Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Louise Arbour's interview with The House includes both her compelling criticisms of both the Cons' terror bill, and the Libs' failure to stand up against C-51. And the Canadian Press reports on Justin Trudeau's continued fecklessness, as he won't even take a position on whether the bill is constitutional after having ordered his party to support it.

- Crawford Kilian writes that while it's too late to atone for the death of Alan Kurdi, we should have no hesitation in making sure the same doesn't happen to other people we can help. Doug Saunders highlights three mistakes we're too prone to make in answering the needs of refugees. And Susan Delacourt rightly notes that voters can be more than spectators in ensuring that refugees find a home.

- But of course, it's also worth looking back to see how the current crisis came to pass. On that front, Lee Berthiaume reports that it was the Cons who passed the rule which they now point to as an excuse for denying entry to Kurdi's relatives (and which continues to operate as a barrier to Syrian refugees). Bruce Johnstone points out that the refugee crisis merely reflects the Cons' general dearth of will to assist anybody and a lack of competence, while Martin Lukacs writes that Kurdi's case is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the damage the Cons have done.

- Elly Alboim notes that the refugee crisis represents a clear test as to whether our political parties are willing and able to respond to important new events in the course of a campaign. Chantal Hebert points out that the Cons aren't the least bit interested in learning from their mistakes, or indeed deviating a word from their existing anti-humanitarian script. And Robin Sears sees that line of attack as the epitome of heartless and mindless message control at the expense of people's lives.

- Finally, Andrew Coyne reminds us that there are many questions as to what will happen in the aftermath of an election result which leaves any room for interpretation - which should serve as motivation to make sure Stephen Harper has absolutely no argument to remain in power.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Kate McInturff puts forward some big long-term goals which deserve to be discussed as we elect our next federal government. And Leah McLaren discusses how a lack of child care affects every Canadian:

The single most shocking thing to me about becoming a mother was the lack of affordable child care, both in Canada and in Britain (where I was living when my son was born). It was an issue I had heard responsible people around me banging on about for years, but one that had sort of floated above my comprehension, like the sound of the grown-ups talking in the animated Charlie Brown.

Like car insurance or taxes, I expected organizing child care to be a pain – one of those annoying but ultimately surmountable aspects of grown-up life. What I did not expect it to be was a financially crippling, life-paralyzing quagmire.

In Canada (as in Britain), I was shocked to find little or no access to affordable child care during my son’s first years of life. Like most families, we shouldered the heavy financial burden of full-time child care all on our own with no help from the government or extended family (everyone lives out of town). It was either that or one of us quit working. Not a pretty choice, or a realistic one for most parents, either.

...

Child care is not a women’s issue. It’s not even a family issue. Like health care or education, it’s an all-of-us-in-it-together issue. And yet it’s also something many of us don’t think about until we are hard up against it, confronting the impossible life choices that materialize when you live in a society with a lack of affordable daycare – a society that sentimentalizes children but not the act of actually caring for them.

- Lindsay Tedds discusses how the Cons' tax giveaways for resource exploration represent all that's wrong with public policy which serves only to enrich investors rather than serving the public interest. And David Dayen highlights how mortgage foreclosure fraud continues in the U.S. even after being publicly exposed.

- Derek Seidman notes that in addition to improving conditions in specific workplaces, the push for a $15 minimum wage is also serving as a rallying point for the labour movement as a whole. And Unifor highlights the importance of an improved Canada Pension Plan as another means of ensuring financial security regardless of one's immediate employer. 

- Finally, Terry Glavin follows up on Alan Kurdi's tragic story with some suggestions as to what can be done next - though it's worth noting that the convention he points to as a barrier to the Kurdis' effort to seek refuge does nothing to prevent a country from doing more than the bare minimum.  Ratna Omidvar, Joseph Yu and Kai Wong make the case to bring 1,000 refugees to the GTA alone. And Aaron Wherry takes a broader look at our options in dealing with refugees and other displaced persons, while Karl Nerenberg and Michael Harris are particularly pointed in criticizing the Cons' callousness.

Juxtaposition II: Humanitarian Boogaloo

From one stunt...

The news of McCain's suspension drew gales of derision from the press. No one was willing to give him the slightest benefit of the doubt...that his motivations were anything less than craven...

McCainworld had assumed that the suspension would be viewed as an authentic, characteristic act of putting country first. But...McCain was now seen as a typical, and faintly desperate politician - and his campaign a campaign of stunts.

