Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Lana Payne comments on the biggest of the Cons' many lies about the role and capacity of the federal government:

Canada’s $18.7-billion deficit has (its) roots in failed economic policies, decisions made before the world financial crisis, including reckless corporate tax cuts.

Remember, because the Conservatives would like us to forget, that this is a government that inherited $13 billion in surpluses.

They quickly emptied the cupboard with one tax cut after another.

Harper’s deficit has become, in many ways, a manufactured and convenient bogeyman. Bogeymen are useful especially when your goal is to convince Canadians we can’t afford public services or a social safety net, including universal medicare which is currently under immense attack.

A deficit is also handy if you are looking for an excuse to sell Canadians on more austerity, more public service cuts.

But the federal Conservatives have a few problems with the narrative they are so desperately trying to tell.

On the one hand they preach about their ability to manage the economy, and yet, when examined closely, their economic record is anything but stellar.

And a dwindling number of Canadians are buying into the big lie.

- But for those thinking big dishonesty is limited to the Cons, Karen Howlett offers a devastating look behind the scenes of Dalton McGuinty's exit from the Ontario Libs - featuring specific discussion about creating a "salacious" story around an opponent's wife in order to distract from the deserved public-relations fallout from scandal and cover-ups.

- Emily Chong is the latest observer to point out that the supposed trade-off between wages and jobs is illusory - as an increased minimum wage which helps workers stay out of poverty doesn't significantly affect the number of jobs available.

- And Carlito Pablo reports on the exploitation of migrant workers who are tied to a single employer (and thus unable to point out its abuses).

- Finally, Ryan Meili weighs in on the CMA's report on the social determinants of health:

We've known for decades, through Dr Marmot's famous Whitehall study and many others that health care is only one element in determining health outcomes; a far less influential factor than income, education, housing, nutrition, and the wider environment. However, this information has had little impact on how medicine is practiced, and this can be frustrating for doctors, uncertain of how to translate this understanding from the conceptual to the clinical.

A paper released by the CMA at that Yellowknife meeting on the role of the physician in achieving health equity tackled the issue head on, and encouraged doctors to think differently about how they can address the social determinants of health in practice. 
...
Pharmacare, Housing First, a national food security program and guaranteed annual income: these are ideas that could be considered quite radical.

They would certainly be outside of what most Canadian politicians would openly discuss as options. And yet, here they are, coming from what is thought to be one of the most conservative professional organizations in the country. Why? Because whatever self interest may influence physician politics, the purpose of the profession is still, at its heart, to work for the best health outcomes for patients. The weight of the evidence for the social determinants of health, and the need for creative, system-wide policy changes to address them, is simply too great to ignore.

New column day

Here, on the increasing attempts of executive government at all levels to declare democracy irrelevant - and how strong grassroots party structures may be the key to reversing the tide.

For further reading...
- Again, Andrew Coyne's column remains the definitive discussion of the issue at the federal and provincial levels.
- But I'll give credit to the Libs who have recognized that shutting down democratic debate is a serious problem - particularly Steve V, who also discusses Gerard Kennedy's outspoken criticism of the move. And we'll find out over the next few months whether the Libs' membership will see the importance of Kennedy's message, and set a higher standard for their own party's internal accountability than "Harper got away with it, so can we".

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Tim Harper slams the Cons for yet another omnibus abuse of parliamentary democracy:

Stephen Harper didn’t invent prorogation and omnibus legislation, but he has made two arcane polysyllabic political terms part of our everyday lexicon, improving our vocabulary but diminishing our democracy.

His shut-it-down and take-it-or-leave-it approach to procedure and legislation has gone viral, with the Ontario legislature now sitting dark, prorogued by Dalton McGuinty.

This is the second chapter of a very cynical story by the Harper government, NDP House leader Nathan Cullen said, but it’s not clear whether the opposition response will be different in chapter two.

The last omnibus budget bill began the process of gutting environmental regulations and this one takes the process another step further.
...
Whether these changes are good or bad isn’t the point. The point is that they cannot be properly scrutinized by the people sent to this place to hold a government to account.

New Democrats, with their opposition partners, went as far as they could in opposition last spring, given the reality of a majority government.

The Conservatives have clearly determined that a lost night’s sleep in the Commons is an easy price to pay for passing legislation their way, and the opposition may have to look for another way to engage Canadians this time around.

 - Meanwhile, plenty of journalists are rightly testing Jim Flaherty's nonsensical claim that brand-new attacks on environmental laws were somehow included in a March budget that mentioned nothing of the sort.

- Lest there be any doubt, there's every reason to criticize the McGuinty Libs for treating the Harper Cons' anti-democratic cynicism as the new normal. And both Thomas Walkom and Andrew Coyne duly blast McGuinty and the general degradation of parliamentary democracy as a result.

- No, we shouldn't be the least bit surprised that the Cons' strategy of treating everything as an opportunity for partisan gain includes foreign election monitoring.

- Finally, Josh Mandryk criticizes the Cons' attacks on unions and workers - and points out the privacy implications of the Cons' attempt to silence political countermovements:

Far from atypical, (C-377) is but the latest instance in a well-documented pattern of the Conservative government lashing out against groups seen as standing in its way.

Worse than the character assassination of former Opposition leaders Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff has been the systematic attack on its opponents in civil society. From slashing funding to women’s groups, to suppressing dissenters in the federal bureaucracy, to attacking environmental charities as “foreign-funded radicals,” this government has shown an unprecedented willingness to come down on groups who either actively or passively oppose its agenda.

And now they’ve come for the trade unionists.
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Two examples help illustrate just how invasive the bill is.

