Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Andrew Nikiforuk discusses the 10 inescapable laws of pandemics - and the grim future they portend in light of our pitiful response to the social challenges posed by COVID-19. And Jessica Wildfire writes that the effects of repeated COVID infections on people's immune systems will reverberate for decades to come. 

- Lucas Henneman writes about new research showing that pollution from coal-fired electricity produces even more health problems than previously identified.  

- Lynn Boylan and Alma Dufour point out that Amazon is a massive cause of carbon emissions and avoidable waste - even as it tries to greenwash its operations through selective reporting and PR. Oliver Griffin reports on the targeted killings of environmentalists in Colombia and elsewhere by corporate forces determined to destroy anything and anybody who might call attention to their destruction. And Radio Ecoshock discusses the fossil fuel sector's plan to wreck the Earth's atmosphere, while Leyland Cecco reports on Canada's worsening contribution to carbon pollution as oil companies ramp up production in the midst of a climate crisis. 

- Michelle Cyca writes about the reality that real estate windfalls represent a massive source of unearned wealth - as well as an opportunity for cynical politicians to divide the working class based on homeownership. And Max Fawcett highlights how the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is entirely a political tool of right-wing parties, rather than a remotely principled critic of unconscionable waste when it emanates from the likes of Danielle Smith. 

- Paul Wells discusses how Pierre Poilievre has paired Stephen Harper's contempt for accountability with the antisocial buffoonery of the Joker, while Deveryn Ross calls out Poilievre's combination of serial lying and determination to foment fear and hate. And the Economist writes about the appalling rise of Geert Wilders' party - including through the normalization of bigotry by "mainstream" parties. 

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Paul Kuodi et al. find some hopeful evidence that vaccinations may help to prevent long COVID symptoms as well as more acute ones. Nili Kaplan-Myrth rightly questions why safety is being treated as a privilege to be withheld from vulnerable people. And Yasmeen Serhan discusses how responsible leaders are challenging the anti-social actions of those who have chosen to remain unvaccinated, while Adam Hunter reports that Scott Moe's nonexistent public health response and insistence on coddling anti-vaxxers are being rejected by a growing majority of Saskatchewan's public. 

- Leyla Asadi, Raina MacIntyre, Lisa Brosseau and Trish Greenhaigh highlight the need to upgrade to respirators which effectively control the inhalation of viral particles. Josh Mark reports on John-Mark Opondo's call for people to self-isolate even with mild cold-like symptoms in order to reduce COVID spread. And Megan Ogilvie reports on Ontario's shortage of therapeutic drugs to treat COVID patients.  

- Taylor Lambert discusses the toxic mix of intimidation, disinformation and heavy-handed legislation that defines Jason Kenney's reign in Alberta - though one would be hard-pressed to find much basis for distinction from the governing philosophies of Scott Moe or Doug Ford. 

- Scott Schmidt calls out the familiar con being used once again by corporate spokesflacks to try to attack universality in health care. And Luke Lebrun reports on a new study documenting the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's deliberate choice to push racist messages and themes.  

- Matthew McClearn discusses how far Canada has to go in eliminating fossil fuel subsidies from a starting point of pouring more money into them than any other G20 country. And Amory Lovins and M.V. Ramana point out how a fully renewable power grid is entirely feasible with current technology - as long as we don't let climate deniers and corporate polluters set our energy agenda. 

- Finally, Joel Dryden reports on the effect of gig platforms on Alberta's labour market - including the reality that corporations are using apps as an excuse to avoid basic protections for workers who are actually their employees. 

On lunatic fringes

Let's take a moment to acknowledge a rare opportunity to agree with the messaging of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation: any plan to hand out more giveaways to the corporate sector can only be reflect policy based on the definition of insanity.

Friday Evening Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Martin Regg Cohn writes that reducing access to pharmacare is just the first item on Doug Ford's extensive hidden agenda. And Steve Morgan examines the effects of Ford's cuts to public prescription drug coverage and finds that the end result of relying more on the private sector will be added costs borne disproportionately by the middle class.

- David Climenhaga points out that the funding for Canada's anti-tax propaganda mills includes the donation-laundering mechanisms used by American billionaires.

- Corey Shefman recognizes that the disproportionate concentration of Indigenous people in jails should be considered a national crisis. And Max Fineday notes that the gap is only getting worse for the new generation of Indigenous youth.

- Lana Borenstein highlights why Scott Moe's crusade against greenhouse gas emission pricing is likely doomed to fail.  And Marc Lee offers a reminder of the massive public subsidies behind British Columbia's liquid natural gas industry (among other fossil fuel development).

