New column day

Here, on the fundamental need for governments to provide a secure source of income and benefits - and the choice of the Trudeau Libs and Moe Sask Party alike to instead make citizens bear the brunt of political choices.

For further reading...
- The National Post offered a backgrounder on the Phoenix pay system which has resulted in federal civil servants getting shortchanged on the money they've earned for public service. The Auditor General reported on its inexplicable failings. And CTV reported on the continuing rallies to draw attention to hundreds of thousands of still-outstanding issues.
- Terry Farrell reported on Canada Post's orders which resulted in the delay of benefit cheques which CUPW specifically agreed to keep delivering. CUPW called out Patty Hajdu's misleading attempt to then use management decisions to attack workers' right to strike. And Nora Loreto pointed out that no government can reasonably expect labour peace while going out of its way to undermine the bargaining processes which are supposed to keep conflict contained.
- D.C. Fraser reported on how a rental supplement cut by the Saskatchewan Party will result in a year's gap in coverage since a federal replacement has been delayed - and since Scott Moe and company don't care enough about renters to fix the mess they've made.
- Finally, I'll point again to Noah Smith's post on the many facets of poverty and insecurity in order to highlight the importance of a government willing to reduce all of the drivers of precarity.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to end your weekend.

- Doug Cuthand makes the case for First Nations resource ownership as a matter of historical right:

When the numbered treaties were negotiated in Saskatchewan in the 1870s, the resources under the ground were never discussed. At the time the government had no idea that Western Canada was a treasure trove of oil, potash, uranium and base minerals. The only mineral it was interested in was coal, which was the fuel for the railways.

The government's vision was to open the West to agricultural settlement. The oral history on the First Nations side includes a question from a chief in the Treaty 4 negotiations, who asked about what lay under the ground. He was told that the government only wanted land to the depth of a plow, and his question would be dealt with at a later date.

The issue was never discussed in any other subsequent treaty negotiations. So, ownership of the minerals and the wealth that lay under the earth remained unaddressed and wasn't part of the treaty agreements. Any lawyer will tell you that if an item is silent in a contract, it remains with the original owner.
...
Successive federal governments have simply assumed they owned everything. The 1930 Natural Resources Transfer Agreement gave the mineral rights to the three Prairie provinces, without any consideration of the rights of the First Nations. At that time our leaders raised the issue, but they were unable to get a fair hearing. They were basically ignored.
...
As far as First Nations people are concerned, we own 100 per cent of the mineral wealth in Saskatchewan. However, we're willing to negotiate the province's share. That sounds reasonable to me.

- TC Norris points out Ari Berman's critique of the austerity class looking to punish society at large for the (supposed) benefit of creditors:

Taken together, the various strands of the austerity class form a reinforcing web that is difficult to break. Its think tanks and wonks produce a relentless stream of disturbing statistics warning of skyrocketing debt and looming bankruptcy, which in turn is trumpeted by politicians and the press and internalized by the public. Thus forms what Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent calls a Beltway Deficit Feedback Loop, wherein the hypothetical possibility of a US debt crisis somewhere in the future takes precedence over the very real jobs crisis now.

Even President Obama’s new jobs plan—a long overdue break with austerity-class orthodoxy—has been pitched in the context of deficit reduction. Every debate over measures to improve the economy begins with the question “How much will it cost, and can we afford it?” rather than “How many jobs will it create, and how will it help the country?” Far from possessing the solution to our economic crisis, the austerity class represents a major impediment to finding one.

- Mark Sumner traces how a corporate bait-and-switch has served to eliminate secure pensions, then use talk about "ownership" to lock workers into worse and worse alternatives.

- And the Cons are facilitating both that process and a systematic upward redistribution of wealth with their tax-free savings accounts. But hey, it's at least reassuring to know that at least some of the Cons' actions achieve their intended results.

- Finally, the first decision in the Canadian Union of Postal Workers' effort to challenge the Harper Cons' draconian back-to-work legislation doesn't deal with the substance of the law to a great degree. But it's still noteworthy to have a judicial pronouncement that the union has "overwhelmingly established the existence of irreparable harm" as we continue the political debate over the Cons' anti-labour policies.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Just as in this year's federal election, the NDP will need to look to move voting intentions once the campaign is underway. But also just like in the federal election, there's reason to like the party's chances - particularly as it's promising to limit the sniping that's been going on for months between the other two main parties.