First, suppose you pass away while an active union member and your spouse receives a death benefit from your union’s pension plan. Bill C-377 would require your spouse’s name and address to be posted online, along with an explanation that he/she has received a sizeable payment as a result of your passing.

Or suppose you have a disability or require medication for a serious illness not covered by your province’s health-care plan. If you receive more than $5,000 in benefits from your union’s plan, your name and address, along with an explanation of why you’ve received that money, would be published online for your family, friends and employer to see.
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By demanding carte blanche financial disclosure with little justification, Hiebert appears to be swinging aimlessly in hopes of finding dirt on the labour movement.

Unfortunately, he and the rest of the world will have to dig through personal information about millions of Canadians before they find it.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Erika Shaker describes the effect of the "right-to-work" laws so popular among our more regressive politicians:

“Right-to-Work” still remains a dubious—even Orwellian—term, probably because we have a sweatshop-sized vat of research documenting examples of what this scheme has meant for those American jurisdictions that have implemented it. Higher rates of poverty and child mortality; lower per-capita income, life expectancy and standard of living; fewer people covered by health insurance; and significantly lower levels of worker productivity.

Let me say that again. Right-to-Work states experience significantly lower levels of worker productivity (which I guess free market types feel is so totally worth it if it means they can bash a union or two).

- Meanwhile, the Star reports on CEP's approval of a merger with the CAW - along with the new union's more ambitious goals to organize workers outside of normal workplace settings:

Nearly 1,500 delegates to a CEP convention in Quebec City endorsed the merger, paving the way for creation of a new super-union with the financial resources and political clout to tackle the challenges facing the labour movement.

“Today we witnessed history being made. This isn’t just a step forward for the labour movement. It’s a step forward for progressive people in this country,” said Dave Coles, national president of the CEP. “It sends a very clear message, we believe, to the Conservatives and any other political group that thinks that they can attack workers.”

The new union, which would represent 320,000 workers across some 20 industries, aims to aggressively expand its membership, financial resources and political clout. It will also seek mergers with additional unions.

While it still doesn’t have a name or a leadership structure, it does have a vision — to recruit as many people from as many walks of life as possible, including seniors, students and the unemployed.

- And Duncan Cameron weighs in on the merger:

Proponents of the new union know what is going wrong today. As Kennedy put it, neo-liberalism is not working for the 99 per cent. Dave Coles talked about how decency is disappearing and Canadians suffer as big government and big business work together against the interests of working people.

What is going to be tested in the next months is the ability to deliver on the promise that creating a new union, over 300,000 strong, will make things better for its members, and have the kind of impact on the politics of the country that proponents of the merger want to see. 

- Finally, Mark Jarvis discusses how the most important story out of Dalton McGuinty's recent machinations is his willingness to accept Stephen Harper's belief that democratic government is a mere inconvenience to be shut down at will:

Prorogation is not a mechanism designed to afford the current government a political advantage in the exercise of power.

Yet, in recent years we have seen first ministers misuse the power of prorogation to avoid confidence votes, delay reporting by officers of parliament, escape questioning and scrutiny, and side-step accountability for matters of public policy and administration.

This most recent prorogation terminates an ongoing investigation of contempt against one of McGuinty’s ministers  and effectively precludes anticipated motions of contempt against an additional minister and McGuinty himself until a new session of the legislature, when McGuinty will no longer be premier.

This alone renders this prorogation an abuse.
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But there is something even more disconcerting afoot.

Across the country prime ministers and premiers are making it clear that they see legislatures – our elected representatives – as an undue burden. Whether as a means of managing legislative impasses or risks of losing confidence or simply to escape scrutiny, first ministers have demonstrated a predilection for simply shutting down the respective legislative assemblies in their jurisdictions.

It is worth examining the premier’s own words in explaining the prorogation. In an email sent to Liberal supporters McGuinty said: “I’ve asked the Lieutenant Governor to prorogue the legislature to allow those discussions with our labour partners and the opposition to occur in an atmosphere that is free of the heightened rancour of politics in the legislature…”

The “rancour” that Premier McGuinty is so dismissive of is an essential dynamic of public accountability within our democratic system, which sees partisan politics – institutionalized adversarialism – as the best means of securing democracy.

On self-destruction

I'm sure we'll eventually learn more about the reasons why Dalton McGuinty decided to jump ship. But it's worth pointing out how his move looks to completely undercut his own party.

After all, Ontario's Libs have spent nearly a decade branding McGuinty as the dull but reliable Premier Dad - and followed up on that by echoing the Harper Cons' rhetoric about stability. Which makes McGuinty's abrupt and not-particularly-well-explained departure an especially striking development.

Now, the Ontario Libs will have to set up a leadership campaign and debate what exactly they stand for as a party before choosing a new leader. And all this in a minority legislature (and a time when the Libs were already falling behind two opposition parties in the polls).

Which is to say that having already gone out of his way to lose the confidence of the labour movement, McGuinty has effectively trashed the message which helped his party cling to power last year. And that means that whoever succeeds McGuinty shouldn't count on staying in office for long.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Saturday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- Thomas Walkom comments on the Cons' preference for low-wage, no-rights immigrant labour as a means of avoiding good jobs for Canadians:

Theoretically, temporary work visas are supposed to be reserved for those with unique skills.

But increasingly, the notion of skill has been stretched to the extreme. In Alberta, some temporary skilled workers serve coffee in doughnut shops. Others heave around beef carcasses in slaughterhouses like the Brooks XL Foods meat-packing plant — now the epicentre of an E. coli food scare.

In the fruit and vegetable fields of Ontario, the unique skill that temporary migrant workers from the Caribbean or South America bring is their willingness to do back-breaking work for low wages.