- Finally, Claire Cain Miller explores the factors behind the choice of younger Americans to have fewer children, and finds that a lack of affordable child care is at the top of the list.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Peter Rossman explains why the CETA falls far short of the mark in accounting for anybody's interests other than those of big business. And Dani Rodrik discusses the dangers of laissez-faire fundamentalism, particularly to the extent it threatens to undermine the foundation of a functional society:

(T)he lesson from the 1980s is that some reversal from hyper-globalization need not be a bad thing, as long as it serves to maintain a reasonably open world economy. As I have frequently argued, we need a better balance between national autonomy and globalization. In particular, we need to place the requirements of liberal democracy ahead of those of international trade and investment. Such a rebalancing would leave plenty of room for an open global economy; in fact, it would enable and sustain it.
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The key challenge facing mainstream political parties in the advanced economies today is to devise such a vision, along with a narrative that steals the populists’ thunder. These center-right and center-left parties should not be asked to save hyper-globalization at all costs. Trade advocates should be understanding if they adopt unorthodox policies to buy political support.

We should look instead at whether their policies are driven by a desire for equity and social inclusion, or by nativist and racist impulses; whether they want to enhance or weaken the rule of law and democratic deliberation; and whether they are trying to save the open world economy – albeit with different ground rules – rather than undermine it.

- Michael Enright writes about the obvious failure of Canada's corporate sector to convert billions in giveaways into economic investment. And that track record in relying on the corporate sector offers all the more reason to be wary of Justin Trudeau's plan to sell off what's left of our common wealth.
 
- Casey Quinlan examines how corporations are using underfunded public school systems in the U.S., while Daniel Boffey notes that private schools in the UK are creating new barriers for poor children.

- Sarah Smarsh theorizes that the rise of Donald Trump can be explained in part by the failure of the media and other cultural institutions to provide a voice for many working people. And David Beers warns us that we shouldn't trust the mainstream right to recognize the risk of a Trump-style demagogue.

- Finally, Dougald Lamont reminds us why we shouldn't pretend the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation stands for anything other than unaccountable corporate influence. And DeSmog Canada examines the grossly insufficient state of political finance regulations in British Columbia.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

 - Joseph Heath responds to Andrew Coyne in noting that an while there's plenty of room (and need) to better tax high personal incomes, there's also a need to complement that with meaningful corporate taxes:

(A) crucial part of the Boadway and Tremblay proposal is to increase the personal income tax rate on dividends and capital gains. That’s where the “soak the rich” part comes in. The argument — and it is an interesting argument — is that dividends are currently taxed at a lower rate in the hands of individuals, in order to avoid “double taxation,” once in the hands of the firm, again in the hands of the beneficiary. However, if the corporation is able to shift the tax on profits to other constituencies, then the tax paid by corporations isn’t really being paid by shareholders. So by taxing corporations less, and taxing individual investment income more, the Boadway/Tremblay policy makes it more difficult for the rich to shift their tax liabilities onto others.

I can see the argument for this. However, there always the danger of equivocation when talking about “the rich” or “inequality.” There is broad-based economic inequality, of the sort captured by a GINI coefficient, and then there is the specific problem of the very rich (whom we can refer to, for simplicity, as the 1%). While it is true that most Canadians are already able to exempt the entirety of their investment income from taxation (through home ownership, RRSPs, TFSAs), this is manifestly not the case with the 1%, who continue to use corporate ownership as a vehicle for tax avoidance.

Shortly after writing about this, I came across the following working paper, by Michael Wolfson, Mike Veall and Neil Brooks, “Piercing the Veil – Private Corporations and the Income of the Affluent.” It seems to me that before we talk about “soaking the rich,” or about the distributive effect of corporate taxes generally, the issues raised by this paper need to be addressed.

- And Eric Reguly discusses the role of executive pay and stock options in exacerbating inequality:

The rich and the super-rich are getting richer. We all know that. The question is why? Every economist on the planet has a theory. Some blame waning productivity gains or workers' losing their war with the robots. Others argue that the "offshoring" of jobs has suppressed wages, still others that lower taxes on capital gains have benefited the investing class. Thomas Piketty, the suddenly famous French economist whose bestselling book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has fired up the wealth-gap debate around the world, argues that the inequalities in income distribution have risen sharply because of enormous corporate pay packages. He's generally right (even though the Financial Times found fault with some of his historical data) but what he does not do in any detail is break down those packages into their component parts. He and his research colleague, Emmanuel Saez, use U.S. Internal Revenue Service data, which lumps all pay together as "salaries." But salaries make up only a tiny portion of the haul for top executives. The biggest single component is stock-based pay: the realized gains from exercising stock options and the vesting of stock awards.

How did stock-based pay turn into a monster? The simple answer is that no one--not shareholders, not employees, not regulators--has been able to stop the executives from rigging the game in their favour. What seemingly started out as a reasonable idea--handing executives some shares so they would have an extra incentive to boost shareholder value--has tipped so far into the executives' favour that the richest bosses are gaining oligarch status. Through the repricing of options and ever-rising stock awards, many executives have been able to ratchet up their pay even when their company's share price falls.
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The executive pay system is so well organized, and so sublimely immoral, that it has taken on a racketeering flavour, all in the slick guise of aligning the interests of management and shareholders. Executives pad their boards with yes-men and -women who wouldn't dare suggest their boss is overpaid; compensation consultants are happy to recommend that the CEO's pay should fall in the peer group's top quartile; and the regulatory climate has been benign, thanks to the lobbying power of the companies.

