Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Andrew Nikiforuk writes that the decision to stop doing anything to limit the spread of COVID-19 is opening the door for a forever plague. Olivia Bowden and Kenyon Wallace report on the start of a summer COVID-19 wave in Ontario, while Cindy Harnett discusses how one is also cresting in British Columbia. And Erin Prater examines the groups of people (covering a large proportion of the population) who are most likely to be vulnerable to long COVID, while Megan Leonhardt reports on the failure of far too many employers to support workers who suffer from it. 

- Fawziah Rabiah-Mohammed, Abe Oudshoorn, Cindy Brown and Luc Theriault discuss the need for Canada to build more housing for immigrants and migrants. And Holly Funk writes that Saskatchewan's minimum wage continues to fall far short of what people need to live. 

- Lori Fox discusses British Columbia's climate refugees pushed out of their homes by unprecedented fires and smoke. And Thomson Reuters reports that glaciers are becoming increasingly unstable as our planet keeps overheating. 

- Finally, Dayne Patterson reports on the revelation that the RCMP spied on advocates for Medicare. And Dennis Gruending rightly treats that as an example of Canada's police state being used to push the wrong side of history. 

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Edward Xie and Danyaal Raza make the case for a basic services model to ensure people's needs are met as we recover from the coronavirus pandemic:

Meeting universal basic needs for participation, health and independence is not a simple consumer choice. Rather, it’s a minimum condition to ensure a vibrant and thriving democratic society. Sadly, personal income alone cannot create more space in a child-care centre, more beds in a well-staffed care home, or more rail and bus routes. You may have more money, but are you empowered to live and sustain a richer life?

What if more income wasn’t the only path to a better life? A basic service we’ve all experienced is so deep-seated that we take it for granted: we pay taxes for our public health-care system, but it’s free to use when we need it and supported as a matter of civic pride. Our health systems are further supported by monitoring and standards to address the variety of ways the benefits of health can be achieved. As our neighbours to the south know all too well,  trying to purchase a public good like this, out of your own pocket and through private markets, can quickly become expensive in a life-altering way. Yet we haven’t carried this lesson over to other basic services.

The truth is that Canada lags other rich countries in social spending for public programs that improve health, assist children and seniors, and protect us from poverty and unemployment. Research shows that we stand to reap large rewards from boosting our basic health and social services. In their absence, COVID-19 has exposed these long-standing gaps as a precarious reality for too many of us in Canada.

Broadening the scope of what might transition from the CERB, a national approach to public “basic services” complements the undisputed importance of income by ensuring our shared needs are securely met in an uncertain world. It’s already supported by experts in the UK and Canada. They point out that the greatest needs are those that form a basic standard of living and support the determinants of health: clean water, pharmacare, safe and affordable housing, good-quality child and long-term care, and transportation and internet services that rapidly connect this vast country, among others. 

Calling them “basic” recognizes that these services are building blocks for a strong society, as essential for a thriving nation as roads and bridges, and an essential responsibility of governments to deliver. For workers stranded by changing trends in labour conditions and the economic shutdown, expanding access to basic services may provide lasting support while maintaining impetus for better employment standards. Ensuring access to high-quality basic services for everyone can also begin to address existing injustices, particularly to Indigenous peoples, with inclusive design and adequate funding from the start.

- Meanwhile, Rosa Saba reports on yet more research showing how residents in for-profit long-term care facilities have suffered far worse health outcomes than those in public or not-for-profit homes.

- The Atkinson Foundation has offered a set of recommendations to ensure that Employment Insurance actually provides replacement income for the people who need it. And Dennis Gruending offers a look at how the NDP has pushed for vital supports in response to COVID-19 in light of the consistent choices of the Libs and Cons to strip EI of needed capacity.

- Van Badham comments on the absurdity of right-wing politicians continuing to attack unemployed people for failing to find nonexistent work in the midst of a pandemic. And Nick Bonyhady reports that some unions in Australia are seeing their membership grow as workers recognize the need for a voice and a power base in the workplace.

- Finally, Emily Pasiuk reports on the Saskatchewan parents who are increasingly (and justifiably) worried about Scott Moe's decision to reopen schools without giving any meaningful thought to how that can be done safely. And Poverty Free Saskatchewan highlights just a few of the elements of the Saskatchewan Party's pandemic budget which cry out for improvement.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Dennis Gruending discusses the significance of the climate crisis in Canada's federal election. And Sarah Jones interviews Ann Pettifor about the importance of a Green New Deal - and the barriers corporatists have placed in the way of every previous effort to develop a clean and sustainable economy.

- Meanwhile, Maureen Tkacik connects the financialization of Boeing's business model to deaths caused by its faulty 737 Max jets.