Employers say they need foreign temporary labour because they can’t find Canadians willing to work. What they mean is that they can’t find Canadians willing to work at the wages being offered.
...
A wise government wouldn’t create two classes of immigrants but would treat equally all who enter this country legally to work.

This government just authorizes more temporary migrant workers, knowing full well that — regardless of their formal rights — they are in no position to complain.

It’s one thing for the Harper Conservatives to return us to the status of a resource economy. It is another for them to insist that we become a low-wage resource economy.

- Meanwhile, Public Values catches the McGuinty Libs laying off labour investigators to match the number of enforcement officers they hired to much fanfare earlier this summer.

- Susan Delacourt has some suggestions to replace the current trend of top-down political advertising with more balanced forms of communication:

(I)f we are interested in curing our politicians of their advertising addiction, it seems there are two things we might want to demand.

One would be for some kind of limits on political advertising in between elections. We set spending limits during the formal campaign period so that the playing field is reasonably level; to ensure that no one has an unfair advantage in the bid to pummel citizens with propaganda.

It may be time for us to recognize that the election campaign never really stops in Canada these days — that the ad wars are a permanent fixture on the political landscape.

As for the government’s advertising addiction, that’s harder to cure, or even regulate. But as a start, we could maybe ask that the people in charge of the country spend as much money listening to the citizens as they do in talking at them.

- Tom Blackwell reports on Nipa Banerjee's conclusion that $1.5 billion in Afghanistan aid spending under the Cons bought Canada little beyond a few photo ops.

- And finally, CBC reports on the Sask Party's musings about selling off the Information Services Corporation. Needless to say, answers as to why in the world public corporate and land titles registries would be handed over to private operators (particularly given that the province will plainly need to ensure their continued adherence to legislated standards) do not figure to be forthcoming.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Mitchell Anderson's final report on Norway's highly successful management of its oil resources puts Canada's current philosophy to the test:

Seen through this lens, how is Canada doing? Abysmally...:

1. Dependency. Even with our vast oil wealth, Canada currently relies on other countries for about 50 per cent of our supply -- so-called "unethical oil" from the volatile Middle East. Proposals to pipe unrefined bitumen from western Canada to Asia will increase this dangerous dependence since Alberta will have to import vast amounts of condensate from the Middle East to dilute thick bitumen enough for pipeline transport.

2. Staying in the red. Alberta has been unable to balance the books since 2007, burning through $17.7 billion of past oil wealth, with another $3 billion deficit forecast for the coming budget.

3. Draining at full tilt. Labour and production costs are through the roof, at least until the next employment bust. Both the Alberta Federation of Labour and the late premier Peter Lougheed have both called for slower (sic) the pace of oil sands growth. Ten proposed upgrades have been cancelled since the 2007 recession, replaced instead with pipeline proposals for unprocessed diluted bitumen. With resource values rising relative to global currencies, what's the rush?

4. Getting global black eye. The oil sands have such a credibility problem the Alberta government spends $25 million a year countering "baseless" criticism from environmental groups. 

 - Ken Coran and Ken Lewenza highlight the value of allowing unions and management to reach deals that make sense for a particular workplace, rather than having decrees issued from on high. But sadly, the only negotiations the McGuinty Libs seem prepared to accept are their own dealings with Tim Hudak and his party to eliminate workers' right to bargain collectively.

- Thomas Walkom describes the XL Beef E. coli disaster as the Harper Cons' Walkerton moment - and it would indeed seem to be about time to recognize the practical consequences of ineffective regulation. But Postmedia reports that the Cons aren't done making matters worse - planning instead to cut food safety programs by tens of millions of dollars more.

- Finally, Polly Toynbee discusses Ed Miliband's new "One Nation Labour" theme - with a particular focus on how it serves to promote cooperation rather than competition in public services:

Watch [the Conservatives] writhe as One Nation Labour encapsulates everything divisive they do, from Cameron's tax bonus for millionaires to his cruellest cuts for the disabled. Divide and rule is the Cameron hallmark, north against south, the in-work against the workless, private against public employees, young against old, exam-passers versus plebs. How clever to pilfer a Tory phrase with no intention of blurring boundaries or triangulating into Tory turf.

Subtlety is Miliband's style. So when he said to voters he understood "why you turned away from Labour", that was enough, everyone knows the reasons why. Of Cameron, he said he understood "why people gave him the benefit of the doubt" – but then he walloped him from here to kingdom come for inflicting all this pain to cut the deficit only to send it soaring higher than ever.

His words on the NHS brought the hall to its feet. A One Nation NHS means repealing the act that forces hospital to compete with hospital, instead of co-operating in common cause. Banks, businesses, schools, jobs – that One Nation phrase will suit everything Labour needs to say. It stands for the squeezed middle as well as the poor.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Thomas Walkom discusses how the McGuinty Libs are going beyond imposing immediate pay freezes on the public sector, and instead passing what's better seen as the War on Workers Measures Act - giving Ontario's government the power to dictate labour outcomes by decree without any forum for review:

If approved by the legislature, the Protecting Public Services bill would allow the government to not just freeze the wages it pays to unionized employees — ranging from nurses to home care workers to hydro linemen — but roll them back.

It would give cabinet the power to scrap or modify salary grids — as it has already done with the province’s teachers. The government would also be able to unilaterally change or eliminate any non-wage benefits unionized public sector workers now receive.

And the bill would bar unions from either striking or appealing such decisions to the courts.
For essential services such as hospitals, where workers are already barred from striking, the bill would prevent contract arbitrators from basing their rulings on either the Canadian constitution or the Ontario Human Rights Code.

