Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Karl Flecker discusses how the Cons' push to encourage employers to use temporary foreign workers will affect wages for everybody:

In fact, what Kenney said was untrue. He has conveniently forgotten that his government significantly changed the wage rules for employers hiring high-skilled migrant workers. On April 25, 2012, after direct consultations with a select group of employers, Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources Skills Development Canada, announced a new "Accelerated Labour Market Opinion" to provide employers with "greater flexibility." "Wages," she said, "that are up to 15 per cent below the average wage for an occupation in a specific region will now be accepted."

Later in May, her department issued a backgrounder clarifying that employers would also be able to pay low-skilled migrant workers five per cent less than prevailing wage rates, and that the Accelerated Labour Market Opinion process "may gradually be expanded to include risk-based processing for all occupations and components of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program." Simply put, this means the Conservative government plans to implement a pay-less wage structure across all streams of the program. Given that migrant workers are now present in every sector of the economy, this change will create the means to lower wages for all workers.

Minister Kenney's public assurance that the Temporary Foreign Worker Program requires employers to pay at or above the prevailing wage rate of any occupation does not hold water.

- Meanwhile, James Keller reports that the Cons are now "vigorously defending" the use of "temporary" foreign workers for upwards of a decade - even in the case of HD Mining where Diane Finley had to admit to problems with the use of that type of labour.

- Both Chris Selley and Bruce Anderson make the point that the Cons' refusal to consult or listen to anybody when it came to their omnibus budget monstrosities has only made it impossible for them to feign any willingness to work constructively with First Nations.

- Finally, Scott Sinclair writes about the possible effect of CETA on fisheries regulation. But without diminishing the importance of our fisheries, the most significant takeaway is that every other sphere of government action figures to be similarly affected.

On unwanted imports

The Mound of Sound is rightly appalled at the revelation that JP Morgan is making money off of the U.S.' food stamp program.

But lest we think the problem is limited to our neighbours, let's note that the Cons are doing their utmost to ensure that every social ill turns into a source of corporate profits on our side of the border as well:

(Diane) Finley has repeatedly rebuffed pleas for a national approach to housing and poverty, arguing that the federal government is not best placed to deal with issues that often have local nuances.

But at the same time, since the federal government provides significant funding for affordable housing, homelessness initiatives and other key social programs, Ottawa is deeply implicated in social policy whether it likes it or not.

Finley suggested she was frustrated with the lack of progress in social programs [ed note: of the type which her party has consistently refused to support], and wants to dramatically re-arrange the system...

And that re-arrangement means...

“Social finance is about mobilizing private capital to achieve social goals, creating opportunities for investors to finance projects that benefit Canadians and realize financial gains,” the government said in a statement announcing the financing mechanism.

So as far as the Cons are concerned, the main problem with poverty in Canada is that the financial sector hasn't yet figured out how to make enough money off of it. And absent some significant pushback, we can fully expect that the JP Morgan example will pale in comparison to what we'll end up paying to turn citizens' dire needs into corporate profits.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The outrage against the Cons' total online surveillance scheme continues, with Dan Leger, Mia Rabson and Michael Geist adding noteworthy comments to the mix.

- Meanwhile, the Star rightly criticizes the latest legislation to hand Con cabinet ministers the power to make major policy decisions by fiat with no accountability. But lest there be any doubt, that's been happening since long before the Star apparently noticed the issue surrounding refugees.

- And the minister responsible at that time is doing her own share of damage to vulnerable groups, in this case the workers whose retirement benefits stand to be slashed. So let's offer a reminder of what the Cons hope the public forgets: if we're facing a declining tax base and need to build up reserves, the sane thing for any government to do would be to make sure we're taking in enough revenue now to bridge the gap, rather than slashing taxes with no regard for (or outright hostility toward) our ability to fund social needs.

- Susan Delacourt rightly notes that the only surprising part of Vic Toews' ravings this week is the fact that anybody in the media bothered to challenge the Cons on their standard-issue demonization of all opposition.

- Finally, Jessica Bruno reports on the desperate need for better parliamentary oversight over federal government spending. But it's also worth being careful not to accept the Cons' distorted definition of what our representatives should be doing: surely it's equally important to identify and support what actually needs funding, rather than spending a disproportionate amount of time declaring what shouldn't be.

Sunday Morning Links

Selected text for your weekend reading.

- Edmund Pries points out how the right sees wasted public money and gratuitous tax slashing as tools to force cuts to programs which actually serve a valuable purpose:

During the Reagan era, a friend and former colleague, a professor of American history, was invited to the deliberations of a Washington think-tank that provided policy direction for the Republican Party. As they discussed growing the debt and increasing the deficit, he was flabbergasted: “Are you not the party of balanced budgets and debt elimination?” The reply was unequivocal, “Our goal is to grow the deficit as much as possible in order to create political space to eliminate government-funded programming. Until then, we want high deficits while lobbying for a balanced budget — and promoting social program cuts as the only solution.”