- Stephanie Taylor reports on the FSIN's call for Saskatchewan to follow British Columbia's leadership in ending "birth alerts". And Jorge Barrera reports on Justin Trudeau's refusal to commit even to following the orders of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal when it comes to funding services and compensating for past discrimination.

- Finally, Vinay Menan calls out Trudeau's empty words after his proclivity for blackface and brownface was made public.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Greg Wilpert interviews Julia Wolfe about the contract between soaring incomes for CEOs, and stagnant ones for workers. And David Cooper observes that everybody benefits from a fair minimum wage.

- Christopher Cheung points out that the presence - or absence - of basic bathroom facilities offers a simple test as to whether cities are designed to be lived in by people.

- Zoe Ducklow interviews Tatiana Schlossberg about the relationship between consumer lifestyles and our climate breakdown and other environmental consequences.

- Patricia Aldana rightly calls out Canada's corporate elite (and their fully-owned political subsidiaries) for prioritizing resource sector profits over the rule of law in Latin America. And Mitchell Anderson notes that we don't have any standing to claim superiority over Brazil in our effect on the climate - though the answer should be that we accept being subject to the same type of pressure we ought to apply to other countries who also place short-term profits ahead of the viability of our planet. 

- Finally, Bernie Sanders highlights how media outlets motivated by a combination of easy profits and billionaire manipulations represent a threat to democracy. And Dennis Gruending discusses how the Koch brothers' dark money has harmed Canada's political debate.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Dennis Gruending writes about the difference between genuine populism focused on the interests of the public at large, and the discriminatory politics of the right which are often given the same label:

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a populist as someone who is “a member or adherent of a political party seeking to represent the interests of ordinary people.” That is just what Douglas and others, such as Ontario MP Agnes Macphail, were doing in the early to middling years of the 20th century. The rural community was being exploited by banks, railroads, grain buyers and farm machinery companies, with the complicity of most politicians in the old line parties.
...
Populists, including Douglas and Macphail, were engaged in movements to bring about economic and social reforms which were badly needed. They were also dedicated to winning those reforms through the ballot box. As democratic socialists they pushed the limits of liberal democracy while remaining committed to its structures and practices.
...
There remains a need today for popular movements to challenge elites – including Canada’s 100 highest paid CEOs who, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, took home salaries and benefits equal to 197 times more than the average worker in 2017. The pursuit of economic and environmental justice demands research, organization, and yes, appeals to emotion. But let’s not confuse those efforts with incitements by today’s demagogues to greed, violence and racism.

[Update: IP's Twitter response is worth a look in clarifying the academic definition of "populism" to include elements of both left and right.]

- Molly McCluskey discusses the lasting positive effects of Quebec's affordable child care program - along with the fact that there's room for improvement in ensuring that everybody has access to quality public care.

- Reuters reports on Google's offshoring of tens of billions of dollars in 2017 alone. Jeff Stein examines how much more revenue the U.S. would have to improve people's lives if it applied reasonable tax rates on extreme income and wealth, while William Horobin writes that a crackdown on tax compliance has become one of the latest achievements of France's gilets jaunes protests. And Owen Jones comments on the need for the UK's fat cats to start paying their fair share.

- Aimee Picchi reports on the thousands of U.S. drug price increases resulting from the Trump administration's willingness to let big pharma dictate the terms for access to necessary medication. And Aris Folley reports on just one tragic example of a 26-year-old diabetic who died for lack of access to insulin.

- Finally, Duane Bratt writes that while anger may be a useful tool as part of an effort to take power, it's useless as a guide to exercising it.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Labour Day reading.

- Ed Finn offers a reminder of the rights and benefits we now take for granted which were won only through labour organization:

Look back at Canada’s 150-year history, and you’ll find that many of the basic rights and benefits we all enjoy were originally fought for and won by unions. Unions were in the forefront of the struggles for public health care, for public education and pensions, for improvements in employment conditions and the minimum wage.

Most employees today work 40 hours or less a week instead of 50 or more, because in the 1950s the railroad unions went on strike for a shorter work week with the same pay. They won that historic battle, a labour victory that led in a few years to the adoption of the 40-hour work week as a standard schedule for all workers, unionized or not.

Later, the provision of year-long legislated paid parental leave was initiated at the bargaining table by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, which made it a priority in negotiations. This gain, too, soon became a universal benefit.

In both the private and public sectors, it was the unions, through collective bargaining, that also pioneered overtime pay, sick leave, paid vacations, jointly funded pension plans and other now-taken-for-granted employment benefits.

Without the unions, striving arduously over the years in so many ways, in cities and towns from coast to coast, the socioeconomic strands that hold our country together today would not be nearly so sturdy.