Indeed, the arbitration section is perhaps the most internally contradictory part of the draft legislation.

Arbitration is based on the notion of having a fair-minded umpire decide issues that management and workers cannot. But this bill would allow that fair-minded umpire’s decision to be overturned by the government, which to all intents and purposes is management.

 - Toby Sanger points out that even the Fraser Institute's latest studies serve to thoroughly undermine blind faith in a corporatist market - at least, if one reads past the heavily-spun headlines to the actual data.

- George Monbiot highlights the social denialism of the uber-rich:

We could call it Romnesia: the ability of the very rich to forget the context in which they made their money. To forget their education, inheritance, family networks, contacts and introductions. To forget the workers whose labour enriched them. To forget the infrastructure and security, the educated workforce, the contracts, subsidies and bailouts the government provided.
...
As the developed nations succumb to extreme inequality and social immobility, the myth of the self-made man becomes ever more potent. It is used to justify its polar opposite: an unassailable rent-seeking class, deploying its inherited money to finance the seizure of other people's wealth.
The crudest exponent of Romnesia is the Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart. "There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire," she insists. "If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain; do something to make more money yourselves – spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising and more time working … Remember our roots, and create your own success."

Remembering her roots is what Rinehart fails to do. She forgot to add that if you want to become a millionaire – in her case a billionaire – it helps to inherit an iron ore mine and a fortune from your father and to ride a spectacular commodities boom. Had she spent her life lying in bed and throwing darts at the wall, she would still be stupendously rich.

Rich lists are stuffed with people who either inherited their money or who made it through rent-seeking activities: by means other than innovation and productive effort. They're a catalogue of speculators, property barons, dukes, IT monopolists, loan sharks, bank chiefs, oil sheikhs, mining magnates, oligarchs and chief executives paid out of all proportion to any value they generate. Looters, in short. The richest mining barons are those to whom governments sold natural resources for a song. Russian, Mexican and British oligarchs acquired underpriced public assets through privatisation, and now run a toll-booth economy. Bankers use incomprehensible instruments to fleece their clients and the taxpayer. But as rentiers capture the economy, the opposite story must be told.

- But even as the corporatist worldview is exposed as a sham, Patrick Diamond notes that there's still plenty of need for progressive parties to better describe and defend an alternative.

- Finally, Gerald Caplan responds to the inevitable wave of talk about a Justin Trudeau leadership run by asking a rather pertinent question as to whether the Libs themselves take him seriously based on his roles in the party's caucus.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Althia Raj reports on the Cons' concerted effort to undermine organized labour in Canada (along with anybody else who might object to putting the interests of dirty oil and dirty money above the needs of citizens):

Behind the rhetoric about “union bosses” and “transparency” lies a strategy, political observers say, that stokes controversies and throws up red herrings in order to force key opponents on the defensive — in this case, Canada’s labour movement and the NDP.

“The whole approach is not to push your guy but to totally demean and to discredit and to vilify your opponent so that the only person left standing in the ring is your own person,” said Nelson Wiseman, a political scientist at University of Toronto.
...
Critics of the government, such as Sierra Club of Canada executive director John Bennett, see a wider game of political distraction at play — the kind the Tories perfected last winter when they accused environmental groups of being radicals backed by foreign interests.

For months, environmentalists were forced to explain their activities and funding sources while the Harper government crafted a budget that scrapped decades of environmental legislation the groups had fought for.

The campaign began in January, when Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver suggested “radical groups” were out to destroy Canada’s economy. Environment Minister Peter Kent raised the spectre of charitable groups “laundering” foreign funds in Canada. And Conservative senators launched an inquiry into the "interference of foreign foundations in Canada’s domestic affairs and their abuse of Canada’s existing Revenue Canada charitable status.”

“It was a total distraction,” Bennett said. “I think that is what they wanted us to do — to be messaging not the vision of a sustainable future but rather the complaints of an interest group.

“And I think they are doing the same thing to the unions,” he said.

- Meanwhile, Kathryn May highlights the next step in the attack on public-sector workers, as the Cons are trying to impose a two-tier workforce.

- And Adam Radwanski discusses the McGuinty Libs' plans to test the limits as to how many labour rights they can strip away under the Charter. Which would be a dubious enough strategy even if it wasn't based on a false claim that public-sector wages are headed in a different direction than private-sector ones.

- Charmaine Borg stands up for the privacy concerns of Canadians in the wake of Facebook's timeline fiasco. And Megan Leslie calls for an end to the Cons' shredding of environmental standards.

- Finally, Paul Wells catches some major problems in the China trade deal the Cons want to push through without debate:

Why am I dragging you through all this business about dispute-settlement arbitration? Because things are getting crazy out there, and by “out there” I mean “wherever China doesn’t like the way a business deal turns out.” Say hello to Belgium, where on Monday the Chinese insurance company Ping An filed an arbitration claim worth $3 billion. In 2008 a Chinese SOE bought a Belgian bank. The global economy went through the ensuing turmoil and the Chinese firm lost its shirt. Which is, you know, life, but the Chinese firm figures the government of Belgium owes it the $3 billion it lost, and the arbitration mechanism will now consider the claim seriously.

“This might signal the beginning of a wave of Chinese claims if you think about the commodities they’ve been buying, and the investments they’ve made in commodity-related companies around the world,” a British trade lawyer told Reuters, while freaking ominous music played in the background if you’re reading his quote in Canada. ”There are bound to be any number of outward investments they have made in the last five to ten years which may now be starting to run into problems.”

So, you know, good luck. The FIPA, tabled yesterday, is available for consultation at the link above for 21 Parliamentary sitting days, at which point it comes into force without need for a vote in the House of Commons.