- Alison highlights yet another set of foreign-funded corporate mercenaries complaining that we shouldn't listen to environmental and social groups because they might be foreign-funded. And Kayle Hatt calls out the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's attacks on humanities research and other evidence-based analysis.

- James Moore's latest push toward a national corporate-privilege agreement has apparently given up on identifying more than a single trade barrier in favour of labelling the fictitious as "extraordinarily stupid" in the hope that will make up for the lack of actual examples.

- Finally, Seumas Milne writes that a reversal of privatization is one of the essential building blocks of long-term growth and stability:

Privatisation isn't working. We were promised a shareholding democracy, competition, falling costs and better services. A generation on, most people's experience has been the opposite. From energy to water, rail to public services, the reality has been private monopolies, perverse subsidies, exorbitant prices, woeful under-investment, profiteering and corporate capture.

Private cartels run rings round the regulators. Consumers and politicians are bamboozled by commercial secrecy and contractual complexity. Workforces have their pay and conditions slashed. Control of essential services has not only passed to corporate giants based overseas, but those companies are themselves often state-owned – they're just owned by another state.

Report after report has shown privatised services to be more expensive and inefficient than their publicly owned counterparts. It's scarcely surprising that a large majority of the public, who have never supported a single privatisation, neither trust the privateers nor want them running their services.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Anne Manne discusses how extreme wealth leads to narcissism and a lack of empathy, while pointing out that to merely recognizing the problem goes some way toward solving it:

Outside the lab, Piff found that the rich donated a smaller percentage of their wealth than poorer people. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans, those with earnings in the top 20%, contributed 1.3% of their income to charity, while those in the bottom 20% donated 3.2% of their income. The trend to meanness was worst in plush suburbs where everyone had a high income, and never laid eyes on a poor person. Insulation from people in need, Piff concluded, dampened charitable impulses.

Poorer people were also more likely to give to those charities servicing the genuinely needy. The rich gave to high-status institutions such as already well-endowed art galleries, museums and universities, while Feeding America, which deals with the nation’s poorest, got nothing.

These qualities are not set in concrete. "We’re not suggesting rich people are bad at all," said Piff, "but rather that psychological effects of wealth have these natural effects.’ It is, he said, a function of greater prosperity, rather than innate qualities of rich people.

Piff found that when shown images of children in poverty, the wealthy could behave more empathetically. Like the long campaign for the NDIS, which sensitised people to the plight of those with a disability or those caring for them, people can respond to good political leadership which primes them for generosity rather than meanness.

- And Darlena Kunha writes about the experience of poverty and income insecurity from the standpoint of a family which once believed itself to be beyond that risk:

The reality of poverty can spring quickly while the psychological effects take longer to surface. When you lose a job, your first thought isn’t, “Oh my God, I’m poor. I’d better sell all my nice stuff!” It’s “I need another job. Now.” When you’re scrambling, you hang on to the things that work, that bring you some comfort. That Mercedes was the one reliable, trustworthy thing in our lives.
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The most embarrassing part was how I felt about myself. How I had so internalized the message of what poor people should or should not have that I felt ashamed to be there, with that car, getting food. As if I were not allowed the food because of the car. As if I were a bad person.

We’ve now sold that house. My husband found a job that pays well, and we have enough left over for me to go to grad school. President Obama’s programs — from the extended unemployment benefits to the tax-free allowance for short-selling a home we couldn’t afford — allowed us to crawl our way out of the hole.

But what I learned there will never leave me. We didn’t deserve to be poor, any more than we deserved to be rich. Poverty is a circumstance, not a value judgment. I still have to remind myself sometimes that I was my harshest critic. That the judgment of the disadvantaged comes not just from conservative politicians and Internet trolls. It came from me, even as I was living it.

- Kaylie Tiessen argues that Ontario shouldn't let a change in its credit outlook be used as a means to further trash the province's economy through austerity and tax slashing. And Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew's report on the treatment of Canadian banks offers a compelling indication as to why we shouldn't take the ratings agencies seriously at all - as the same firms which consistently gave perfect ratings to what proved to be derivative time bombs are now downgrading the outlook for Canadian banks merely because they might have to stand on their own two feet.

- Meanwhile, Paul Krugman points out that inflation hysteria serves primarily to ensure that the wealthy benefit at the expense of everybody else.

- Finally, PressProgress questions just how much further the Canadian Taxpayers Federation wants to go in eliminating employment insurance - though I'd suspect that zero social safety net for anybody would be just fine for one of the most extreme anti-social organizations in the country. And Andrew Stevens studies the abuse of temporary foreign workers (and resulting decline in service-sector wages) in Saskatchewan.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- David Macdonald comments on Statistics Canada's latest wealth survey, with particular emphasis on the continued gap between a privileged few and the vast majority of Canadians:

(T)he top 20% of families have twice as much wealth as the bottom 80% of families combined. Even if the bottom 80% of families doubled their net worth tomorrow, they still wouldn’t have as much as the top 20% presently do.

Inequality is not only about the wealthy, it’s also about the middle class. Looking at the middle 20% of families, while they represent 20% of the population, they only receive 15% of all income. However, the middle 20% of families only have 8% of all net wealth and this has remained fairly constant since 1999.