- Neil Irwin examines the career paths of janitorial workers a few decades ago compared to today as a prime example of how outsourcing and other precarious work arrangements limit the opportunity for workers to advance. David Well comments on the desperate need for public policy aimed at better protecting and accounting for the interests of workers caught in those traps. Lawrence Summers points out the role governments need to play in facilitating labour organization. And David Olive highlights the benefits of a more fair minimum wage.

- But Helaine Olen points out how the Trump administration is instead engaged in concerted attacks on the U.S. labour force. And Michael Paarlberg writes about the dishonesty in Trump's promises to protect workers.

- Suzanne Moore discusses the importance of  the UK McDonald's strike and other shows of solidarity within the precarious workforce. And Lana Payne offers a reminder that the labour movement needs to focus particularly on young workers.   

- Dennis Gruending points out that the benefits of union extend far beyond their membership or even workers generally, while Alejandra Bravo writes about the importance of worker organization as a means to spur social change. And Kira Lerner reports on the efforts of U.S. unions to do just that in the Midwest where standards have been deteriorating rapidly under corporatist governors, while Gregory Beatty highlights how Brad Wall's contempt for workers has tarnished his legacy.

- Finally, the Canadian Labour Congress discusses its push for a national pharmacare program as the latest major project to build a better Canada for everybody, while Hassan Yussuff makes the case for the plan in the Star.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Peter Martin reports on the Australia Institute's recent study showing that corporate tax levels have little to do with foreign investment:

New research ridicules the Prime Minister's claim that cutting the company tax rate will boost foreign investment, pointing out that almost all of Australia's foreign investment applications already come from countries with much lower tax rates.

The analysis by the Australia Institute finds that 97 per cent of the applications to Australia's foreign investment review board come from countries with lower company tax rates. By value, 71 per cent of applications come from countries with lower rates.

"All of this raises the question – if Australia is already successful at attracting foreign investment why would we give tax cuts to foreigners?" said the report's author David Richardson, a senior research fellow at the self-described progressive think tank.

"History shows that when Australia's company tax rates were adjusted in the past, foreign investment did not go the way expected. When the rate climbed to 49 per cent in the 1980s there was a rise, not a drop in investment."

- Dennis Gruending challenges Chrystia Freeland's unquestioning devotion to free trade agreements which haven't benefited anybody other than the wealthy few in practice. Patrick McDonnell writes about the effects of NAFTA and its possible repeal on Mexico - featuring the observation that the pattern of workers seeing little benefit from a corporate-driven trade deal applies just as much to the country which started with the lowest wages. And the ITF highlights how a trade deal with China may lock in ongoing abuses against workers.

- Rank and File provides a handy mythbusting guide to the effects of a more fair minimum wage.

- Finally, Jordon Cooper offers a reminder that more strict rules against panhandling don't do anything to change the social factors which drive it.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Dean Baker discusses some of the myths about the effects of corporate globalization - with particular attention to how our current trade and immigration structures are designed to provide easy profits for capital at the expense of labour around the world. And Jason Hickel reports on new research showing how the developed world (or at least its upper class) is extracting trillions of dollars from the countries which can least afford to lose them.

- James Kwak comments on the massive gap between the effects of minimum-wage increases as threatened based on oversimplified economic theories, and the real-world impacts which have been beneficial for workers and the broader economy alike. 

- The International Labour Organization reviews the continued lack of secure employment around the globe. And Ashley Cowburn reports on the UK public's strong support for the idea of reining in CEO income compared to that of a business' general workforce.

- Alexander Kaufman highlights Rex Tillerson's implausible denial that he has any idea Exxon and other oil companies enjoy public subsidies. And Ross Belot points out that based on then Libs' combination of nominal greenhouse gas emissions targets and plans which fall far short of meeting them, we're likely to see yet another public giveaway to the oil sector in the form of carbon bailouts.

- Finally, Dennis Gruending offers his take on the need for a public response to the threat of mass surveillance.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Following his resounding win to become Labour's leader, Jeremy Corbyn describes the proper role of government as a vehicle for shared benefits:

We understand aspiration and we understand that it is only collectively that our aspirations can be realised.

Everybody aspires to an affordable home, a secure job, better living standards, reliable healthcare and a decent pension. My generation took those things for granted and so should future generations.
...

For the Conservatives, the deficit is just an excuse to railroad through the same old Tory agenda: driving down wages, cutting taxes for the wealthiest, allowing house prices to spiral out of reach, selling off our national assets and attacking trade unions. You can’t cut your way to prosperity, you have to build it: investing in modern infrastructure, investing in people and their skills, harnessing innovative ideas and new ways of working to tackle climate change to protect our environment and our future.

Our job is to show that the economy and our society can be made to work for everyone. That means ensuring we stand up against injustice wherever we find it and we fight for a fairer and more democratic future that meets the needs of all.