...to another:

Conservative candidate Chris Alexander has suspended his campaign for re-election in the riding of Ajax, Ont., in the wake of the Syrian refugee crisis.

Alexander cancelled a Thursday morning media appearance and is returning to Ottawa to focus on his ministerial responsibilities. They include looking into a case brought to the forefront Wednesday after disturbing images emerged showing a Syrian toddler's body washed up on a beach in Turkey.

In a statement, Alexander said "the tragic photo of young Aylan Kurdi and the news of the death of his brother and mother broke hearts around the world."

Meanwhile, Tabatha Southey calls out Alexander for still caring only about optics:

“Photo,” “images,” image,” talking point. A sense of what Alexander sees as the problem & where he’s going with it. https://t.co/GOtCIoquAh

— Tabatha Southey (@TabathaSouthey) September 3, 2015

And Tonda MacCharles notes how the Cons' campaign-only mentality will prevent Alexander from running even a public relations exercise from his office:

According to Chris Alexander's Ottawa office, all media relations spox are on leave until Oct. 19 working on election.

— Tonda MacCharles (@TondaMacC) September 3, 2015

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Chris Mooney takes a look at the positive side of social influences on behaviour, as new research shows a correlation between spending time with neighbours and an interest in the environmental issues which affect us all. But Adam Stoneman documents how another form of social interaction - that of wealth flaunting - promotes conspicuous consumption which benefits nobody.

- Tim Harper slams the Cons for looking to attack aboriginal Canadians rather than work with them - a particularly serious problem in the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report. Don Martin writes that Stephen Harper's staged apology has proven to be entirely empty. And Stephen Maher reminds us that the past genocide by Canada's settlers against First Nations went far beyond culture alone.

- Justin Ling's notorious interview in which the Cons' Immigration Minister Chris Alexander equated wearing a niqab with terrorism is here. And Paul Wells follows up with a scathing counter to Alexander's wilful ignorance about his party's legacy of racism.

- Finally, Karl Nerenberg offers his own roundup of what we can expect now that the Cons' terror bill has been forced through Parliament. And CBC reports on one case of an individual being detained indefinitely without charges even before C-51 offers legislative cover for the disappearing of anybody who proves inconvenient.

[Update: fixed link.]

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Joan Walsh discusses Elizabeth Warren's work on improving wages and enhancing the strength of workers in the U.S., while Jeremy Nuttall interviews Hassan Yussuff about the labour movement's work to elect a better government in Canada.

- Bob Hepburn argues that getting rid of the Harper Cons is a first step toward regaining some faith in our political system. And Scott Reid worries that Stephen Harper's cynical view of government in anybody's hands may have spread to Canada's electorate - though while there's plenty of work to be done in the longer term, the short-term Con message of "you shouldn't trust government!" would seem to be readily supplemented with "especially this one!".

- Speaking of which, Joanna Smith catches Chris Alexander interfering in a response to questions about the Cons' immigration mess. And the argument that it's too much work to actually track outcomes hardly speaks well to the Cons' supposed management skills.

- Toby Helm reports on Ed Miliband's plan to set up a Living Standards Index to measure well-being beyond GDP alone as part of a push to show that right-wing orthodoxy misses the impact of the economy on the vast majority of people. And Ron Lieber observes that gross inequality can be toxic for the people who grow up with extreme privilege.

- Finally, Guy Dauncey responds to Sarah Petrescu's series on poverty in Victoria by pointing out that we'll need some big ideas to eradicate it altogether - though I'd note that he may miss the most important one.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Angelina Chapin highlights the drastic impact a guaranteed annual income would have on Canadians currently living in poverty:

To set and meet goals, you have to think long-term. When you’re poor, you can’t focus on the future (and Bill Gates wasn’t raised poor, by the way). You worry about finding boots, not pulling up your straps. The best way to “motivate” poor people is with programs that help lift their gaze from the ground to the horizon. A guaranteed annual income program would do that.

The idea is simple: in place of a complicated welfare system, give people enough money to live above the poverty line in their region (Ontario’s Low Income Cut-Off was $22,229 for a single person in 2011). No strings attached. The less you make, the more guaranteed income you receive.
...
Just getting on social assistance is a commitment to poverty. To receive it in Ontario, you can’t have more than $1,657 in liquid assets, which could mean selling a car or giving up savings to qualify. There are at least five administrative steps to continually get welfare. Once you’re in the social assistance system, there’s not much incentive to leave.
...
As soon as a welfare recipient starts making any real income, social assistance benefits, subsidized housing and prescription drug money are all cut to some degree. The GAI program would still guarantee any employed person below the poverty line a top-up to, you know, encourage rather than punish their progress.

