Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Sunny Freeman reports on the Canadian Foundation for Labour Rights' study into the effects of anti-labour legislation:

The CFLR argues that [right-to-free-ride] laws would contribute to greater income disparity by undermining union strength and rights to collective bargaining, which they say leads to improved wages and benefits for employees.

The authors cited statistics suggesting that the wage premium for Canadian unionized workers over non-unionized employees in comparable jobs is between seven and 14 per cent. Workers in U.S. states that have adopted the laws earn an average of $1,500 less annually and have lower rates of employer-sponsored health and pension plans than workers in regions that have no such laws, they added.

The CFLR suggests that any such legislation would be the culmination of a trend in the past three decades that has brought an increase in anti-union labour laws.

“The attack on labour rights is being ramped up by the federal government and various provincial governments,” it said, adding that government interference in labour relations has become more prevalent.

- Mary Ormsby's expose on drug-tainted horse meat making its way into Canada's food chain all too aptly highlights how honour-system "regulation" tends to operate:

Priest signed the federal government’s mandatory Equine Information Document — a type of horse passport that must accompany all horses destined for slaughter — and stated that as owner, he had “uninterrupted possession, care and control” of Backstreet Bully for the past six months.

In fact, he had owned him for about 24 hours.

In signing the passport, Priest also attested that Backstreet Bully had been drug free for the past six months and had not been given any “not permitted” substances listed on the government’s website.

Critics of the passport system say the form is confusing and open to misinterpretation or outright fraud.

Priest, who has been in the horse business for more than 40 years, said he rescues and sells horses to good homes. He told the Star he falsely claimed he’d owned Backstreet Bully for six months because “everybody does” this on the horse documents.
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The federal government relies heavily on the accuracy of the passports, which have been in existence since 2010 and are the first line of defence in keeping tainted horse meat from the human food chain. The government does not require owners selling a horse for meat to provide additional medical history such as veterinary records.

Dr. Martin Appelt, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s national veterinary program manager, acknowledged the government relies on an honour system and hopes that the documents are “a reflection of the truth.”

In other words, the entire regulatory system is based on hoping for vendors to accurately describe the products they're selling - even as "everybody" within the system considers false answers to be just fine. Which sounds like an ideal recipe for exactly the kind of misinformation which seems to be the norm under the Cons' anti-regulatory schemes.

- Meanwhile, the oil industry is leaking various toxic fluids all over North America. Pipeline proponents are bullying landowners while leaving communities to clean up their messes. And the Cons' latest corporatist giveaways may include the establishment of a right to frack. But it's your patriotic duty not to notice.
- Finally, Kate Webb reports on the lone charity deregistered as a result of the Cons' McCarthyite attack on progressive issue advocacy: the nuclear disarmament group Physicians for Global Survival. And we surely shouldn't miss the opportunity to criticize the Cons' war on global survival as a core governing principle.

Parliament in Review - April 23, 2012

Monday, April 23 was the first day back in the House of Commons following the Easter break. And it featured some of the most lively and telling discussion we've seen yet on the Cons' anti-refugee legislation as the second-reading debate reached its end.

The Big Issue

As part of the refugee bill debate, Craig Scott made his first speech as the NDP's MP for Toronto-Danforth. And he wasted no time in showing what he'll add to the NDP's caucus:

One huge difference is that the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act requires that a person be a permanent resident before the person is able to sponsor family members, such as the person's spouse, children, or parents, to immigrate to Canada. Thus, under Bill C-31 irregular refugees would have no hope of reuniting with family in Canada for at least five years.

 

Currently, family class applications in this country are often processed at a snail's pace. It is not uncommon for it to take three years for a child or a spouse to be admitted and sometimes up to six years for parents. It is no stretch to say that a refugee who started out as a designated foreign national may have to wait 10 years for family members to join him or her.