That's right: in addition to facilitating a takeover of our natural resources, the Cons may also be committing to have the Canadian public foot the bill for any investments that don't turn out as hoped. 

Saturday Afternoon Links

This and that to end your Saturday.

- As pointed out by Paul Krugman, Kathleen Geier recognizes an obvious possible cause of a declining life expectancy for some less-wealthy Americans:

I will offer an alternative hypothesis, one which is not explicitly identified in the Times article: inequality. In the U.S., the period between 1990 and 2008, which is a period that saw such steep declines in life expectancy for the least well-off white people, is also a period during which economic inequality soared. Moreover, there is a compelling body of research that suggests that inequality itself — quite apart from low incomes, or lack of health insurance — is associated with more negative health outcomes for those at the bottom of the heap. One of the most famous series of studies of the social determinants of health, Britain’s Whitehall Studies, had as their subjects British civil servants, all of whom health insurance and (presumably) decent enough jobs. Intriguingly, these studies

found a strong association between grade levels of civil servant employment and mortality rates from a range of causes. Men in the lowest grade (messengers, doorkeepers, etc.) had a mortality rate three times higher than that of men in the highest grade (administrators).

...
I believe that inequality-related stressors are likely to be the determining factors in declining American life expectancies, as well. I’m surprised, in fact, that the Times article did not specifically identify inequality as a causal factor, because the health risks associated with economic inequality are well-established in the scientific literature. For decades, the United States has been making a series of political choices that has distributed wealth and power upwards and left working Americans not only poorer and sicker, but also feeling far more burdened and distressed, and experiencing far less security and control over their lives. The consequences of these choices have been devastating, and absent a dramatic reversal in our political course, they are likely to get even worse. Where inequality is concerned, Republicans have their foot on the accelerator, while the best the Democrats seem to be able to do is to (temporarily) put their foot on the brake.

- And Adam Davidson-Harden recognizes the need to reverse the trend of social backsliding arising out of increased inequality as a crucial reason why we need fight back against attacks on labour and other progressive forces:

If I was a betting man (which I'm not), I'd put my money behind the idea that the Ontario Liberals thought they could win a majority government out of declaring war on teachers in the recent round of byelections. Of course, they were wrong on that score, but they are still working on a strategy that banks on austerity as a key plank in their platform, from the Drummond report on.

The snake-oil consists of a fairly simple, business and bank-approved message: we can't afford social programs anymore. We need to retrench them and cut everything in the public sector. We don't have the money (repeat that last five times or more to get the general point). Meanwhile, Ontario sports some of the lowest corporate taxes in any developed economy.

Rolling over sends a message to the political prophets and priests of austerity. It says to them: 'well, maybe we have things too good after all. Maybe the rights, benefits and working conditions/learning conditions we've won are too much. Maybe we don't deserve them.' Rolling over under assault is giving up, and giving up is interpreted by employers and governments as simply acknowledging that they're right, that austerity is the default, inevitable, unavoidable, a universal fate of retrenching social programs.   

- Meanwhile, Althia Raj reports that Ontario is just one of far too many provinces with no interest in protecting its interests while negotiating the CETA. But it's worth noting that such agreements are normally designed to ensure the ongoing erosion of democratic power no matter who holds office at any given time: exemptions can't be added without other parties' agreement, but can be permanently destroyed by a single term of a right-wing government.

- Finally, John Geddes' profile of Tom Mulcair is well worth a read.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Tim Harper weighs in on the Cons' latest campaign of coordinated lies, and notes that the NDP looks to have learned one important lesson in how to respond:

The NDP may be here at the federal level for the first time, but they appear to have learned the first lesson when dodging such volleys — respond.

No charge is too ridiculous or over-the-top to be ignored.

The term Swiftboating entered the North American political lexicon because John Kerry took a holiday in 2004 rather than respond to Vietnam Swiftboat vets who questioned his war record.

So far, New Democrats have been up to the task, but when facing a government that never stops campaigning, the opposition will have to use a lot of its time in the spotlight parrying rather than proposing. 

- Meanwhile, Elections Canada is considering regulating at least some of the most obvious potential sources for abuse of citizens' information by political parties.

- Dan Gardner longs for the day when evidence-based policy will be a basic expectation for government of all stripes. But that vision seems rather far off when the Cons can't discard anything which might produce evidence fast enough - especially if that means that useful data will be solely in the hands of their oil-sector benefactors.

- Finally, pogge compares the McGuinty Libs' consistent pattern of cuts and attacks on public services in the name of deficit reduction to their mealy-mouthed waffling when it comes to earning value for the province's own resources. And John Jacobs notes how the Harper Cons' CETA fetish figures to make matters worse.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Kady points out that despite the Cons' best efforts to stonewall, the Robocon investigation in Guelph looks to have locked in on the source of their fraudulent robocalls. And while it's indeed somewhat concerning that Elections Canada hasn't reached anywhere near the same depth of investigation when it comes to the other 234 ridings where voters have reported questionable calls, a solid case aimed at an individual who took steps to cover his tracks may be just the opening needed to get at the party's wider scheme.

- pogge duly slams Jim Flaherty's economic inaction plan:

You can be sure that the fragility of the recovery will continue to be invoked to justify all manner of government actions. For public consumption, the Harper Government™ will still be focusing like a laser on the economy. But as Flaherty acknowledges here, the main thrust of the government's economic policy will continue to be to give our corporate overlords what they ask for. If things take a turn for the worse, don't look for much help from the Conservatives. If you're a corporation the government is here to help you. If you're a citizen, you're on your own.