Many critics of the GAI, ironically, suffer from their own inability to think long-term. They complain about the initial costs, which in Canada could be anywhere from $30-to-$50 billion per year, according to Basic Income Pilot founder Jesse Helmer. But over time, the recipients’ lifestyle changes drive the price down. Citizens for Public Justice estimates that a GAI income could reduce crime costs by $1-2 billion and health-care costs by $7-8 billion annually.

If we could just accept the mound of data showing poor people aren’t degenerates who don’t set their alarm clocks early enough, there would be more support for programs that give people enough money to think ahead.

- But as Paul Krugman notes, the need for more thought about the bigger picture is as much a problem at the top of the income distribution as at the bottom:

Rising inequality has obvious economic costs: stagnant wages despite rising productivity, rising debt that makes us more vulnerable to financial crisis. It also has big social and human costs. There is, for example, strong evidence that high inequality leads to worse health and higher mortality.

But there’s more. Extreme inequality, it turns out, creates a class of people who are alarmingly detached from reality — and simultaneously gives these people great power.

...
But every group finds itself facing criticism, and ends up on the losing side of policy disputes, somewhere along the way; that’s democracy. The question is what happens next. Normal people take it in stride; even if they’re angry and bitter over political setbacks, they don’t cry persecution, compare their critics to Nazis and insist that the world revolves around their hurt feelings. But the rich are different from you and me.

And yes, that’s partly because they have more money, and the power that goes with it. They can and all too often do surround themselves with courtiers who tell them what they want to hear and never, ever, tell them they’re being foolish. They’re accustomed to being treated with deference, not just by the people they hire but by politicians who want their campaign contributions. And so they are shocked to discover that money can’t buy everything, can’t insulate them from all adversity.

- In a similar vein, Carol Goar criticizes Chris Alexander as the latest Con to try to win political points by attacking the health of some of the most vulnerable people in Canada:

“There was hope that the government might decide to change the discourse,” said Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council of Refugees.

It gradually dissipated. The last thread snapped a week ago when Alexander lambasted Ontario for its “scandalous” decision to provide medical care to “bogus” asylum seekers.

“It’s irresponsible,” he railed. “It’s also unfair to for taxpayers.”

His tirade set a new low in intergovernmental relations. It signalled that any Canadian office-holder who showed compassion, tried to mitigate the harm Ottawa is doing or defended the values jettisoned by Stephen Harper’s regime was open to attack.
...
In the short term, (Dench) and her colleagues will continue to stand up for refugees, reach out to sympathetic Canadians and do what they can to soften public opinion. Their hope is that the 2015 election will bring a change of government and a change of heart.

They’ve given up on Alexander. He had the talent, the knowledge, the international experience and the diplomatic skill to be an exemplary minister of citizenship and immigration. He chose instead to use his power to crack down on sick, vulnerable people.

- Meanwhile, Robert Reich points out that the more successful the privileged are in suppressing the well-being of those below them in the short term, the more likely we are to see wrenching changes in the longer term.

- Finally, Stanley Tromp reports on the findings of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration about the transportation of tar sands products - featuring much-needed recognition that the Cons and their oil-sector cronies have done nothing to evaluate the new and real risks of shipping dangerous products through sensitive areas. And Transportation Safety Board chair Wendy Tadros confirms that outdated tanker cars create a risk of more Lac-Mégantic-style disasters, while Greg Gormick calls for a combination of public investment and better regulation to ensure rail safety.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Peter Buffett rightly questions the trend toward making the provision of basic necessities subordinate to a corporate mindset, rather than putting human needs first:

As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering” — feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity.

But this just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place. The rich sleep better at night, while others get just enough to keep the pot from boiling over. Nearly every time someone feels better by doing good, on the other side of the world (or street), someone else is further locked into a system that will not allow the true flourishing of his or her nature or the opportunity to live a joyful and fulfilled life.

And with more business-minded folks getting into the act, business principles are trumpeted as an important element to add to the philanthropic sector. I now hear people ask, “what’s the R.O.I.?” when it comes to alleviating human suffering, as if return on investment were the only measure of success. Microlending and financial literacy (now I’m going to upset people who are wonderful folks and a few dear friends) — what is this really about? People will certainly learn how to integrate into our system of debt and repayment with interest. People will rise above making $2 a day to enter our world of goods and services so they can buy more. But doesn’t all this just feed the beast?

