New column day

Here, on how the rise of Rachel Notley's NDP serves largely to bring Alberta's political system into step with those of its regional neighbours.

For further reading...
- Murray Mandryk had previously pointed out why we should be cautious about reading too much into the Alberta results. But the most important distinction looks to be that Saskatchewan is currently functioning as a pure two-party system - so the support level which won Rachel Notley a resounding majority would leave the NDP on Saskatchewan's opposition benches.
- Dan Arnold and Andrew Coyne both confirm that a progressive victory in Alberta shouldn't be too much of a surprise.
- Finally, Jeremy Nuttall examines how the NDP's win may affect the federal political scene, while Tim Harper and Chantal Hebert also weigh in.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Julian Beltrame reports on the Cons' concerted efforts to add to corporate bottom lines by attacking working Canadians:

One of the measures is so sneaky, says NDP MP Pat Martin, nobody seemed to notice the line buried deep in the 452-page Bill C-38 that simply states, "The Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act is repealed," giving no explanation.

With those 10 words, Ottawa intends to wipe out a 1985 law compelling contractors bidding on federal contracts to pay "fair wages" and overtime.

"I would have missed it and I'm from that industry. It was number 68 of 70 bills that they changed," said Martin, a former journeyman carpenter and construction worker.

Martin notes that unlike most measures in the budget bill, there was no prior discussion of the measure or even a signal such a change was contemplated.

"It's a solution without a problem. The only conclusion I can come up with is that it's a war on labour and the left. It's what the Americans did with the right-to-work states and the end result is $8 or $9 an hour is now the average wage in places like North Carolina."
...
(Perrin Beatty's claim that employers will take anybody willing to work) is hard to square with a national unemployment rate of 7.3 per cent, and new figures showing there are 5.8 unemployed workers for every vacancy. Officially, there were 1.37 million Canadians actively looking for work in April, and that doesn't count the hundreds of thousands of discouraged workers, involuntarily self-employed or part-timers wishing to be employed full-time.

Labour economist Erin Weir of the United Steelworkers says he has never bought the labour shortage argument, noting that in a market economy if that were the case wages would be increasing. Instead, they are barely keeping up with inflation.

 - Tim Harper criticizes the Cons' EI slashing as well for pushing Canadians into dead-end jobs. And Susan Riley echoes the point that the Cons' plan has nothing at all to do with evidence or reality:

It sometimes seems the only people slow to understand that the majority of jobless Canadians are not scofflaws, living the high life on their $485 (maximum) weekly benefit while “suitable” jobs go begging, sit in the Harper cabinet.

Finley has repeatedly advanced the hoary myth that EI benefits can be a “disincentive” to finding work. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, hearkening back to his days as a taxi driver and hockey referee, grumped that “there are no bad jobs.” And Jason Kenney, the hard-working immigration minister, seems to think the unemployed need to be prodded to drive to the next community to work, even though his home province is teeming with Maritimers who have left behind family and friends in pursuit of a paycheque.

In fact, senior federal officials predict fewer than one per cent of current EI recipients will be denied benefits as a result of these changes — which suggests “abuse” is hardly widespread. In that light, the Finley reforms look like a solution in search of a problem.
... 

Like other elements of the sprawling “budget” bill, the EI measures, to take effect in 2013, seem hasty, driven by anecdote rather than evidence, much less face-to-face consultation with those affected. They will likely be marginal in impact, for better or worse.

- Seth Klein points out that increasing inequality (which the Cons are doing so much to exacerbate) figures to be a major obstacle in the way of action on climate change.

- Finally, Dan Arnold nicely sums up the most important takeaway from David Wilks' remarkable shift from claiming he'd oppose his government's omnibus bill if only he thought it could make a difference, to falling back in line:

(T)he man has no one to blame for this controversy other than himself. If he truly supports the budget - as he now claims to do - he should have thanked his constituents for their feedback, said he'd consider what they said, then explained to them why he supported the budget.

If he truly opposes the budget - as he said he did yesterday - he should vote against it. Wilks is wrong when he says one MP can't make a difference. John Nunziata and Bill Casey brought more attention to the budgets they opposed than they ever would have by meekly supporting them. Michael Chong's opposition to the Quebec Nation resolution may have prevented Harper from going further down that road. I also like to think that the more acts of defiance we get, the more likely we are to see an attitudinal change in Ottawa that gives a greater say to individual MPs. Some may disagree with me, but I think that would be a welcome shift.

 [Update: fixed formatting.]

Thursday Evening Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- In the last couple of days' worth of developments on Robocon, the Cons defaulted to their standard setting of admitting nothing and misleading about everything - though it's hard to see that strategy working out well given the amount of information that's already coming to light. Dan Arnold and Michael Harris considered the necessary ingredients to make the electoral fraud into a lasting scandal. Trish Hennessy ran some numbers on vote suppression. Andrew Coyne lamented the state of Canada's institutional accountability, while Chantal Hebert hopes Elections Canada can get to the bottom of the fraud. While the Cons' latest spin is that their national party (which is of course already an admitted electoral cheater) had nothing to do with the scheme, Harold Albrecht has already acknowledged otherwise when it came to false calls in his own riding. And Sixth Estate identifies the various parts of the Cons' vote suppression organization while rightly suggesting that we focus on full disclosure and investigation rather than getting caught up the prospect of by-elections.

- Meanwhile, Helene Buzzetti exposes a new incarnation of Conadscam, as Quebec ridings once again plowed tens of thousands of dollars of claimed election spending into they-can't-explain-what in an apparent effort to shift expenses down from the national level.

- Barbara Yaffe compares the Cons' no-price-is-too-high attitude toward prison spending with their miserly attitude toward Canadian seniors. Which is surely the kind of unflattering comparison the Cons want to shut down by hiding the books from Parliament and the public alike.

- If we were lacking for reasons to doubt the spin of corporate tax-slashers, Erin provides them with a particular focus on an attempt to keep racing to the bottom ahead of the United States.

- Finally, the main difference between Richard Evans and a good chunk of the right-wing noise machine is that he's foolish enough to connect the dots in combining eliminationist rhetoric with hatred for anybody who isn't in the tank for the oil industry. But it's well worth highlighting just what happens when the dirty truth manages to seep out.

Blogger Battle Royale

CBC's Day 6 recruited yours truly for a political bloggers' bout against Dan Arnold and Stephen Taylor. Have a listen.