All the above examines the share of net worth, not its dollar value change over time. In fact, net wealth has increased for all quintiles since 1999.  For instance, middle class net wealth has increased by almost 80% since 1999 in inflation-adjusted terms. The upper class has increased their net worth by a little over 80% since 1999. That seems fairly equal until you realize that the wealth they were starting from in 1999 was already incredibly unequal: 80% of $760,000 is a lot more than 80% of $137,000 (the 1999 median wealth values for the upper and middle classes, respectively).

In fact, of every new dollar of Canadian wealth created since 1999, $0.66 went to the richest, $0.23 went to the upper middle class and the bottom 60% fought it out for the remaining dime.

The reasons why wealth increased for the middle class in contrast to the rich are also quite different. If we look at the distribution of debt instead of net wealth, we find that the middle class actually holds the most debt of any quintile, certainly more than the poor, but interestingly also more than the rich.  The middle class has managed to increase their net wealth in large part due to increased leveraging, not asset price appreciation. The richest families have less debt and substantially more assets. Their increased wealth is largely due to asset accumulation, not leveraging.

- Meanwhile, Phillip Inman reports on a new IMF study which shows that redistribution of wealth correlates to slightly more economic development - meaning that policies aimed at giveaways to the wealthy in the name of growth tend to fail even on their own terms (while succeeding only at exacerbating inequality).

- Ian Welsh explains how our political and financial systems are set up to funnel free money to the banking sector - while pointing out the inevitable result that an already-coddled industry is accumulating ever more wealth and power.

- Karl Nerenberg offers seven suggestions to make the Cons' elections legislation less damaging. But it's particularly worth noting that exactly one point on the list reflects a change from the status quo - meaning that the main effects of the Fair Elections Act are to make matters worse than they'd be if nothing were to be passed at all.

- And Rick Mercer rants about the Cons' plans to change Canada's electoral rules solely for their own benefit:


- Finally, David Climenhaga looks at the dwindling membership of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation - showing that even astroturf has an expiry date.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- It shouldn't be a surprise that more people are pointing out the importance of effective regulation in preventing disasters like the Lac-Mégantic explosion. But it may be somewhat unexpected to see that message from a CEO in the industry which stands to be regulated:

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. CEO Hunter Harrison warned that a catastrophic derailment like the one that levelled the centre of Lac-Mégantic could happen again if regulators don’t impose tougher safety rules for transporting hazardous materials.

Mr. Harrison, an outspoken industry executive who has been running railroads in Canada and the United States for more than five decades, said he is frustrated with the “turmoil” and “bureaucracy” of multiple cross-border investigations, legal volleys and political finger-pointing after a fiery crash of crude tankers that killed 47 residents in the small Quebec town.

The chief executive officer said the large teams and agencies investigating the accident are taking so long that regulators are not adopting precautions needed to avoid further accidents with hazardous crude, gases and chemicals. “God forbid that something else should happen again while they investigate,” he said in in an interview with The Globe and Mail on Tuesday.

The deadly accident has given new urgency to a long-standing debate about the need for safer tanker cars, a reform that Mr. Hunter said has been stonewalled for decades by petroleum and chemical producers and other commodity shippers who own the vast majority of North America’s tankers. 

“The root of all this is the dollar sign,” he said. “We can fix all this stuff, it is fixable.”

- Meanwhile, Mike Hudema points out that Alberta has seen another oil-spill-filled summer. And Damian Carrington notes that the only forms of energy with any realistic chance of reaching the "too cheap to meter" standard promised of non-renewable power developments are in fact...wind and solar, thanks to their zero-cost inputs.

- Bill Tieleman writes about the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's selective interest in transparency - which of course doesn't apply to its own shadowy funding and administration.

- Bradley Brooks and Frank Bajak report that Brazil may be leading the way in developing alternatives to the Internet in its current form as a response to the revelation that the current infrastructure has been set up to facilitate surveillance by the U.S. and other governments.

- And finally, Kapil Khatter debunks a few myths about the (negligible) difference between brand-name and generic drugs.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Yves Engler highlights the two-tiered justice system exacerbated by the Harper Cons, as anybody with a sufficient level of privilege avoids any punishment for wrongdoing:

One law for the rulers and another for the rest of us -- wasn't that supposed to have ended with feudalism?

If a poor person is caught taking a computer or some other piece of property from a federal building you can bet police will be called and the thief will go before a judge to decide if she/he goes to jail. Yet when a Senator who is paid at least $132,000 per year in salary illegally claims many times the value of a stolen computer as a "living expense" they simply have to return the money.

Of course so-called white-collar crime is generally treated less severely than other forms of illegal activity, which is another way of saying there are different rules for 'important people' than the rest of us. If you have high enough status you can usually buy your way out of crime.

For example when Griffiths Energy recently pled guilty to bribing officials in Chad to gain access to lucrative energy properties, the Calgary-based corporation agreed to pay $10.35 million under the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act. But no individual at the privately held company will be pursued criminally. Apparently, you can pay a multi-million dollar bribe to gain access to a poor country's natural resources and then simply pay some more money when you are caught.