- Meanwhile, Jim Stanford follows up on Mark Carney's address to the CAW by pointing out some common ground as to how to improve Canada industrial productivity. And Dan Gardner discusses how the give-business-everything-it-asks-for strategy has proven a miserable failure for the past decade:

If we don’t close that gap, our prosperity will slip away when the commodity boom goes. And the commodity boom will go. They all do.

So how do we improve productivity? “Twenty years ago we created a laundry list of the things we needed to change in the policy front and productivity would blossom,” says Don Drummond, one of the country’s leading economists. “And you know, we changed most of them but productivity didn’t blossom.”

Canadian corporations got lower taxes and all sorts of incentives to invest. But they didn’t, and they aren’t, at least not at anything like the rate that’s needed.  According to the C.D. Howe Institute, investment per worker has risen from $10,100 in 2009 to $11,600 in 2011. But in 2011, American companies invested $13,200 per worker.

“We are heavily underinvested in machinery and equipment, particularly high technology stuff, relative to the U.S.,” notes Don Drummond. “We have roughly half the stock of machinery and equipment per hour worked in Canada that the U.S. does.” The figures for research and development are even worse: Canadian business spends about one per cent of GDP on it, compared to two per cent in the U.S. and 2.5 per cent in Japan, the Scandinavian countries, and others in the OECD.

- Finally, as Thomas Walkom notes, there isn't any real distinction between the Harper Cons and the McGuinty Libs when it comes to squeezing the middle class for corporate gain:

(T)his government wants public-sector workers to get less than nothing. Even the unions’ offer for a zero increase isn’t enough. The Liberal bill would arbitrarily strip away benefits that were previously bargained and keep all but the newest teachers at journeyman wage rates.

And if teachers don’t like it, there is little they can do. The bill would not let them withdraw their labour in protest.

If teachers were deemed essential workers, such a strike ban might make sense. Police officers, for instance, can’t go on strike.

But if teachers were defined as essential workers, the government would have to treat them fairly. It wouldn’t be able to impose a settlement. It would have to let an impartial arbitrator decide.

And my guess is that no impartial arbitrator would give teachers less than nothing.

Tim Hudak’s Conservatives are at least up front on this issue. Hudak seems to believe that unions are evil. He is an honest troglodyte.

The Liberals are more duplicitous. They work to cripple trade unionism while protesting that they are friends to the middle class that such unions protect.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher keep up their reporting on Robocon by noting that Elections Canada's trail seems to have gone cold with the use of an unsecured wifi connection to hide the identity of Pierre Poutine. But as Susan Delacourt points out, that fact only confirms that the Cons' election fraud seems to have been rather deliberately planned to escape detection.

- Meanwhile, Delacourt also laments the effect of "churnalism" in which the media serves largely as a conduit for government or business talking points:

Harper has not held a news conference around Parliament Hill since 2009 and has succeeded in drawing strict limits around media access to his government. “It’s not that he hates the media,” one Conservative MP said to me earlier this year. “It’s more that he has no respect for them.”

Why has this worked so well for Harper? Probably because the public buys the idea, frequently put forward by the Conservatives and their allies, that the media is little more than a delivery system for the “spin” the politicians like to spout.

Watching most of those MP panels on TV, or wading into the daily scrums in the foyer of the Commons, it’s hard to disagree with that assessment. That’s not debate we’re seeing — it’s just people reciting well-rehearsed lines, speaking past each other, and certainly not answering any questions.

In the print realm, meanwhile, politicians and their handlers are now fond of replying to media questions with sparse, fact-free emails, timed to arrive just before deadline, so there is no opportunity for follow-up or subsequent queries.

All of this has been rightly dubbed “churnalism” — the practice in which journalists simply take the PR material handed to them and churn it out to their readers or viewers.
...
Any solution, though, is going to have to address this issue of the “churn” and the spin. It won’t be easy. By any rough count, the growing number of communications professionals on Parliament Hill (about 1,500 in government alone, according to a Hill Times tally) vastly outpaces the ranks of the media (around 400 in the press gallery, and shrinking, it seems, monthly.)

The number that should focus the collective media mind, however, is that 78 per cent figure south of the border — all those people who now view political reporting in the same, dim light as they view the politicians.

And that may not be because the media is the enemy of politicians, but because it’s grown too accommodating to the spin and talking points.

- And on a related note, Peter O'Neil learns not to take the self-serving statements of dirty oil advocates at face value.

- Irene Mathyssen discusses why the Cons' push for privatized pensions doesn't figure to provide retirement security for Canadians:

The regulations surrounding the administration of PRPPs are yet to be established; but unless the cost of administration is low, and unless the pooled amount of investment is high -- which is unlikely given the non-mandatory nature of the plan -- PRPPs will not be any more relevant as a retirement savings option to Canadian workers than RRSPs. In other words, the banks will profit and workers will continue to struggle to make ends meet before and after retirement.

The voluntary nature of this savings plan is not the only drawback. PRPPs as a retirement savings vehicle function like RRSPs. They are taxed on withdrawal and affect net eligibility for Old Age Security (OAS). PRPPs and RRSPs only serve middle- to high-income earners (those averaging wages of $50,000 or more) at retirement. Workers making less actually run the risk having their income drop to below poverty levels at retirement because of the fact that their PRPP income is taxed and clawed back from OAS eligibility.