 

If that is not enough, a designated foreign national refugee will not even be able to travel outside Canada to spend time with family, for example, in a country other than the country of origin which the refugee fears going back to. Why is that? Bill C-31 decrees that such a refugee will not be given travel documents until he or she becomes a permanent resident, that is, until at least five years have passed, despite the fact that the refugee convention requires that travel documents be issued to refugees once they are “lawfully staying” in the host country. Fortress Canada thus becomes prison Canada for the designated foreign national refugee. If he were still alive, Kafka could not have written Bill C-31 better if he tried.

Other speakers including Kevin Lamoureux also questioned why the Cons are so determined to keep families apart for a period of up to a decade. Kirsty Duncan pointed out how quickly patterns of human rights abuse can emerge and render obsolete the "safe country" designations the Cons want to use to attack refugees' rights. Guy Caron and Andrew Cash criticized the Cons' pattern of placing large amounts of power over individual rights in the hands of unaccountable ministers. Caron also lamented the politicization of refugee claims. Libby Davies highlighted the fact that organizations familiar with refugee issues were lining up against C-31, then observed that the bill would allow the Cons to retroactively attack refugee status if circumstances changed in a new immigrant's country of origin. Elizabeth May asked about the cost of locking up refugees rather than allowing them to contribute to Canadian society. Jinny Sims queried how refugees would take the Cons' admonition to play by the rules seriously when the 300,000 who did so in the current skilled worker program queue are being arbitrarily deleted. Anne Minh-Thu Quach and Massimo Pacetti pointed out that there's plenty of reason why refugees can't be expected to meet the ridiculous requirements placed on them by the Cons.

Meanwhile, for the Cons, Jason Kenney took umbrage at any suggestion that his party wanted to get tough on refugees - only to admit that part of the bill's purpose is deterrence to keep them from coming to Canada. And while Patrick Brown offered a boilerplate defence of a plan to require biometric information from new immigrants, Dan Harris rightly criticized the fact that the Cons were refusing to hear from a committee already assessing the use of biometrics.

But as tends to be the case, the Cons simply decided to ignore every valid criticism of their legislation, and voted down the NDP's proposed amendment before forcing the bill through.
 Pop Quiz

Caron received a response to his order paper question (#489) as to the criteria used to decide to close a processing centre in Rimouski and set one up for the primary benefit of Christian Paradis in Thetford Mines and the reason why the change was made. Your challenge: spot anything in the answer that amounts to an explanation of the decision beyond "because we damn well said so, that's why".

In Brief

Merv Tweed spoke to his bill to prevent Canada Post from hiking rates on books delivered between rural libraries. And the idea received multi-party support - though it's worth asking how Tweed's initial can be reconciled with the Cons' constant demand that Crowns be run as revenue-maximizing businesses or sold off to be turned into just that.

Meanwhile, Malcolm Allen offered a statement on cuts to food inspections through both the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Canada Border Services Agency, then followed up in question period. Francoise Boivin served notice that the NDP won't hesitate to defend a woman's right to choice. Megan Leslie wondered about the minders being sent to accompany civil servants to a conference and report on their activities. Irene Mathyssen's question about how much money was being cut out of OAS was met with Diane Finley's response that her government's attacks on seniors' standard of living have nothing to do with deficit reduction. Carolyn Bennett slammed Leona Aglukkaq for singling out aboriginal health for massive cuts. And Caron asked adjournment questions about the Cons' lack of a realistic plan to foster research and development in Canada, while Jack Harris wondered what exactly the Cons plan to do with the influx of prisoners created by their dumb-on-crime strategy (especially as they indicated they planned to close some facilities).

Parliament in Review - March 30, 2012

Friday, March 30 was the first day of Peter Julian's budget filibuster. But while it accomplished its goal of avoiding several hours worth of Con talking points, was there much to take from Julian's own comments?

The Big Issue

Well, let's highlight a few of his more noteworthy observations. First, on the Cons' own plan to increase unemployment in Canada:

In this extensive budget of 500 pages, there is a very key page that actually points to the government's admission that as a result of this budget, unemployment is actually going to go up. It is quite astounding that the government would put jobs on the front page of a budget that it knows is actually going to promote unemployment. The unemployment rate from 2011 will go up in 2012.