- But Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report on what may turn into be a rare exception, as Elections Commissioner Yves Cote has recommended that charges be laid against the Conservatives perpetrators of the Robocon election fraud.

- David Climenhaga nominates the Canadian Taxpayers Federation for a "Turfy" award in falsely claiming to be a grassroots organization:

(U)ntil recently I had no idea just how pure and refined an example of Astroturfing is the clever-boots organization that gave Canadian political discourse the “Teddy Award” – allegedly to highlight government waste.

But the fact is – and we have CTF Operations Vice-President Shannon Morrison to thank for this revelation – the organization has only five members. [Ed. note: later updated to six without explanation in another sign of true transparency.]

Let me say that again, just to make sure there is no misunderstanding: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has only five members!

Now, you may have had the impression that the CTF – which is almost invariably referred to by the mainstream media as a “taxpayer watchdog” – has something like 70,000 members, every one a concerned Canadian frowning grimly at the idea of governments wasting their hard-earned tax dollars on things like pensions for public employees, the long-gun registry and the long-form census.

Mind you, if these taxpayers also happen to be concerned about wasteful plans to spend bazillions on easy-to-shoot-down F-35 stealth bombers or mere billions for unneeded and counterproductive prison cells, of course, they’ll need to look elsewhere for support. Notwithstanding its claim to be “non-partisan,” the CTF is reliably pro-Conservative and has nothing bad to say about those particular Tory boondoggles.
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MORRISON: “Tony, I apologize for my delay in answering. In law, the CTF is a federal not for profit corporation. Technically the only ‘members’ are the board directors themselves. … The bylaws you quote are extremely out of date but even with that we have never had a membership other than the board directors. We have worked very hard to use consistent language to reflect this over the last several years. The financial summary found on our website is what we have for our donors and supporters.” (Emphasis added.)

So there you have it. The entire membership of the CTF is made up of five people. As it was, it is now and ever shall be. And the finances of their organization are none of your business – even if you thought you were a member.

- Alice Funke and Andrew Coyne both see the Libs' leadership campaign going off the rails.

- Finally, Dan Tan discusses the opportunities available for the NDP in building cross-border connections - as well as Tom Mulcair's strong start on that front.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- James Laxer points out how overreach by the wealthy and powerful inevitably leads to backlash - and how we're just scratching the surface of what's to come:

(R)ight-wing revolts can get out of hand and can create difficulties, even grave difficulties, for the rich and the powerful and the states that do their bidding.

The most overwhelmingly important such case was the French Revolution. The Revolution was preceded by a revolt of the rich and the powerful, known as the Revolte Nobiliare. That revolt, which sought to protect the privileges of the nobility, gravely weakened the French state. It opened the way for a transformative social revolution, a revolution that swept away the actors and institutions that had launched the Revolte Nobiliare, overturning the monarchy and the entrenched rights of the nobility in the process. What is significant for today is that a political upheaval begun by the forces of social and political reaction can end up generating an upheaval that is utterly different from the one the reactionaries had in mind.
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The harsh policies being pursued in North America, the U.K., and the Euro Zone countries are pressing the ill effects of austerity down on the large majority of the population, while the wealthiest and most economically powerful see their incomes soar and are assured that the state will bail them out when necessary. This is their state and they know it. The young in the advanced countries are having their futures stolen from them. Opportunities shrink and the price of post-secondary education soars ever higher. Upward mobility, always the safety valve in capitalist society, is being choked off.
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Those at the helm on both sides of the Atlantic are playing dangerous games. It is far from certain that they will be able to control the forces they are unleashing. Some may believe that we live in the eternal present of neo-liberalism. History shows us that that is not a good bet.

- Meanwhile, Linda McQuaig highlights how Jack Layton's eulogy has come to be a rallying cry for Canadian progressives. And Michael Valpy notes that Layton's death has caused a broad swath of Canadians to recognize and affirm that they share his values:

It’s been suggested the deep emotional response was to the suddenness of his passing, or to the cruel irony of death striking him down while the applause still rang out for his grand electoral success. If that’s all that was involved, it would be a shallow saga, soon forgotten. Something struck a chord across the country – not all of it mind – but in the big cities where progressive voices have long felt comfortable. It struck, that chord, as a public manifestation of a collective worry about what Mr. Layton’s loss — Jack’s loss — meant for so many Canadians’ values, the not-quite-taken-shape articulation of people who feel threatened, who see themselves governed by politicians holding alien values, beliefs and behaviour.

It’s a chord of frustration about a country increasingly seen as the domain of conservative politics, conservative values and a dominant narrative that decries a mythic ‘downtown elite’ (and even the public cost of marking their death).

It’s a chord of protest against a domain that doesn’t want libraries, social housing or a long form census but only lower taxes and more fighter jets. A chord of resentment sounded by people who have felt themselves unable to self-identify as progressives in the way Jack Layton consistently did, with an unrepentant pride in his beliefs.

For people holding the same convictions, his death has made them want to shout out loud what they shared with him. We think it’s maybe as simple as that.