I’m really not calling for an end to capitalism; I’m calling for humanism. 

- And Moises Velasquez-Manoff discusses the inherent and destructive stress involved in living in poverty:

Although professionals may bemoan their long work hours and high-pressure careers, really, there’s stress, and then there’s Stress with a capital “S.” The former can be considered a manageable if unpleasant part of life; in the right amount, it may even strengthen one’s mettle. The latter kills.

What’s the difference? Scientists have settled on an oddly subjective explanation: the more helpless one feels when facing a given stressor, they argue, the more toxic that stressor’s effects.

That sense of control tends to decline as one descends the socioeconomic ladder, with potentially grave consequences. Those on the bottom are more than three times as likely to die prematurely as those at the top. They’re also more likely to suffer from depression, heart disease and diabetes. Perhaps most devastating, the stress of poverty early in life can have consequences that last into adulthood.
...
A nurturing bond with a caregiver in a stimulating environment appears essential for proper brain development and healthy maturation of the stress response. That sounds easy enough, except that such bonds, and the broader social networks that support them, are precisely what poverty disrupts. If you’re an underpaid, overworked parent — worried, behind on rent, living in a crime-ridden neighborhood — your parental skills are more likely to be compromised. That’s worrisome given the trends in the United States. About one in five children now lives below the poverty line, a 35 percent increase in a decade. Unicef recently ranked the United States No. 26 in childhood well-being, out of 29 developed countries. When considering just childhood poverty, only Romania fares worse.

-Vanessa Brcic calls for British Columbia to restore the Therapeutics Initiative as a sorely-needed fair arbiter of drug effectiveness. The Star pleads for somebody to take on long-term responsibility for the Experimental Lakes Area. And Stephen LaRose points to Winnipeg as a prime example of the (nonexistent) returns when a civic government prioritizes big-money sports and entertainment over actual needs.

- Finally, Haroon Siddiqui holds out some hope that Chris Alexander might revisit some of Jason Kenney's most damaging moves as Minister of Immigration (though I'd add "employer-driven" to his overall freeze proposal):

Kenney’s changes have not been popular, have not worked, have not reduced backlogs and have not improved the system — indeed, have made a mess of it.

We are bringing 250,000 immigrants a year and tens of thousands of guest workers when 1.3 million Canadians don’t have jobs, another million are underemployed or have given up looking for work, and the unemployment rate for both the young as well as new immigrants is twice the national average. Of the immigrants who do have jobs, three in four are not using the education and skills for which they were picked as immigrants.

Perversely, the temporary foreign workers program (which brought in at least 500,000 workers) grew even as the economy slowed down. Kenney’s mantra of “skills shortages” has been shown to be a bit of a fraud. As the Star’s Nicholas Keung reported Tuesday, for example, Canada imported more than 6,000 temps as chefs and cooks in 2011, when Canadian colleges are churning out culinary graduates in record numbers.
...
All this brings me, Mr. Alexander, to ask you this:

Tell us why you should not freeze immigration until the job picture improves, both for them and Canadians; axe the temporary foreign workers program; restore health benefits to refugees; stop the shameful treatment of the Roma; and why your government that emphasizes family values is being so punitive toward the family reunification of immigrant families.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- I'll follow up with one extra note from Mark Carney's address to the CAW - as the headlines seem to have missed a rather important point about the relative effect of the Canadian dollar and even the widest possible definition of labour issues:

He noted Canada’s export performance was the second-worst in the G20 over the last decade, with only 9 per cent of exports going to fast-growing emerging markets such as China and India.

But he sought to dispel the notion that the high loonie bears the bulk of the blame.

“Some blame this on the persistent strength of the Canadian dollar,” Mr. Carney said in prepared remarks ahead of his address.

“While there is some truth to that, it is not the most important reason. Over the past decade, our poor export performance has been explained two-thirds by market structure and one-third by competitiveness. Of the latter about two-thirds is the currency while the rest is labour costs and productivity.

“So, net, our strong currency explains only about 20 per cent of our poor export performance.”

By Carney's own account, then, "labour costs and productivity" have had only half as much effect as the boosted Canadian dollar on exports. Which (for anybody willing to listen) should thoroughly undermine the claim that there's any validity to a Con position pretending the dollar is no issue at all, while attacking the far smaller labour factor at every turn in the name of competitiveness.