- The Washington Post points out that our current system of intellectual property protection - supposedly designed to encourage innovation - in fact does little but to create a cottage industry for high-tech non-inventors:

Patents were originally conceived to protect inventors—people and companies who contribute to the advancement of society by creating new products. But in the past decade, something went horribly wrong. Patents are increasingly became nothing more than financial and legal weapons, to be amassed in portfolios by “non-practicing entities” (i.e. patent trolls) and used to extort protection money from economically productive companies.
...
Most of the money from patent lawsuits is going to the trolls and the lawyers. Between 1995 and 2001, practicing entities were getting higher median awards ($6.3 million) in patent lawsuits than non-practicing entities ($5.2 million). Those numbers flipped between 2002 and 2009, when the median award given to patent trolls climbed to $12.9 million, while awards given to operating patent holders dropped to $3.9 million. The trolls obviously got very efficient and found friendly court districts like the Eastern District of Texas where they could push their claims (patent trolls have a 55.6 percent success rate in cases in the Eastern District of Texas). And it is not just the trolls that are bringing lawsuits as a course of business, companies like Microsoft are getting in on the action too, using their patents as a strategic weapon against their rivals.

It’s this combination of a growing pool of patents that should have never been granted in the first place with the rise of the patent lawsuit industry that is creating huge costs for technology companies of all sizes and the economy at large. All of those bilions (sic) of dollars spent in defending questionable patent lawsuits and buying up patents that will never be used to create anything new is a terrible waste of money. The patent system has been broken a long time, but if we don’t fix it soon it will slow down one of the few engines of the economy still humming.

- It didn't receive much attention compared to the news about the CUPW's planned challenges to the appointment. But after they went out of their way to undermine the concept of collective bargaining as we know it, should we have expected anything other than for the Harper Cons to then appoint an arbitrator with as little labour experience as possible?

- Rene Najera's story looks like a particularly egregious example of an employer trampling on a worker's ability to participate in any public debate.

- Finally, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald weighs in on Tony Clement's G8 patronage and cover-up:

Auditor General John Wiersema said he had never before come across the "unusual and troubling" situation of there being "absolutely no paper trail."

But last week, NDP MP Charlie Angus turned up a paper trail of sorts.

Doing an end-run of his own, Mr. Angus used provincial disclosure laws to access minutes of municipal leaders’ meetings on G8 projects that Mr. Clement chaired. They indicate federal officials did attend some meetings and Mr. Clement’s constituency office managed an application process for projects through unofficial forms.

The government should explain how this squares with what it told the auditor general — that departments were not involved in designing the fund and selecting projects.

And Mr. Clement should explain why his office ran this process outside the auditable framework of Treasury Board rules and policies for which he is now responsible.

If he can’t do that, he shouldn’t be at Treasury Board.

Parliament In Review: June 21, 2011

Issue of the Day

Much of the day's debate was taken up with the final debate on the Cons' budget legislation, with the NDP particularly highlighting provisions to subsidize private mortgage insurance - while the Cons responded at times by insisting that there's somehow a need for competition against the CMHC, and others by suggesting we should be willing to trade off a stable mortgage insurance system for promises of transparency.

Once it was time to vote, there was only one slight surprise. It was never a secret that the Bloc planned to vote for the Cons' budget based on the inclusion of HST money for Quebec - but I'm rather curious as to how the Bloc can also justify voting against all of the NDP's proposed amendments as well.

All In Order

Is it a violation of parliamentary procedure to describe Tony Clement as "hiding under his desk"? For some reason, the Cons seemed to want to debate the point. Which led to Charlie Angus' reply:

Mr. Speaker, I want to clarify the record because I do think it is very important. I take my choice of words very seriously. When I said “the missing member for Muskoka” I was not implying that he was missing from the House. I said that he was missing from doing his job.

Fighting Back

The Cons sought unanimous consent to ram through anti-refugee legislation. But instead, Olivia Chow instead delivered a blistering attack on the Cons' disdain for refugees:

the bill would not punish smugglers. Under our present legislation, a smuggler would be jailed for life. We have the most severe punishment for people convicted of smuggling. What could be more severe than putting them away for life? We cannot get more severe. The bill is not really about the smugglers. It is about the refugees.