- Meanwhile, David Olive writes that the Cons' longstanding economic promises and boasts have proven to be completely illusory. Josh Bivens points out how hundreds of billions of dollars have been funnelled into U.S. corporate coffers based solely on the declining share of income going to workers. And Greg Grandin notes that the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other new trade agreements are designed to further push wealth to the few who already have the most at the expense of the vast majority of citizens.

- Scott Santens comments on the inescapable reality of technological unemployment. Sarah Jaffe questions the theory that workers are better off operating under the expectation that their employment will reflect the principle of "do what you love". And Deirdre Fulton examines yet more evidence as to how workers in general are far better off where unions are strong.

- Alex Boutilier discusses the need to bring Canada's access-to-information system into the 21st century. And Donovan Vincent reports on a renewed push for a restored long-form census which better allows Canadian governments and other organizations to have accurate information about the people they're supposed to be serving.

- Finally, Patti Tamara Lenard exposes the Cons' dismal record in dealing with refugees. And Dennis Gruending argues that the Cons will pay the price for their callous attempt to scapegoat the world's most vulnerable people.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Arjumand Siddiqi and Faraz Vahid Shahidi remind us how inequality and poverty are bad for everybody's health:

In Toronto, as elsewhere, the social determinants of health have suffered significant decline. As the report makes clear, the poorest among our city’s residents have borne the greatest portion of this burden.

These trends have affected the health of the poor in countless ways. They have constrained access to quality health care. They have increased susceptibility to harmful health-related behaviours, such as smoking. They have compromised the adequacy and stability of housing conditions. They have restricted access to nutritious foods. They have heightened exposures to daily experiences of stress and adversity that get under our skin and harm not only our minds but our bodies as well. In fact, what research has shown is that economic conditions underlie almost every pathway leading to almost every health outcome.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, despite a decade of public programs intended to promote health equity, the health status of the poorest Torontonians hasn’t improved. Given what we know about the social determinants of health, the persistence of health inequalities was entirely predictable.

At the heart of the issue are two important insights provided by our best available science. First, public health programs that are designed to encourage people to alter their lifestyles and behaviours simply do not address the myriad other associations between economic position and health status. Attempts to address any one problem do little to fundamentally interrupt the overall correlation. Second, because public health programs do not address the “causes of the causes,” they are incapable of stemming the tide of new individuals that develop poor health-related behaviours. No sooner has one cohort been exposed to a health promotion program than another cohort is ready and waiting.

- But Dennis Gruending points out that the Cons' budget conspicuously avoids even mentioning poverty, let alone doing anything at all to reduce it. And Michal Rozworski notes that the Cons are merely continuing a pattern of destructive austerity.

- Meanwhile, Juliette Garside reports on the increase in wealth inequality in the UK. And Suzanne Daley points out that income-based fines and penalties can serve both to ensure that punishments are more fair, and that the enforcement of regulatory law slightly helps inequality generally.

- Andrew Mitrovica tells Benamar Benatta's story as a painful example of how individuals can get caught up in a Kafkaesque terror trap even absent the blanket secret police provisions the Cons want to impose through C-51. And APTN's report on two deaths in Winnipeg offers another example of law enforcement running amok, in this case be seizing media cameras without a warrant.

- Finally, Jesse Myerson offers some suggestions as to how to respond to public protests.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Hugh Segal discusses the need for an open and honest conversation about poverty and how to end it. And to better reflect Canadians' continued desire for a more fair society, Roderick Benns makes the case for a basic income as Canada's next major social program.

- Matt Bruenig writes about the U.S.' income inequality as compared to other developed countries- and it's well worth noting that Canada's distribution is only slightly less distorted than the U.S.'.

- Margo McDiarmid reports on the Cons' latest steps to block any evaluation of the environmental damage done by the tar sands. Dennis Gruending rightly points out that environmental activism will be of limited use if it can't influence government policy, as the major challenges we face demand more coordination than citizens alone can muster. And PressProgress notes that Canada is missing the boat when it comes to developing the renewable energy which will power the world in the decades to come.

- Finally, Jennifer Hollett argues that it's long past time to get rid of our embarrassing leaders. And Michael Harris observes that Stephen Harper remains at the top of that list, with his party's "rage over reason" attitude serving as a particularly important basis for concern.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Linda McQuaig discusses Stephen Harper's class war:

Canadians don’t like Harper’s anti-worker agenda — when they notice it. That’s why there’s been such a public outcry since the temporary foreign worker program was exposed as a mechanism by which the Harper government has flooded the country with hundreds of thousands of cheap foreign workers, thereby suppressing Canadian wages in the interests of helping corporations.