 

We know about the 19,000 jobs that it is cutting. I mentioned earlier one of the Canadian citizens who wrote to us expressing her concern about how seriously these public services are going to deteriorate. Also, for each job that we lose in the public service we lose another one in the private sector as well. Therefore, we are actually talking about nearly 40,000 jobs that would be lost in a very short time frame over the next little while.

 

How a government that is actively pushing a higher unemployment rate and actively throwing thousands and thousands of public sector and private sector workers out of work could possibly pretend that this is somehow a jobs budget is beyond me.

Second, on the Cons' broken promises which kept them in power with the promise of stability that's been replaced by gratuitous cuts to Canada's social programs:

The reality is this, and I want to make this clear. If the government had campaigned on what it really intended to do, it would have said that it would be cutting health care transfers; that it was going to force people to work two more years, regardless of people's ability to do that at that late age; that it was going to cut services, food and transportation safety and environmental assessments; that it was going to cut Canadian institutions like the CBC; and that it was going to cut the Auditor General so that the auditor could not check up on the government to see if it were using its money effectively, because it does not like the Auditor General because he or she questions its questionable purchases like the F-35s that go from $9 billion to $40 billion. If the government had actually said all of those things, members are as aware as I am that since Canadian families deserve much better, it would be the NDP on that side of the House.

Third, on the continued deterioration of Canadian wages under the Cons and its effect on workers:

Wages are not keeping pace with inflation. Part-time workers saw their wages grow 1.4% over the past year. Full-time workers saw their wages grow almost at the rate of inflation. In both cases neither part-time nor full-time wages are keeping pace with the rate of inflation, but for part-time workers it is much lower. It is much worse and a much greater problem.

This is a fundamental issue which, as Canadians, we certainly have to wrestle with. When we see only 200,000 net new jobs since May 2008, when we see that the vast majority of those jobs are part-time, and when we see the wages for those part-time jobs are falling further and further behind at $16 an hour on average and far below the rate of inflation, we are setting up a permanent situation of insecurity for Canadian workers.

Fourth, on the respective fiscal records of the NDP and the Cons:

Members should know that the annual fiscal period returns published by the Ministry of Finance show which parties are best at balancing budgets. It is important to note that every year now for 20 years, as the fiscal period returns are presented, one party outshines the rest. Now, of course, the NDP governments that are part of those fiscal period returns are provincial governments. We have not yet governed at the federal level. We are fighting very hard to be governing as of October 20, 2015.

 

However, NDP provincial governments, compared with Conservative and Liberal provincial and federal governments, have had the best record at balancing budgets and paying down debt for every single one of those 20 years.

 

So, to the individual who asked who am I to question to the Conservatives and who is the NDP to question the Conservatives, it comes from having strong fiscal management experience on a personal level, always managing money and paying down debt without cutting services, because that is how Canadian families do it.

And finally, a summary of the effect of the Cons' economic policies on mere working Canadians:

(W)ith the policies it has put in place, with the cuts to services and benefits, such the OAS and health care support, as well as producing lower paying jobs and part-time jobs and getting rid of the value added full-time family sustaining jobs of before, which is the only way to put it because the government seems to be deliberately putting policies in place to cripple our manufacturing sector, that is what has led to crippling levels of debt in this country under the watch of the government.

What we are seeing increasingly is a country where a small number of Canadians are benefiting from the government's policies while the vast majority of middle class and poor families are struggling under record debt loads, trying to cobble together two or three part-time jobs just to keep a roof over their head and struggling to keep their head above water.

Meanwhile, Scott Simms spent some of Julian's time guessing optimistically as to how Canada's economy has performed recently under the Cons. And John Baird was more interested in counting Lib MPs than any mere talk of the budget, the economy or jobs.