This legislation would require the mandatory detention of all people arriving in Canada, including women and children, whether they arrive by foot, by boat or by air. A mom and a two year old child, a five year old child, or a baby, would be jailed a minimum of 12 months. After they serve that 12 months they might receive some consideration. They would also be denied permanent residence or family reunification for at least five years.

Let me use as an example a dad who leaves a troubled country and his wife and children are left behind in a refugee camp. He arrives in Canada by himself and gets designated by the minister. The minister could not even explain a few minutes ago what criteria he is going to use. He mentioned those individuals who do not have documentation. Most refugees who come to Canada do not have documentation. How can we expect people who live through an earthquake or arrive from a war-torn country to have identification? A lot of refugees arrive at our shores without identification. They could be designated. More than two refugees who arrive on our shores could be designated as a group.

Let me revert to my example of the dad who arrived in Canada after fleeing from a war-torn country. Under this rule he would be sent to jail for at least a year. Let us say that he goes through the process and is determined to be a genuine refugee. For five years he would not be able to sponsor his wife and children from a refugee camp. What does that mean? It means that he will be separated from his family for at least seven years. These refugees will have to determine whether or not they want to leave their loved ones behind because they will not see them for at least seven years. Do they want to come to this country alone or do they want to make a dangerous journey together? That is why I say the bill is cruel.

In Brief

Let's start with a few noteworthy points on the Canada Post debate which made for the other major theme of the day. First, Pat Martin pointed out that the root of all of Canada Post's problems which were supposed to justify back-to-work legislation lay in money extracted from it and its pension plan. The NDP also nicely highlighted the "orphan clauses" designed to ensure that future Canada Post workers don't enjoy the pay and benefit levels of current employees. And following his much-ballyhooed speech, Yvon Godin had the definitive answer to a question about a six-year-old waiting for her glasses through the mail:

Madam Speaker, I would tell this little six-year-old girl that the Conservative government has refused to tell Canada Post to get back to the table with its collective agreement and negotiate in good faith. I would tell the little girl that when she gets older, I hope it is not a Conservative government in power that would hit on her the way they are doing today. I would tell that little girl that if she wants to buy glasses, I hope she has a decent job with good pay that the Conservative Party will not take away from her. I would make sure that the little girl never voted for the Conservative Party her whole life.

And in other news...

Chris Charlton stood up for the principle that Parliament needs time to review and debate legislation, rather than having it forced through in artificially short time frames. Jim Flaherty answered Terek Brahmi's question about the well-being of families trapped by record debt levels by saying that the corporate sector is doing just fine. Peter Stoffer introduced a bill to establish a right to housing.

Monday Evening Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Janyce McGregor's article on the perils of Senate reform is well worth a read in general. But let's particularly highlight an issue I've raised before - if one which is no less glaring in the absence of any reform:

So why not just abolish the Senate? Indeed, that's the position of other premiers, including Ontario's Dalton McGuinty, and the NDP at both the federal and provincial levels.

The NDP's preference for abolition over reform is another reason Simon Fraser's Heard is uncertain about the prospects for the voluntary elections framework in the current bill.

New Democrats hold power in Nova Scotia and Manitoba, and are serious challengers for government in B.C. in the coming months. The party might be seen as contradicting itself to run candidates to serve in a chamber it believes should be abolished.

"If they maintain this position, then several provinces with a strong NDP presence will not be properly represented," Heard fears.

- Aalya Ahmad and Geoff Bickerton discuss the toxic mix of management, government, paid PR and media which all served to ensure the least fair outcome possible in Canada Post's CBA negotiations.

- Verda Petry points out just a few of the people who have reason to figure that Saskatchewan's current track won't take them anywhere worth going:

No mention of the Health Sciences Association, who have been without a contract for over two years, the Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation, the CUPE Local of educational assistants, the Saskatchewan Cancer Society workers, the Crop Insurers Group, SIAST instructors and support staff. Government interference in free collective bargaining and wage offers below the cost of living create acute distress and anger.

The minimum wage is so low that at full employment a worker doesn't meet the low income cut-off for poverty. All this at a time when government revenue has exceeded expectations by $1 billion. Add to this the federal abuse of postal workers, farmers threatened with the loss of the Canadian Wheat Board, and you have a plethora of workers, their families, and citizens who depend on these workers for services, for whom Saskatchewan is not "on track".

- And for those wondering what comes next in the corporatist arsenal after massive handouts to the rich are paired with "but look how many people we took off the tax rolls!", Orrin Hatch is leading the Republican Party toward the inevitable next step.