Apart from this clumsy fiasco, the Harperites have been adroit at keeping their anti-worker bias under the radar. Instead, they’ve directed their attacks against unions, portraying them as undemocratic organizations run by “union bosses” who ignore the interests of ordinary workers.

It’s revealing that this harsh critique of unions largely comes from business think-tanks and conservative politicians — folks who aren’t generally known for championing workers’ rights but who apparently can’t sleep at night at the thought workers aren’t being well represented by the people they elect to run their unions.

Of course, the real reason Harper attacks unions is because they’ve been effective in promoting the interests of working people over the past century. By establishing norms for higher wages and benefits in the workplace, and by pushing governments to implement universal social programs, unions are largely the reason we have a middle class in this country.

- Meanwhile, Carol Goar laments that Ontario's Wynne Libs chose not to make a meaningful effort to cut down on poverty. And Dr. Dawg documents the federal Libs' latest attempt to be indistinguishable from the Harper Cons.

- In the latest in conservative transparency, Alison Redford is covering up her own government's pipeline safety report - presumably to avoid the possibility that its conclusions might get noticed in the review processes for new pipelines. Michael Harris discusses the Cons' strategy of blaming their own scandals on unnamed bureaucrats (who are of course prevented from defending themselves with the truth). And the Star finds that the federal government won't answer questions about $2.4 billion in consulting contracts - while contracts ranging up to nine figures seem to have bought the public little more than the contractor's silence:

(S)everal departments and agencies refused to say what services they bought as part of the roughly $700 million in taxpayer money they spent on management consulting.

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), in charge of delivering social programs and services, has billed more than $420 million since 2004.

One of the department’s most recognizable divisions, Service Canada, has spent another $129 million for management consulting — more than 70 per cent of which was given to a single recruitment company, according to the government’s contract records.

What consulting work was done for all that money? A spokeswoman with HRSDC refused to say.

The company, Quantum Management Services, was just as tight-lipped.

“I’m not going to answer your questions,” said Anne Cote, a vice-president in the company’s Ottawa office. 

- Fortunately, at least some individuals are working to shed lights on the increasingly-hidden operations of our state and corporate sectors. And Dennis Gruending highlights a few of the examples noted by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.

- Finally, Joe Bower discusses the effect of standardized testing in Alberta - which has enabled the Fraser Institute to take pot-shots at a school for student parents based on its failure to be sufficiently choosy in recruiting pupils.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Shawn McCarthy discusses the Cons' latest plan to sell Keystone XL to the U.S. - which involves hoping that the best-resourced government on the planet will be suckered into accepting a transparently false pretense that the Cons have the slightest interest in addressing climate change. And Harper cabinet appointee Monte Solberg offers a window into the Cons' environmental mindset, trying to make a case against "thinking globally" on the basis that there are easier votes to be won by focusing on small vacation areas while shredding the rest of the planet.

- The Cons' latest Senate abuses have provoked plenty of discussion as to how in the world we can justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars on an unaccountable set of patronage appointees. Among those calling for (or at least musing about) abolition are Diane Francis, Paul Sullivan and Geoffrey Stevens. Kai Nagata recognizes that we should see Patrick Brazeau as entirely emblematic of the Cons - rather than accepting their spin that it's just bad luck that he's following in so many disgraced footsteps. Murray Dobbin compares Brazeau's abuse of privilege to the genuine movement for change behind Idle No More. Stephen Kimber contrasts Mike Duffy's one-time journalist persona against his current diminished state, while Dan Leger wonders whether Duffy has officially joined Brazeau in being cut loose by the Cons.

But the definitive word goes to Sixth Estate in discussing Duffy:

(W)e’re no longer talking about an issue of merely failing to uphold a few technical rules. We’re talking about fraud here.

The only question is: fraud against whom? Against Ontario taxpayers, for using an Ontario health card when he is really a primary resident of PEI, or against federal taxpayers, for collecting expense fees for his PEI cottage when he is really a primary resident of Ontario?

Either way, I guess we now know why right-wingers are so paranoid that lazy, self-interested gits are ripping off the welfare system. That’s what they think is going on, because it’s exactly what they do when given the opportunity.

- Digby compares the "donor class" of Americans who fund political parties to the wider citizenry - and finds that the U.S. government (like its UK equivalent) is paying far more attention to the frivolous deficit obsession of the former than the job and income security concerns of the latter.

- pogge rightly highlights the Cons' strict party control over private members' bills. But I'll add that the vetting of what's supposed to be the prerogative of individual MPs is far from new, as Garth Turner raised exactly the same concern after he was booted out of the Cons' caucus.