- And for all the talk surrounding his possible leadership bid, it's hard to disagree with Brian Topp as to the NDP's role:

"No one will replace Jack. But we can continue his work," said Topp.

"That will be about carrying forward his approach to politics. It will be about continuing to focus on getting things done that matter to people. It will be about compellingly representing the people of Quebec.

"And it will be about persuading Canadians in other provinces that the next federal government can be a new, better, progressive and truly national one."

- Finally, Malcolm rightly questions why Saskatchewan's policy is being set by Manitoban reactionaries. But it shouldn't be news that the Wall government long since gave up any pretense that its decisions would be based on grassroots concerns in Saskatchewan.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- Chris Selley nicely summarizes Jack Layton's celebration of life today:

I can just hear people kvetching: Was this a funeral for a great man, or a rally for his party?

But again, this is surely to miss the point. Mr. Lewis said, son Mike and daughter Sarah confirmed in a lovely joint eulogy, and no one has plausibly disproved the concept, that for Jack Layton, “the private man and the public man were synonymous.” And that man was a New Democrat — for 40 years. He took his colleagues to unimagined new heights, rightly feared a tumble, and attempted to rally their spirits with his final words. We rightly lament the dearth of authenticity and sincerity in our politicians. Here was one displaying both in the most trying circumstances imaginable, and some of us turned up our noses.
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Frankly, it’s easy to imagine many of the complainers mourning Layton’s conservative equivalent just as passionately as Canadians mourned Layton — if only it was possible to imagine a conservative equivalent of Jack Layton. I only met Layton once, in his final and finest office on Parliament Hill. Judging by the stories and anecdotes I saw this week, in print and in voice and in chalk, two million or so Canadians knew him better, and believed he was genuinely interested in their lives — “a man of the people who made everyone feel special,” as Shawn Atleo said. Love him or hate him, this is pretty much what politics is supposed to be.

- Meanwhile, Stephen Lewis' stirring eulogy is here.

- The Leader-Post editorial board slams the crowded jails resulting from the Cons' dumb on crime policies, while Chris Putnam criticizes a similarly short-sighted publicity stunt on a smaller scale in the form of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's attacks on video games in youth facilities.

- Finally, Errol Black and Jim Silver serve up some fast facts as to who's pushing for perpetually-increasing inequality and why.

On dangerous repetition

Yesterday, I noted that the Libs might want to be a bit more careful in echoing the CTF's message about supposed tax increases. Now, Andrew Jackson offers a better reason: that the CTF's claims are flat-out wrong in a way that distorts the purpose of vital social programs:

(A)ctually..., there has been no increase in the CPP contribution rate for 2011. True, the earning ceiling has been raised in line with average earnings, but that is not a real tax increase on two counts. First, there is no inflation adjusted increase at all for anyone, least of all anyone earning below the earnings ceiling. Second, the increased contribution ceiling will be rewarded down the road with a higher benefit, so it is not really a tax at all let alone a tax increase.

As for EI, yes the premium rate is being hiked marginally, from 1.73% to 1.78% for employees. (The horror! The horror!) This is just one third of what would have been required to balance the EI account moving forward. And the rise in the EI Account deficit over 2009 and 2010 was almost entirely attributable to increased payouts of regular benefits as a result of the recession (to the tune of some $10 Billion over two years), not to maternity/parental/sickness and compassionate care benefits which were unchanged in 2010. There was a very modest increase in EI funded training, most of that going to income benefits for unemployed workers being retrained.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Scott Brison is partly right in dismissing the Con-based talk about a possible agreement with the NDP on the budget. But the story only seems to have gone anywhere because the Libs themselves have been so eager to parrot the Cons' spin that the NDP would support the Harper government notwithstanding that its position has been clear on the Cons' corporatist focus:

Mr. Mulcair said the NDP wants future corporate cuts to be more targeted to ensure companies are investing in jobs and productivity.

“If the budget includes the same type of blind, across-the-board corporate tax cut that the Conservatives have been doing in the past, it is highly unlikely that the NDP caucus would ever be able to support such a budget,” said Mr. Mulcair.

- John Ibbitson's year-end review of the Cons nicely highlights Stephen Harper's seven-dimensional ultrachess at work:

The morning of the vote, Lawrence Cannon arrived at the United Nations absolutely confident that Canada would win a temporary seat on the Security Council, according to someone who was close to the situation. His diplomats had assured him they had more than enough written and verbal commitments to win one of the two seats up for grabs.

When Canada came up short on the first round of voting, the Foreign Affairs Minister “was absolutely astounded,” according to one source. So certain were the Canadians of victory in the first round, they lacked a strategy to build momentum in the second round. The delegation sat there, dumbfounded, as votes drained away.

And once again, it's well worth wondering whether the Cons' hubris may well result in similarly surprising results at home.

- Yes, I understand the appeal of using anti-tax language against the Cons. But can we agree that a message that the CPP and EI should be seen as "common villains" might not be one that deserves repeating?

- And finally, Preston Manning offers up a short story about the Underpants Gnome Privatization Theory of Health Care. I'd suggest that he stick to his day job, but he's probably doing less damage as long as he's writing extremely short fiction.