On needless aggression

While I wrote today's column before word came out about the Harper Cons' meddling in the negotiations between Canada Post and CUPW, it looks like the Cons' desire to provoke a war with workers extended even further than I'd thought - including through their rejection of a deal which both the union and Canada Post were prepared to accept:

The NDP launched a filibuster in the House of Commons to delay the proposed law in hopes of giving more time for a negotiated settlement. Behind the scenes, Godin and fellow New Democrat MP Joe Comartin acted as go-betweens with Labour Minister Lisa Raitt and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers as well as the Canadian Labour Congress.

Interviews with officials familiar with the talks reveal they came close to breaking the stalemate.

Indeed, even before the filibuster got underway Thursday night, the NDP thought a deal had been reached with the Conservatives to amend the back-to-work legislation. The changes would have taken final offer selection off the table and provided for eight weeks mediation overseen by an arbitrator.

Emails predicted success. “Looks like this will work out,” read one email written by one person close to the talks and obtained by the Star.

But just over an hour later, the Conservatives had put the final offer back on the table and the message from Raitt’s office was “there is no deal.”
...
By Friday evening, both Canada Post and the union had a tentative settlement that outlined agreement on some key issues such as wage rate, according to a source. Other outstanding issues would be sent to arbitration.

But after midnight came word that Raitt’s office had apparently turned down the deal, a source said.

It's not clear whether the motive was aimed more at ensuring that the NDP couldn't claim a win, or at taking the hardest possible line with CUPW instead as a signal to other unions. But either way, there seems to be little room for dispute that the Cons were far more aggressive and unreasonable than any of the parties actually directly involved in the Canada Post bargaining process - going so far as to choose to reject an agreement which would have been possible absent their interference. And that message should serve as a red flag for workers across Canada that their federal government will be working to damage their interests at every opportunity.

Meanwhile, for those asking questions about the NDP's strategy in filibustering on motions at second reading rather than challenging the Cons more in committee, the news of the Cons' interference looks to provide a compelling explanation. It looks to have been true that Canada Post and CUPW only needed some additional time to come to a compromise - but that ceased to matter when the Cons made it clear that any resolution acceptable every other party involved would be considered unacceptable to them.

New column day

Here, expanding on the hostile labour environment that's developing as federal and provincial governments alike use back-to-work legislation as a pre-emptive attack on workers.

For further reading (which should be familiar to those who read the blog regularly):

- Ryan McGreal's "revenge egalitarianism" concept earns a mention in the column, and for those who haven't read it yet his general discussion is also well worth a look.

- Andrew Jackson points out the research showing a link between decreased unionization and increased inequality, including this summary with a similar theme to the column:

The path from strong unions to greater equality among non union workers likely runs through two channels. The first is fear, non union employers in a strong union environment will pay higher wages to lower paid workers in order to avoid unionization. The second and likely stronger channel is norms. Strong unions establish norms of fair wage differences between management and workers and between groups of workers which spill over into the non union sector.

- And the theme of the column is developed from a couple of my earlier posts on the Canada Post strike/lockout.

On unreasonable outcomes

I've pointed out before how the Cons' deliberate attack on the Canadian Union of Postal Workers figures to create damaging incentives as federally-regulated employers consider how to handle future collective bargaining. But now that we've seen the Cons' endgame, it's worth noting that the incentives for unions may be equally damaging.

After all, the CUPW approached its negotiations with Canada Post from the standpoint of trying to be as reasonable as possible - both in its position at the bargaining table, and in a collective action strategy designed to avoid disrupting postal service. And even from that modest starting point, it was willing to compromise further through the parliamentary process, signalling no apparent disagreement with amendments aimed solely at modifying the worst of the Cons' abuses (eliminating the decree of future salaries lower than those already offered by Canada Post and allowing for some effort at mediation rather than a winner-takes-all arbitration).

And yet even that willingness to compromise was met with a thumb in the eye.

Now, I'm sure the Cons hope that other unions will see the lesson as being that it's not worth even trying to defend collective bargaining rights.

But I'd think that's only one of two possible interpretations - with the other being that the Cons wound up supporting the party which was utterly unreasonable and unduly disruptive, while punishing the one which operated in good faith all along.

And while it remains to be seen what strategies Canadian workers will develop to respond to that message, I'm not sure the Cons or anybody else will have reason to look forward to the result.