In Brief

Julian also opened question period with a series of budget-related questions, noting that "jobs" appears only in the title of the Cons' omnibus bill and inequality is nowhere to be found, while Robert Chisholm challenged Stephen Harper on some of the immediate negative reaction to the budget and Dan Harris pointed out that just two months earlier Harper had promised not to cut programs for seniors. John McCallum mused about the lack of cuts to the PMO, ministers' office and government advertising budgets while actual programs are being slashed in the name of austerity. And Jean Rousseau slammed the Cons' choice to cut food safety funding, while Sana Hassainia lamented that cuts to foreign aid will punish the poorest people in the world for the Cons' bad choices.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Alex Himelfarb nicely summarizes the price of austerity:

Let me be clear that I share in the broad consensus that we must be fiscally prudent. But let’s pause on what fiscal prudence really means: It means spending wisely, reducing waste, collecting sufficient taxes to pay for the public goods and services we want, and keeping debt coming down, at least during reasonably good times.
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Today’s austerity, however, is not primarily about fiscal prudence. If it were it wouldn’t be proceeding in tandem with large, unaffordable and unnecessary tax cuts for the most affluent among us. These tax cuts make deeper program cuts inevitable.

The persistent emphasis on low taxes and cuts to services and public goods looks more like ideology masquerading as fiscal common sense. In this light, austerity seems rather to be about cutting back the state and rolling out the free market agenda. Less public, more private; less collective, more individual. It is, in other words, the fulfillment of the neoliberal counter-revolution rather than an economic plan for the future.
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I, for one, would propose that inequality, not austerity, be the defining issue for us now. Income inequality is growing fast in Canada and even the traditional deniers are coming on board. The gap is simply too big, the risks too high to ignore. Indeed, extreme inequality will continue to grow in an agenda dominated by austerity and tax cuts, an agenda that reduces our capacity for mutual aid and for collective solutions to our major challenges – our low productivity, climate change and environmental deterioration, and declining political participation.

Of course we ought to be fiscally prudent and that means asking of each cut and each expenditure, including every tax cut: will this help reduce inequality or will it make things worse?

Let’s make inequality in all of its manifestations – child poverty, the reemergence of elderly poverty, the squeeze on working Canadians and students, and the excessive incomes at the top – a national priority.

- Paul Waldie documents the results of the Cons' insistence on demolishing the single-desk Wheat Board with no consideration of the resulting consequences. And predictably, the outcome looks to be plenty of damage and confusion rather than any of the supposed benefits the Cons have been claiming.

- Meanwhile, the Cons are also working on making Canada's food supply less safe. And don't take my word for it: here's what their own spinners said in adding the jobs the Cons are now cutting:

The new investments being announced today will improve the Government's ability to prevent, detect and respond to future foodborne illness outbreaks. Among other improvements, the Government will:
-hire 166 new food safety staff with 70 focusing on ready-to-eat-meat facilities...

So if the hirings were an improvement to the "ability to prevent, detect and respond to future foodborne illness outbreaks", then surely the firings have to be the opposite. Right?

- Frances Woolley posts about the effect of moral hazards in allocating health care resources. But while the principle is worth discussing, I have to seriously question how much of a problem is demonstrated when the sole example of actual gratuitous consumption of health care comes from Homer Simpson.

- Finally, Linda McQuaig criticizes the Cons' preference for foreign capital over Canadian workers:

Ironically, the Harper government has complained forcefully about “foreign” interference from outside environmentalists protesting a proposed pipeline across the Rockies. But when it comes to foreign companies stripping Canadian workers of half their wages and then moving operations out of the country, the government hasn’t a negative word to say.

Harper is of course staunchly pro-capitalist, and has aggressively lowered corporate tax rates, while refusing to link lower taxes to investment or job creation.

But his anti-union stance, evident in disputes at Air Canada and the post office last summer, has been particularly provocative. He seems determined to turn Canada into an anti-union paradise — prompting the Ontario Federation of Labour to call for a mass rally at the Caterpillar plant in London this Saturday.