Monday Afternoon Links

Content goes here.

- I don't entirely agree with Andrew Coyne on his observations about the Cons, at seems to me they've done plenty in pursuit of their easily-identified ideological position - even if it's normally been supported enough by the Libs not to set the two parties apart. But it's difficult to argue with his conclusion as to what happens when brokerage politics gets taken to its extreme:

The consequence of all this realpolitik, oddly, is more or less to make politics extinct in this country, or at least redundant. The forms are maintained, the rituals are observed, but without purpose or urgency, the kind that motivates activists and inspires voters. To be perfectly clear: absolutely nothing is at stake in Canadian politics. There is no clash of visions, no conflict of values, because neither party has any. Nothing is riding, therefore, on the outcome of any election. It simply does not matter who wins.

Well, it does, but not in any way that is relevant to the voter: that is, whatever policies a given party or leader might enact after the election, in response to whatever random events or pressure groups, they must remain an impenetrable mystery before the election, or indeed at any time until the moment they are enacted. The analogy here would be with the stock market: it obviously matters what stocks you own, but you’ve no way of knowing how they will perform in advance. You might as well pick them at random. Likewise, I defy anyone to predict what the Conservatives—or Liberals—would do on any given issue. Certainly nothing they say or do beforehand should be taken as evidence of anything. Therefore no one who is not actually paid to follow politics should pay it any serious attention. It is not worth your time, except as a diversion.

I admit I have been as reluctant to admit this as anyone. My whole career has been based on the proposition that somewhere, under all the insults and lying and general bad behaviour that makes up the bulk of political life, there was some genuine issue at stake: that if you could just strip away the politics, you would eventually get to the policy. It has taken me all these years to understand that, no, it’s just politics all the way down.

- Dennis Gruending weighs in on the Cons' unilateral Afghanistan extension:

Polling since 2007 has shown consistently that international public opinion is largely opposed to the war in Afghanistan. Even a majority of respondents in seven out of 12 NATO member countries want troops withdrawn as soon as possible. In Canada, an Angus Reid poll conducted in October 2010 indicates that 55% of Canadians oppose our involvement in the war, while only 35% support it, the lowest level of support recorded by the poll in question in the past two years. Among Canadians, 34% have “strong opposition” to involvement in the war, three times higher than the number in “strong support”, standing at only 11%. Our government does not see this popular opposition as something that should be heeded. It is perceived rather as a public relations problem that should be met by attempts to manipulate us.

- Anybody want to change the odds on how much federal infrastructure money will get spent before the Cons' March 2011 deadline?

- Finally, having managed to goad the opposition parties into restricting the use of ten-per-centers, the Cons and the Canadian Taxpayer Federation are now apparently looking to build similar outrage about the use of in-riding mailouts. But in case there was any doubt what the real goal is, the far more costly federal communications spending that's entirely controlled by the Harper government is once again being ignored.

The source of the vacuum

Apparently Rob Ford's mayoral victory has led to plenty of questions about broader populism in Canada, with both Alex Himelfarb and Robert Silver writing noteworthy posts on the subject. I'll deal later with the state of left-wing populism, but let's start with the answer as to why national movements haven't yet popped up on the right.

There, I'd think the answer is a fairly simple one. It's been well documented that one of Stephen Harper's main management strategies within the Cons has been to tear down any internal structures which could allow anybody else to build a power base which might challenge his leadership. And there has been little if any resistance from right-affiliated groups outside the party to Harper's actions either, as the likes of the Fraser Institute and Canadian Taxpayers Federation have been eager to take up the Cons' party line rather than risking any gap between their theoretical values and the party in power (e.g. by applauding the Cons for spending more money to get less results out of the census).

And I'd go a step further in hypothesizing that the country's leading supposedly-independent Con may actually be the best example yet of how Harper has managed to channel right-wing anger toward his party rather than toward outside movements.

While Maxime Bernier has nominally challenged the direction of the Cons' government at times, he's never done so in a way that Harper himself would figure to disagree with - meaning that he's served primarily as a useful ideological counterweight to the opposition parties in trying to frame the Cons' actions. And rather than seeming to assemble any movement behind himself, Bernier has instead made himself available to pitch the Cons' party line on request.

So the simple answer to why there's no popular movement on the right is that Harper has gone to great lengths to prevent one from developing, setting up a magnet for populist frustration within his own party (and in the person of an MP still under his control) rather than risking the formation of any outside groups. And that task has been facilitated by the fact that right-wing groups who might otherwise have figure to lead the charge have instead gone out of their way to avoid harming the interests of a small-c conservative government.

Far off target

Mia Rabson points out an utterly bizarre request from a group which is normally at least somewhat consistent in its public demands:

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is pressuring the Liberals and NDP to ensure anti-gun registry MPs get appointed to the committee that will consider a bill to kill the registry when Parliament resumes in March. CTF federal director Kevin Gaudet says if they don't, the bill will likely fail. He argues that as the House already voted in favour of the bill once, it would be anti-democratic of the Liberals and NDP not to give the bill its due.

"I think there is going to be a lot of pressure on both leaders," Gaudet said.

