nominations. And their acclamation of Paul Merriman in Saskatoon Sutherland looks to reflect two of the party's major weaknesses: not only does the free ride for a familiar name play into concerns about connections mattering more than substance, but the fact that this is the second Sask Party-held riding where Wall and company couldn't even find a second interested candidate plays into the perception that they're little more than a Potemkin party.