- Finally, CBC reports on the Cons' willingness to fund an anti-gay organization to work in Uganda (home of some of the most obvious homophobic policies on the planet). And Dennis Gruending compares the treatment of Crossroads Christian Communications to that of other groups such as KAIROS and Development and Peace who were de-funded for failing to share the Cons' values.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Dennis Gruending writes about the importance of Edgar Schmidt's whistleblowing against unconstitutional legislation:

Schmidt says that he has over a period of years raised concerns about what he considers the department’s flawed practices. He has done that through various official channels, up to the deputy minister level — in both Liberal and Conservative governments. He says he has never received a satisfactory response and that he has gone to court as a matter of last resort.

Schmidt says the consequences of the department’s failure to act appropriately are serious. The state should be ensuring that it makes laws that it believes conform to the Charter and Bill of Rights. Instead, it is left to citizens, who usually do not have the resources, to discover and challenge such offending laws.

- Michael Harris notes that the Cons' efforts to silence any criticism have now extended to attacks on individual journalists - with Stephen Maher as only the latest example:

The measure for the kind of work that Maher, McGregor, Tim Naumetz and Greg Weston do is not the metric of public relations. The question is not whether their stories are good or bad for the government.

The question is whether the stories are true. If they’re not, it doesn’t mean that the reporters hate the government — just that they’re wrong. If they’re right, they form part of the composite of facts that makes up public reality. The RCMP are now involved in the investigation and the public is entitled to know that. Thanks to Stephen Maher, it does.

At one level, no one should be surprised at this scurrilous attack on a reporter. The Harper government, and the prime minister personally, specialize in character assassination when opposed.

It is one of the oldest and dirtiest tricks in the book. 

 - And Tabatha Southey wonders what additional abuses of power we might see from the Harper Cons in the years to come.

- While far too many seem to be eager to turn Mali into Canada's next ill-thought-out military intervention, Thomas Walkom makes the case for caution.

- Finally, Daniel Wilson highlights why there's rather less reason for patience when it comes to the federal government's neglect of First Nations.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to end your Saturday.

- Jim Stanford looks in detail at the aftereffects of free trade with the U.S., and finds rather little to cheer:

In sum, the promise that free trade would induce more trade, productivity growth, and higher incomes (following traditional Heckscher-Ohlin mechanisms) is not remotely supported by the aggregate economic data. FTA defenders will critique this argument on many grounds. They say we should compare this data to an unknowable counterfactual (namely, where Canada would be in 2012 without the FTA), rather than to the pre-FTA reality. They will parse detailed sub-sector data to find evidence that productivity grew relatively faster in those industries which experienced larger tariff reduction, compared to other sectors. (Daniel Trefler has done much work in this vein – but it doesn’t negate the fact that overall Canadian productivity has languished.) These arguments do not alter the finding that the FTA has not been associated with more trade, higher productivity, or higher incomes – contrary to the promises made when it was implemented. And hence the promises now being made that more FTAs (with Europe, Korea, India, or the entire Trans-Pacific region) will do just that, must be viewed with disbelief.

So it is not the “free trade deniers” (like myself) that inhabit a fantasy world. No matter how loudly Trade Minister Fast asserts that only an economic illiterate would dare to question the virtues of free trade, it’s his side of the debate that relies on faith, rather than fact.

- Far too many people seem to be treating Paul Wells' piece about the decline of the Libs as an ordinary "rivals crowding the centre" message. But the more significant part of Wells' analysis looks to be this one:

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives reliably depict the Liberals as high-taxing statists who cannot imagine leaving a dollar in your pocket when they could spend it on daycare or a fancy census instead. Intriguingly, (Paul) Adams argues nearly the opposite: that the Liberals’ long-standing “progressive impulses” were “quietly muted in a largely collaborative project” between Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin during the almost nine years Martin served in Chrétien’s cabinet.

The Liberals’ 1993 Red Book included promises to renegotiate NAFTA, to boost immigration levels and to create 50,000 daycare spaces. None was implemented. To Adams (whose book argues, probably in vain, for a Liberal-NDP merger), the result was that the Liberals blew their credibility as defenders of activist government.

“As you stare at the wreckage of what was arguably the most successful party in the history of the democratic world, there are various explanations for its utter demagnetization in 2011,” Adams writes. “Some of them were very long-term. But one of them, surely, must have been its wilful refusal to differentiate its policies from those of the Conservatives.”

- Meanwhile, David Dayen notes that a similar problem has developed among Democrats in the U.S. - and there unlike in Canada, voters haven't enjoyed another option to express their desire for progressive change:

Obama comes at the end of a 30-year cycle of narrowing and narrowing what passes for the liberal agenda. The landscape was so different in the 1970s that Nixon was calling for a guaranteed income. Now when Democrats are really feeling bold, they highlight policies that they are proud to reveal were based on Republican ideas of just a few years earlier, things like the Heritage Foundation’s health care plan or the market-based solution of cap and trade.