- Though I suppose we shouldn't operate under the illusion that the Cons' economic plans have anything to do with accomplishing anything useful - as Jim Flaherty is rerunning his thoroughly-discredited "do what I ask, or I'll ask again more pitifully" strategy to deal with the glut of uninvested corporate cash.

- And in case anybody thought a new set of MPs might help rein in the Cons' worst impulses, here's a shorter Chris Alexander:

Lousy media, refusing to accept that all inconvenient prior statements have been declared inoperative. Why won't they just transcribe the word of the Ministry of Truth and leave it at that?

- Finally, David McGrane takes on the Saskatchewan Cons' sad attempts to preserve poor representation for their constituents by pointing out what representation is supposed to accomplish:

Optimal democratic representation means having an MP exclusively devoted to representing your concerns. The proposed constituencies map improves democratic representation by having more rural residents represented by exclusively rural MPs, and more urban residents represented by exclusively urban MPs. It's a win for both the city and the countryside.

No other province has split rural-urban ridings, making Saskatchewan the outlier of Canadian democracy. Other provinces have realized that separating urban and rural residents into different ridings provides better democratic representation and conforms to electoral law that stipulates that ridings must contain residents with similar identities and similar "communities of interest."

If we take a step back and consider, we realize that the proposed boundaries are best for democracy. That's what really counts.

Parliament In Review: June 14, 2011

With the debate over Libya taking up the time for debate, yesterday didn't see quite as much of a range of issues discussed as some previous days. However, there's still plenty of material worth noting from the day's events.

The Big Issue

Obviously, the main issue for the day was the extension of Canada's participation in the UN mission in Libya. But while most commentary seems to have painted the three official parties as having substantially the same position, the debate in fact featured both some noteworthy statements and some important differences.

In the pleasant surprise department, John Baird's response to Paul Dewar's question is noteworthy in highlighting at least one difference between the Cons and their cousins to the south:

The issue of rape being used as a weapon of war I think is abhorrent to every Canadian. The government would like to put some effort not just on the social side of providing assistance to victims of this heinous crime but also at the International Criminal Court. We must send a message when this is coordinated as an act of war that the international community will hold those accountable. That is something every Canadian strongly believes in and which this government will work with the International Criminal Court to support.

Which makes for a nice contrast against the Republicans' reflexive abhorrence of multilateral institutions generally and the ICC in particular - even if its practical effect is unclear.

In addition, some kudos go to Chris Alexander for asking as reasonable a question as one could possibly hope for - querying the NDP's Hélène Laverdière based on her professional experience as to which organizations could contribute to the effort.

On the down side, the Libs staked out some rather stunning ground for themselves. Not only did they completely dismiss the NDP's concerns about Canadian corporations having a role in building prisons for the Gadhafi regime, but Stephane Dion managed to assert that we should consider the presence of corporations which worked with a repressive regime as an advantage in rebuilding following its ouster.

And another obvious difference in position arose on the question of how long the Libyan mission would be expected to last. For the NDP, Libby Davies questioned the Cons as to whether there was any exit strategy, while Joe Comartin set out the NDP position that the extension voted on yesterday should be the only one. In contrast, the Libs' positions ranged from advising against talking about pulling out, to demanding a commitment that Canada remain involved until the institution of "democracy and the rule of law in Libya".

Vote of the Day

Meanwhile, while the nature of the votes on the extension has been well documented (with Elizabeth May as the only MP voting against each of the subamendment, amendment and motion), it's well worth noting how the votes came about in the first place. After all, the subamendment had already passed on a voice vote - meaning that MPs whose side had already won the vote made the effort to require a recorded vote anyway.

Poor Planning of the Day

It's not at all uncommon for the Cons to answer an opposition question about an issue related to a single constituent with a dismissive "we can't talk about individual cases". But I'd think it's much less common for them to give the same answer to one of their own planted questions - as happened when David Wilks criticized a Federal Court decision.

In Brief

While the day's debates were limited to Libya, there was still a couple of other noteworthy content from the members' statements and question period. In the former category, Robert Aubin's opening statement in the House of Commons included a call for proportional representation, suggesting that at least part of the NDP's Quebec contingent which took advantage of the quirks of FPTP is nonetheless committed to electoral reform. And in question period, Linda Duncan raised what would seem to be a rather chilling issue of covert CSIS surveillance of First Nations activists.

Note that I likely won't get a chance to post Parliament in Review for the next couple of days due to some travel.