- Finally, Bob Hepburn documents the remarkable story of the McGuinty Libs releasing outdated and inaccurate data as an excuse to close Ontario Place just as it was in danger of proving a smashing success.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Jonathan Chait points out how the gap between the citizens hardest hit by a weak economy and a political class which faces virtually none of its effects explains the lack of urgency in dealing with mass unemployment:

The political scientist Larry Bartels has found (and measured) that members of Congress respond much more strongly to the preferences of their affluent constituents than their poor ones. And for affluent people, there is essentially no recession. Unemployment for workers with a bachelors degree is 4 percent — boom times. Unemployment is also unusually low in the Washington, D.C., area, owing to our economy’s reliance on federal spending, which has not had to impose the punishing austerity of so many state and local governments.

I live in a Washington neighborhood almost entirely filled with college-educated professionals, and it occurred to me not long ago that, when my children grow up, they’ll have no personal memory of having lived through the greatest economic crisis in eighty years. It is more akin to a famine in Africa. For millions and millions of Americans, the economic crisis is the worst event of their lives. They have lost jobs, homes, health insurance, opportunities for their children, seen their skills deteriorate, and lost their sense of self-worth. But from the perspective of those in a position to alleviate their suffering, the crisis is merely a sad and distant tragedy. 

- David Atkins follows up on digby's analysis as to how a push for additional handouts to the rich is aimed at insulated today's upper class from the vagaries of luck which helped it to win a privileged position in the first place. But as thwap points out, there are some wealthier citizens who are looking to improve matters for all rather than closing off the path behind them - and we should be happy to encourage that sentiment.

- Meanwhile, Sid Ryan discusses one of the obvious elements of that effort: a focus on "flexible" labour which ensures that ensures most workers have neither reasonable wages nor any job security. (And lest there be any doubt, there's plenty of desire for the latter.) But sadly, far too many anti-worker governments - including Dalton McGuinty's Libs - seem to prefer picking fights with workers to keep them as insecure as possible.

- Finally, Ken MacQueen neatly sums up the Cons' Olympic spirit.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Jeffrey Simpson criticizes the Cons for killing off the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy as punishment for telling the truth about climate change at its own request:

In a letter to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE), Mr. Kent said it was in a “unique position” to offer advice on sustainable development. The government had asked the NRTEE in the past to “conduct research and provide advice on key and emerging issues.” Now, Mr. Kent was asking the NRTEE, with its “unique position,” to conduct a comprehensive review of provincial climate-change plans.

A year after the request and the nice comments about the NRTEE’s past work, however, the Harper government killed the agency in the 2012 budget.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird lashed out at the NRTEE, saying it had repeatedly called for a carbon tax that Canadians had rejected. That statement, typically partisan given the source, was completely false. No matter, the Harper government killed the agency, quite likely because it isn’t much interested in sustainable development.

The NRTEE goes out of business next March, but it did complete the assignment it was given by Mr. Kent. Its report, released last week – the most comprehensive study of where Canada is at in reducing greenhouse gas emissions – suggests why the Harper government wanted to close it.

 - But then, Michael Harris notes that the environment is just one of many casualties of the Cons' stay in power:

With the specter of the Parliamentary Budget Officer taking the Clerk of the Privy Council to court, a momentous question looms over our public affairs: will the Harper government answer a single legitimate question about its conduct of Canada’s public business?

Or is the government’s message that we can all go pleasure ourselves until 2015?
...
As everybody knows, the vast majority of C-38 has nothing to do with the finances of the country. That makes it a legislative stealth attack, a fraud upon the democratic system. Yet those in the indentured press are already rhapsodizing about the PM’s political acuity. For passing C-38? That’s like praising a firing squad for getting the job done — after all, the target is blindfolded, tied down, and unarmed.

- And Andrew Coyne writes that some of the Cons' supposed core ideals are among the most obvious casualties of the Harper spin machine.

- Meanwhile, Michael Hurley points out that the Ontario Libs' own omnibus budget included loosening the rules on P3 disasters just like the ORNGE scandal that's already caused so much trouble for McGuinty and company. And Thomas Walkom observes that the "trojan horse" criticism applies just as much to Ontario's budget bill as the federal one.

- Finally, Canadians for Tax Fairness rightly highlights the widespread public support for the type of financial transaction tax that the Cons have deliberately blocked on the international stage.

Pathologies revealed

Paul Wells is right to point out the parallels between the McGuinty Libs' environmentally-destructive, all-or-nothing omnibus bill and the similar legislation being rammed through Parliament by the Harper Cons. But there's an even more telling connection between Ontario and federal politics.

At the time they presented their 2008 FU to a country headed into a recession, the Cons had a theory as to how they might manage to maintain their hold on power:

(According to "various and sundry Conservative pundits, both official and unofficial"), the Conservatives are counting on the NDP eventually coming around to their point of view, on the theory that Jack Layton and company’s almost pathological desire to destroy the Liberal Party forever will override any short-term concern over losing a few million dollars a year.

Needless to say, the bet that the NDP would be more focused on attacking the Libs than policy outcomes proved a disastrous one. But it also strikes me as one of the most important windows on the Conservative soul we've seen since the party took power. After all, since the expectation that a party would be willing to vote against everything it stands for solely to make life difficult for the Libs obviously wasn't based on the actual NDP, it presumably reflected the Cons' own mindset.

And in Ontario, we now seem to have confirmation of that fact.

By all rights, the PCs would have been expected to reject the NDP's amendments - which in aiming to preserve public services and environmental protection run contrary to both the PCs' own values, and the exact policies being implemented by their federal cousins. But unlike Jack Layton's NDP, Tim Hudak and his MPPs apparently have no qualms about voting against everything they believe in for the sake of making life difficult for their neighbourhood Liberal party.

Of course, Layton's principled stand helped to lay the groundwork for the NDP's rise to the forefront of federal politics. And one might hope for the converse to prove true as well, with Hudak paying a steep price for his party's complete lack of principle.