So what's wrong with the request? We can start with the fact that there's no particular reason for the CTF to be taking a particularly strong position on the gun registry in the first place. But let's leave that aside for now and look at the more fundamental problems with the statement.

Even assuming there was some reason for the CTF to take a position as to whether or not a gun registry bill should pass, it would seem to be a rather large leap from agreeing with an idea in principle, to effectively insisting that MPs not work on improving it. Which would be exactly the end result if the CTF's demands were applied generally: the fact that bills had passed second reading would be seen as reason to avoid doing anything to amend them in committee even if a majority of MPs in the committee and the House of Commons alike agree that amendments would result in an improvement.

In effect, in the interest of playing to the base on a single issue, a group which is supposed to be concerned with getting value for public money is asking that Parliament cease to do anything but conduct a single yea-or-nay vote on legislation as presented. Which would presumably result in far more waste than the CTF can possibly allege from the gun registry itself - and more importantly would facilitate the passage of bad legislation as the checks and balances in a multiple-reading system are negated in favour of a declaration that the second-reading vote is the only "democratic" one.

But it gets better yet. Gaudet doesn't just want to tear down Canada's Parliamentary system for the sake of pandering on a single issue, he's also obviously wrong in his assessment of what happens if the bill doesn't get approved by the committee:

Parliamentary rules prevent a committee from killing a bill entirely, but they can report back to Parliament that a bill should not be passed.

So it's nothing short of an outright falsehood to claim that a split committee would actually end the bill's progress: one way or another, it would find its way back to the House of Commons where all MPs would have their say on it. (That is, assuming the Cons don't engineer an election first so they can blame the opposition parties for their choice not to get the bill passed.)

In sum, then, Gaudet seems to have crossed the line from earnest advocacy to blatant misinformation for the sake of pushing an issue which isn't even one of his group's central concerns. And CTF supporters should have reason to question whether they want to encourage that kind of action.

Happy in the dark

Shorter Kevin Gaudet:

The scariest part of the recession and ensuing bailouts is that people might think there's reason to look behind the curtain at what corporations are doing.

The experts have spoken...

...and they're in agreement that Jim Flaherty's planned selloff is a boneheaded idea:

"It's hard to believe this is an ideal environment to sell any asset," said Bank of Montreal economist Douglas Porter.

"And it raises the bigger issue of just how hard should the federal government press to keep its books balanced. My view is if it comes down to selling the family silver at a discount rate just to make the books balance, that doesn't make sense."

Portfolio manager Adrian Mastracci of Vancouver-based KCM Wealth Management said the other disadvantage of selling assets at this time is that the private sector would only be interested in the government's best properties. He said his advice to clients is wait for better conditions unless there is no other choice...

"We actually own some of the most valuable real estate in the country," says Gordon McIvor, vice-president of strategic acquisitions for Canada Lands.

McIvor said that unless Ottawa has changed its mind, he has been told that the CN Tower, which the government acquired in 1995, is not for sale.

But when to sell is key, he adds.

"Part of our job is to make sure we sell at an optimal time. We don't want to flood the market, and we also don't want to sell when it is not going to achieve the best value for the taxpayer."

Which leaves Flaherty alongside the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation in arguing that anything to get assets out of government hands is worthwhile even if it means selling at a lousy price. So much for pragmatism over ideology...

Bills unpaid

In case David MacLean hadn't had a bad enough day already, he's also managed to embarrass himself under his own name again with his stance on the Cons' latest gimmick.

From the CP's coverage, here's what MacLean is applauding:

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Revenue Minister Carol Skelton said Monday the ombudsman will operate as an independent adviser to the government and will deal with complaints from taxpayers about the department's handling of their cases.

The ombudsman will be appointed later this year and is to be operating this fall with 40 offices across the country, Skelton said.

The minister could not say what the new bureaucracy would cost, other than to say its expenses would be absorbed by the current budget of the Canada Revenue Agency...

The 15-point bill of taxpayer rights - expanding on a 1985 declaration by the former Mulroney government - includes a promise of professional, courteous and fair dealings, as well as the right to an explanation after a complaint and "relief from penalties and interest under tax legislation because of extraordinary circumstances."

In case there's any doubt, the current budget of the Canada Revenue Agency is the same one which was already so short of resources that $18 billion in back taxes stood uncollected. Yet in the Cons' view, that gross amount of outstanding tax revenue was somehow evidence that the CRA needed to be distracted from even the amount of collection that it's able to carry out now.

Meanwhile, the so-called "Taxpayers Bill of Rights" does nothing more than add the Harper Cons' distinctive brand of fluff language to a document that's already existed since 1985.

Of course, the CTF may well be happy in the short term if tax avoidance becomes easier - particularly if it spreads far enough to end the "overtaxation" (in the form of surpluses) that MacLean and his ilk seem to despise so much. But it should be obvious that perhaps the most important of the ideals which the Cons are supposedly pursuing - namely consistent application of the law - will only become all the more distant due to the Cons' latest stunt. And nobody who's actually concerned with fairness for the Canadian taxpaying public should be happy with that outcome.