As the PM gears up for his coming battle against federal public sector unions, he will no doubt draw inspiration from Mitt Romney’s stirring words: “I like to be able to fire people who provide services.”

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Erin catches a typically-partisan response from the Cons to the prospect that a new U.S. stimulus package might contain Buy American provisions once again:

What strikes me is that corporate Canada and Conservatives are upset about being excluded from some potential procurement contracts if Obama’s jobs plan is enacted with Buy American provisions. But they seem unconcerned about losing all of those potential contracts if Republicans block the jobs plan.

- Dan Gardner points out how the Cons are determined to turn what were supposed to be extraordinary and temporary restrictions on Canadians' civil rights into a normalized part of their security state:

(E)xtraordinary powers created in an extraordinary time will be restored long after the extraordinary time has passed - even though the powers were irrelevant and unnecessary when they were available and irrelevant and unnecessary when not. And there will be no mechanism to ensure they do not outlive the concern that created them, are not abused, and do not become a metastasizing cancer.

And this will be done by a prime minister who claims to so cherish civil liberty that he considered the long-form form census a violation of freedom so outrageous it had to be stamped out no matter what the cost to social science and sound policy.

- Jim Flaherty exhorts Canadian businesses to invest more in research. Because we know how seriously the business community takes Jim Flaherty's public appeals.

- And, for that matter, how seriously the corporate sector takes Canada's laws and standards. Just ask your friendly neighbourhood food importer.

- Finally, after a day of reports that he planned to endorse Brian Topp, Romeo Saganash has instead announced his candidacy in the NDP's leadership race.

Setting the table

There's been no lack of good commentary on the Cons' plan to eliminate the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's role in inspecting meat (among other areas). But let's note that while it's only meat inspection and other specific areas which would stand to be cut now, the current set of changes would only figure to be a precursor to a wholesale demolition of the CFIA in the future.

Here's what the Cons' current plan looks like:

The Globe and Mail obtained a copy of the document. It consists of a letter from Treasury Board Secretary Wayne Wouters to CFIA president Carole Swan, followed by a table of proposed spending cuts. The agency is asked to cut 5 per cent of its budget as part of a government-wide "strategic review." However, unlike many other departments required to undergo the same process, the agency is promised in the document that the government will return the savings to it for new spending priorities.

Among the 13 areas proposed for cuts is meat inspection: "Shift from full-time CFIA meat inspection presence to an oversight role, allowing industry to implement food safety control programs and to manage key risks," the document states.

The Cons' spin will presumably be that for now, their plan is merely to shift some of the inspection burden from the CFIA to the private sector, with the CFIA ultimately able to do more by shifting current funding to new, unspecified priorities.

Here's one of the problems with that, though: it's hard to see how the Cons could meaningfully evaluate whether the shift would be cost-efficient when they don't yet have a clue what the money would be spent on. And the fact that the Cons don't seem to care where the money is redirected to offers a hint at what may be coming in the long run if they get their way.

After all, the Cons' decision to attack 5% of department spending under their current review process is almost certainly a product of their having just come to power in a minority government: in the longer term, their anti-government bent will demand more and bigger cuts. And there could surely be few juicier targets for demolition down the road than a Food Inspection Agency which doesn't actually inspect food.

Alternatively, the Cons may see the CFIA as a source of patronage goodies, contracting out regulatory tasks to the corporate sector with no internal ability to assess whether anything's being done (and all in the name of claiming to make government more efficient). And sadly, that may be the better of the two plausible long-term outcomes, since it might leave enough structure for a future government to at least rebuilt a competent inspection agency relatively quickly.

What remains to be seen is whether the public will stand for either of those kinds of change, particularly in the face of a vivid example of why the private sector can't be counted on to regulate itself. But it's worth keeping in mind that as harmful as the Cons' current cuts look to be, they're likely just the beginning when it comes to hollowing out the federal regulatory structure.