But there's one problem with that prospect, as the McGuinty Libs seem utterly tone-deaf as to whose position deserves to be attacked. Faced with two opposing parties - one genuinely trying to improve legislation in accordance with its own values, and another manifesting pathological hatred which overrides any values it could otherwise claim - McGuinty and his henchmen have somehow decided to target only the former. 


That figures to let Hudak off the hook for what would otherwise be a flashing neon warning sign about his unfitness for office (not to mention an opportunity to turn much of the corporate community against the PCs). But hopefully it will also serve to highlight the distinction between Andrea Horwath's efforts to make things better and McGuinty's insistence that no such thing is possible - which at least at the federal level was exactly the combination which has the Libs questioning their own existence.

Tuesday Evening Links

Assorted content to end your day.

- Carol Goar asked this weekend for a reasonable explanation as to how to allocate the pain in times of austerity. Not surprisingly, the McGuinty Libs came to the wrong answer - and the Harper Cons figure to do even worse. Meanwhile, Trish Hennessy comments on the power of "austerity" as a concept (while Paul Krugman duly mocks the latest attempt to spin it).

- Min discusses the Cons' seemingly bottomless supply of free money for the oil sector even as they slash anything else within reach. And Andrew Nikiforuk highlights the Cons' quasi-religious devotion to the tar sands as the only explanation for many of their decisions.

- Andrew Jackson writes that the Cons' plans to attack OAS won't actually produce any savings - only serve the purpose of making social supports less effective.

- Finally, for those wondering how long it would take for a Lawyers for Fair Taxation group to develop, the answer was...not long at all.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Erin nicely summarizes Don Drummond's report on Ontario's finances. But it's worth noting that leaving aside Drummond's own choice not to follow the instruction, anybody looking for a thorough analysis of Ontario's fiscal realities should be able to discount the report in its entirety based on the fact that Dalton McGuinty's marching orders included an instruction not to even look at how revenue increases might help to address deficits.

- Frances Russell points out how Enbridge's Gateway pipeline could inflict direct economic damage on Canada. But lest there be any doubt who to blame for the attempts to ram the project down the country's throat, Mike de Souza reports that even Enbridge itself doesn't want to rush the environmental approval process at the breakneck pace being encouraged by the Harper Cons.

- Meanwhile, Shawn McCarthy confirms that the Cons' list of civil society groups being targeted as "extremist" threats includes the likes of Greenpeace.

- Finally, Ken Gray describes the Cons' insistence on pushing ahead with F-35s as a betrayal of reality-based fiscal conservatism. And the utter absence of any backup plan can only make the Cons' folly look all the worse.

Thursday Evening Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Andrew Jackson notes that the IMF is telling countries in Canada's position to hold off on gratuitous austerity. And Trish Hennessy wonders why so many Canadians seem to have forgotten what happened last time budget-slashing was in vogue.

- Meanwhile, Erin documents how Ontario's corporate tax giveaways have produced zero return in terms of investment. And Martin Regg Cohn wonders whether a government eager to take on bullying in schools and communities has any interest in applying the same principles when it's being pushed around by shameless corporate bullies.

- Kev notes that the Cons are giving away far more than they have to in order to complete a free trade deal with the European Union by comparing a similar deal being negotiated by India. But is there much evidence that the Cons aren't actively looking for excuses to, say, hand over another pile of free money to big pharma?

- Laura Ryckewaert points out how the NDP's planning in buying its headquarters has helped to position the party for the longer term. But I do think it's a bit speculative to suggest that the building will make a big difference in election financing: is there any evidence to suggest that any party has had any trouble securing loans for national party financing, with or without real estate to pledge as collateral?

- Finally, Greg Marchildon rightly argues that we should be looking to complete the final phase of Tommy Douglas' vision for health care - rather than looking for excuses to trash it as so many want to do.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- It's bad enough that what's passing for climate change discussion is an agreement to keep meeting for years on end that doesn't really advance matters any from the early '90s.

- But lest there be any doubt, the Cons aren't quite happy enough with the results of their obstructionism to be willing to live up to even the deal they describe as "fair and balanced":

"Canada has been clear that we would not undertake a second Kyoto commitment period. Nor will we devote scarce dollars to capitalize the new Green Climate Fund - part of the Durban agreement - until all major emitters accept legally binding reduction targets and transparent accounting of greenhouse gas inventory.

Anybody who can see the slightest difference between that direct statement that the Cons will ignore the Durban agreement and the Libs' lack of interest in living up to Kyoto from day one is invited to start spinning now.

- NPR tests whether anybody within the Republicans' much-touted group of "millionaire job creators" is willing to go on record saying that their taxes shouldn't be raised. And not surprisingly, nobody seems to want to take up the offer - while at least a few are entirely happy to pitch in a fairer share.

- Meanwhile, Eric Reguly highlights how Europe's embrace of gratuitous austerity is only making matters worse.

- Finally, Martin Regg Cohn has some valuable advice for Dalton McGuinty - which could well do wonders on the economic front as well as the political one:

The NDP’s suggestion: rather than give corporations a blank cheque, let’s reward them with specific tax credits for creating jobs. Boss, you were just saying the other day that setting targets is the best way to get results, so this is right down your alley.

You’re always saying, “there’s never a wrong time to do the right thing.” This is the right time to recalibrate, because we’re hemorrhaging revenues with the depressed economic outlook. And we can truthfully tell business they’re still getting a good deal: “You have to talk about the entire bargain you’re getting.”

This is about fairness and optics, tactics and timing. And surviving. Enjoy the holiday, it won’t last long.