I would disagree that liberalism – although that’s probably the wrong phrase – has disappeared. It’s just become hidden beneath a thicket of campaign contributions from wealthy donors. The decline of unions as a political counterweight means that Democrats chase big money, and not surprisingly they respond to big money concerns. Issues like poverty, hunger, and need go unremarked upon on the national stage, even while they remain core concerns at the community level.
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(T)he agenda at the upper echelon of the Democratic Party has narrowed over the past 50 years, and it’s not like the safety net is so stable and robust that there’s nothing more to do. In fact, our social safety net is among the tiniest in the industrialized world. But poor people don’t have lobbyists, and that’s how Washington works these days. 

 - While the Cons' enforced mindlessness has continued since Parliament resumed, at least one NDP strategy to challenge the subservience of Con MPs looks to be earning some positive reviews.

- Finally, Dennis Gruending weighs in on the Cons' decision to make Christianity the exclusive religion available to Canadian prisoners.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Alison nicely debunks the Cons' latest Robocon talking points. Paula Boutis offers her own suggestions to strengthen Elections Canada in investigating vote suppression. And Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report that the Cons have been working on funneling federal money through a charity to their choice of call centre operators.

- Adam Radwanski unloads on Jim Flaherty for his constant attacks on his home province. But the explanation presumably lies in the Ontario government's inconvenient recognition that Canadians would be far more secure with an improved Canada Pension Plan than with the Cons' newest retirement lotto scheme.

- Dennis Gruending laments the end of decades of work on a cooperative Saskatchewan Wheat Pool as Viterra is sold off for parts. And Paul Dechene wonders how in the world Regina's city council can justify allowing the demolition of affordable apartments in the middle of a dire housing crisis.

- Finally, Paul Krugman compares right-wing economic policies to the "pink slime" phenomenon - only to find that they're even less healthy than heavily-processed filler:

Mr. Gleckman calls (the Republican budget proposal) a “mystery meat budget,” but he’s being unfair to mystery meat. The truth is that the filler modern food manufacturers add to their products may be disgusting — think pink slime — but it nonetheless has nutritional value. Mr. Ryan’s empty promises don’t. You should think of those promises, instead, as a kind of throwback to the 19th century, when unregulated corporations bulked out their bread with plaster of paris and flavored their beer with sulfuric acid.

Come to think of it, that’s precisely the policy era Mr. Ryan and his colleagues are trying to bring back.

So the Ryan budget is a fraud; Mr. Ryan talks loudly about the evils of debt and deficits, but his plan would actually make the deficit bigger even as it inflicted huge pain in the name of deficit reduction. But is his budget really the most fraudulent in American history? Yes, it is.

To be sure, we’ve had irresponsible and/or deceptive budgets in the past. Ronald Reagan’s budgets relied on voodoo, on the claim that cutting taxes on the rich would somehow lead to an explosion of economic growth. George W. Bush’s budget officials liked to play bait and switch, low-balling the cost of tax cuts by pretending that they were only temporary, then demanding that they be made permanent. But has any major political figure ever premised his entire fiscal platform not just on totally implausible spending projections but on claims that he has a secret plan to raise trillions of dollars in revenue, a plan that he refuses to share with the public?

Book Review: Pulpit and Politics

Dennis Gruending is a former journalist and NDP MP who blogs about political and religious issues - which in theory should make for an ideal background for a book focusing on the interplay between religion and politics in Canada.

And Pulpit and Politics is indeed well worth a read. But it does fall somewhat short of its potential in one key area.

By way of example, the subject of the influence of religion in Canadian politics - particularly on the right side of the spectrum - is one that's already been explored in plenty of detail by Marci McDonald. And part of what I'd hoped for out of Gruending's book was a deeper and better-connected discussion of some of the issues already made prominent in The Armageddon Factor.

But instead, Gruending's take on the religious right is limited in large part to relatively brief overviews of the same stories and personalities already covered so thoroughly by McDonald. Which means that while it's difficult to disagree with Gruending's take on her work (to the effect that people should be reporting more on the influence of the religious right in Canada), it's disappointing that Gruending's book on substantially the same subject doesn't advance the cause more than it does.

And that limited development of the theme of the religious right serves as the most stark example of the broader issue with Gruending's writing style. In effect, much of Pulpit and Politics reads as a collection of loosely-connected blog posts - detailing events and encounters from Gruending's own life, commenting on headlines, public debates and polls, and developing little by way of themes or theses from one chapter to the next - rather than the cohesive narrative that would have been ideal for a book format.

To his credit, Gruending is highly readable in that medium. In particular, his detailed discussion of polling data from the 2011 federal election and his extended review of the fate of KAIROS under the Harper Cons serve as important reminders of both what influence religious affiliation has in Canadian politics, and how the Cons are looking to change the current balance.

And the juxtaposition of political and religious institutions assembling by Gruending offers some noteworthy connections which aren't pointed to explicitly. For example, Gruending's rightful frustration as to how the Catholic Church dealt with its child sexual abuse scandal - by denying what it knew to be true, then minimizing and spinning the subject to avoid any consequences for abuses within its ranks - would ring equally true as a chronicle and criticism of how far too many political parties (particularly on the right) handle any news that doesn't suit their purposes.

But there does look to be plenty of room to expand on much of the content of Pulpit and Politics - both in doing deeper research into the areas dealt with as one-off vignettes by Gruending, and in analyzing the connections between them. And while I'll certainly recommend Pulpit and Politics as an important contribution to the discussion of the relationship between religion and politics in Canada, I'll hope to see Gruending and others engaged in moving the subject forward further in the years to come.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- The Cons are once again getting noticed in the world - this time thanks to Serge Schemann pointing out their callous treatment of asbestos widow Michaela Keyserlingk in the New York Times:

This summer, to Mrs. Keyserlingk’s surprise and in a rather peculiar way, her continuing campaign was thrust into the limelight. The Conservative Party, which is currently governing Canada and has steadfastly supported asbestos mining, sent her a sharp notice demanding that she cease using the party’s logo on the modest Web site for her campaign. It threatened “further action” if she did not comply.

Mrs. Keyserlingk had put the Conservative logo on her site and on ads for it, with a red “Danger” sign and the legend, “Canada is the only Western country that exports deadly asbestos!”

The Conservative salvo at a 72-year-old widow of a man she called a “true-blue” Conservative quickly spread through blogs, newspapers and television. People from across Canada, including physicians and politicians, began sending letters of support — and checks, all of which she returned.

“They couldn’t have done anything better,” Mrs. Keyserlingk said of the Tories. To the party, her reply was: “I am delighted that someone in the Conservative Party of Canada is finally reacting after years of work by chrysotile asbestos victims.”

The logo remains. Conservative officials have ceased replying to queries about asbestos.

All of which made me wonder when, exactly, the Conservatives are going to get the message.

- Trish Hennessy's latest Index documents how recent Canadian economic trends are demanding far more of workers while offering less security:

2.3
Percentage increase in part-time jobs from 2008 to 2009, countering the 2.5 per cent loss in full-time jobs.

37.1
Percentage of Canadians aged 25-44 who said working part-time in 2009 wasn’t their choice – there was no full-time work available. Compared to 27.7 per cent of workers over 45.

2.7 million
Number of self-employed workers in Canada in 2009, up dramatically from 1.3 million in 1979

2.3 million
Number of full-time workers in Canada who had rotating shifts or irregular schedules in 2005.

29
Percentage of shift workers who expressed somewhat more dissatisfaction with their work-life balance in 2005.

- Dennis Gruending offers his take on Jack Layton's legacy.

- Michel takes on the media's recent efforts to pile onto Thomas Mulcair.

- And finally, Rabble's efforts to place Karl Nerenberg as a progressive voice in the Parliamentary Press Gallery are well worth some support.

Monday Afternoon Links

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- Let's start with a couple of slightly older pieces which I didn't post originally. First, the CCPA's This or That graphic nicely contrasts the costs of Con priorities compared to what the same amount of money could accomplish if directed toward social spending.

- And second, Dennis Gruending's list of organizations defunded by the Cons speaks volumes about the Canada they've been working to destroy.

- Following up on yesterday's post, Saskboy and Dr. Dawg have more on Stephen Harper's willingness to add a repeatedly-convicted fraudster to his inner circle.

- What thwap said, especially this paragraph on the long-term damage done by the Harper Cons:

What's really depressing though is that a lot of the damage has already been done. Our national political culture has been infected with harper's contempt for our fragile and limited democracy. The view that Parliament is a "kangaroo court" where everything is all stupid, self-interested partisanship all the time, is more ingrained in our minds than ever. The view that all politicians are all crooks, the view that our political process is a joke, and will always be a joke, and that this joke is told by a completely inferior grade of people, and is therefore of no account, is more firmly entrenched than ever. Furthermore, the extremes of executive arrogance, secrecy, and abuse of power that harper has tested pushed the envelope for subsequent governments. Will it be the case that just like Obama has in many ways gone beyond the abuses of the bush II regime, that later Canadian governments will use harper's extremism as the new normal and further denigrate our system's democratic restraints on the powers of the executive branch?

- And finally, deBeauxOs catches Lib candidate Scott Bradley in a lie that likely makes him a prime candidate for Stephen Harper's inner circle in terms of both honesty and ethics.

Monday Afternoon Links

Content goes here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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