To create this useful deficit, tax cuts to wealthy individuals and corporate sectors would be dramatically increased, especially to the banking, energy and military segments. In short, one would implement a transfer of the state’s revenue supply obligations from the wealthiest to the poor and middle classes in order to permit an even greater transfer of wealth from the middle classes to the rich thereafter.

The only trick was to convince the poor and middle classes to “buy in” via a mixture of patriotism and structural necessity so that they would vote in favour of cutting the very programs that benefitted them.
...
Some have pretended that the budgetary crisis is real and not manufactured. Let us be clear: our relative wealth is greater than at any time in our history. Our collective ability to build a strong, caring and inclusive society in which everyone can participate has never been greater. This also holds true for the community of nations: we have the capacity to build a just global society.

Our preparedness to do so, however, seems utterly lacking, for an extreme individualism has taken over the mindset of many. We believe, falsely, that we are best served by hoarding as many resources as possible and letting others fend for themselves. The opposite is true. We are best served when we build a society together where all, including each reader of this article, can benefit through the building of community-wide programs.
...
Have we really lost our sense of the common good? Or is each person now on his or her own? There is no apocalyptic budgetary crisis other than of our own making. The crisis is in our orientation.

- Meanwhile, Sixth Estate notes that even the corporate-friendly Conference Board of Canada doesn't buy the right-wing spin that tax slashing pays for itself.

- I'm not sure she had any reason to defer to Jason Kenney when it came to doling out sarcasm. But Tabatha Southey's warning about Kenney's attacks on Amnesty International is still worth a read:

You're excused if your first reaction on reading of the minister's “joy” is, “Who died and made you the Minister of Sarcasm?”

The concerns cited by Amnesty International are that by using the immigration system to deal with suspected war criminals – deporting them instead of charging them – Canada may allow them to escape prosecution.

In addition, “Canada's international human rights obligations are clear,” Amnesty's letter said – “no person should be deported if he or she faces a serious risk of such grave human rights violations as torture, extrajudicial execution or enforced disappearance.”

In the mildest terms, it urged the minister to “reassess” the government's approach.

That's part of Amnesty's mandate. And far from “squandering the moral authority accrued” in campaigns that Mr. Kenney sees as legitimate, the group would more likely lose some credibility if it failed to raise this issue.
...
The tone of Mr. Kenney's letter to Amnesty, which was posted prominently on his ministerial website (yet is oddly signed only in his capacity as an MP, not as a minister), never gets less sarcastic. It feels personal. It reads like the kind of letter we sometimes write when we feel wronged, but then delete before sending. The tone makes sense only if Mr. Kenney recently broke up with Amnesty International. Prior drafts may well have contained the line, “And Violet Hill was never ‘our song' – it's my song.”
...
He could simply have said, as he sort of did – although not simply, never simply – that prosecuting these accused criminals in Canada would be too costly, complicated and likely ineffective (this may well be the case).

Instead, he called Amnesty's position “poppycock” and claimed that their professional, innocuous letter contained allegations that are “sloppy and irresponsible” and “precisely the slander you wrongly accuse the government of directing at the deportees.”

It doesn't. But what the letter does contain is a request that the government be tougher on war criminals. It's strange that this suggestion, made to a tough-on-crime minister, didn't merit a restrained, less caustic answer.

- Finally, with housing looming as a major issue in this fall's Saskatchewan provincial election, let's note that the Tyee has been going into detail on the issue from a Vancouver perspective - and coming up with some suggestions which the federal Cons unfortunately want to ignore:

Both the City of Vancouver and Dickie's CFAA expressed support for Bill C-304, a private member's bill introduced by NDP MP Libby Davies in 2009, calling for a national housing strategy. Such a strategy, the Vancouver MP says, would establish long-term funding for housing.

But while the last election may have advanced the NDP to Official Opposition status, the party that won a majority in Parliament seems to believe it already has a housing plan.
...
Groups like the Federation of Canadian Municipalities raised concerns that funding for AHI and RRAP expired on April 1, 2011. The federal, provincial, and territorial ministers responsible for housing officially announced continued funding for those programs on July 4, when they announced a $1.4 billion investment under a new Affordable Housing Framework for 2011 to 2014.*

To Davies, long-term, stable federal assistance is necessary when the private market fails to provide housing people can afford. "The reality is that the marketplace, even when it's operating at full tilt, even when it's doing everything that it's meant to be doing cannot meet 100 per cent of the need that there is for housing," she says.

Wednesday Morning Links

Assorted content for your midweek reading.

- Carol Goar laments the fact that Canadian governments at all levels have been able to get away with defiantly doing nothing to combat poverty:

(Diane Finley) would not still be minister of human resources, after four years, if her words didn't reflect Prime Minister Stephen Harper's wishes. He has said repeatedly that he wants nothing to do with the design or delivery of social programs.

But Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is no champion of the poor, either. Since taking the reins in 2008, he has disowned his party's comprehensive poverty reduction plan and replaced it with three measures (so far): a modest caregiver's benefit aimed primarily at middle-class families, a small increase in funding for school nutrition programs and a still-to-be-unveiled national child-care strategy.

Things aren't much better at the provincial level. All of the premiers have decided, to varying degrees, that reducing poverty is unaffordable. Dalton McGuinty's poverty reduction plan for Ontario, unveiled with great fanfare in 2008, has degenerated into a succession of studies, deliberations and excuses. The province's social assistance rate ($592 per person) now stands 59 per cent below StatsCan's low-income cut-off.

In Toronto, Mayor Rob Ford is promising to slash spending and get the city's hands out of taxpayers' pockets.

Politicians at all levels are taking their cue from the public. Canadians either want them — or allow them — to overlook those tossed aside by market forces.

- But Chris Hedges notes why it's entirely predictable that a class of economic and political elites won't take others' interests into account unless they're forced to:

The liberal class is discovering what happens when you tolerate the intolerant. Let hate speech pollute the airways. Let corporations buy up your courts and state and federal legislative bodies. Let the Christian religion be manipulated by charlatans to demonize Muslims, gays and intellectuals, discredit science and become a source of personal enrichment. Let unions wither under corporate assault. Let social services and public education be stripped of funding. Let Wall Street loot the national treasury with impunity. Let sleazy con artists use lies and deception to carry out unethical sting operations on tottering liberal institutions, and you roll out the welcome mat for fascism.

The liberal class has busied itself with the toothless pursuits of inclusiveness, multiculturalism, identity politics and tolerance—a word Martin Luther King never used—and forgotten about justice.
...
We have tolerated the intolerant—from propaganda outlets such as Fox News to Christian fascists to lunatics in the Republican Party to Wall Street and corporations—and we are paying the price. The only place left for us is on the street...The powerful, with no check left on their greed and criminality, are gorging on money while they busily foreclose our homes, bust the last of our unions, drive up our health care costs and cement into place a permanent underclass of the broken and the poor. They are slashing our most essential and basic services—including budgets for schools, firefighters and assistance programs for children and the elderly—so we can pay for the fraud they committed when they wiped out $14 trillion of housing wealth, wages and retirement savings. All we have left is the capacity to say “no.” And if enough of us say “no,” if enough of us refuse to cooperate, the despots are in trouble.

- Meanwhile, for those still trying to pretend there's hope of the Cons being reasonable (I'm looking at you, David McGuinty), Dan Gardner reminds us what the Harper Cons think of civility and restraint:

For the prime minister and his core team, there is no such thing as honest and honourable disagreement. One either supports Stephen Harper or one is the enemy -and enemies must be defeated by any means necessary.

In the 2006 election, the Conservatives issued a press release with the headline "Paul Martin Supports Child Pornography?" It was retracted. But when Stephen Harper was asked about it, he didn't apologize. He attacked. "I'm not going to, in any way, give the Liberal party any break in its record on child pornography."

This was the template for what was to come. One of the lowest points in Canadian political history was reached when the prime minister stood in the House of Commons and insinuated that the Liberals were opposing certain anti-terrorism provisions because a Liberal MP's father-in-law may have been involved with terrorists.

Naturally, this no-limits mentality is not limited to the political arena.
...
The change isn't solely Stephen Harper's doing, of course. It's also the product of American influence.

The prime minister and the people around him have all followed American politics their entire lives, they all have close connections with American politicos, and many have actively participated in American politics. In the American system, the idea of political neutrality scarcely exists. Senior civil servants are political appointees. Judges are identified as Republicans and Democrats and the Supreme Court routinely splits along political lines when ruling on politically contentious cases. There is no Governor General or Queen above politics -nothing is above politics. Indeed, the closest thing to neutrality in American politics is "bipartisanship," which is quite a different creature.

It's also important that the Harper Conservatives are connected to, and influenced by, the American conservative movement. As Rick Perlstein showed so brilliantly in Nixonland, that movement was shaped in important ways less by the sunny nature of Ronald Reagan than the dark insecurities of Richard Nixon. Conservatives are outsiders. They have to fight dirty because power lies with a ruthless and entrenched elite. It's civil war. And it never ends: Even in the middle of the Bush years, when Republicans controlled the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, conservatives sincerely saw themselves as hard-pressed and persecuted insurgents.

Just like the underdogs of the PMO.

- And for those looking for a handy example, look no further than Peter Langille.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading:

- Susan Delacourt asks some necessary questions about what we should expect out of our federal government:

* Is this the Government of Canada or "the Harper government"?
* Who's issuing cheques? The Government of Canada or the Conservative party?
* Do we have a minister of immigration or a minister of (very ethnic) new Conservative recruits?
* Who's bankrolling the Conservatives' public-relations campaign against their enemies? Is it the Conservative party or you, the taxpayers?
* Do we decide our international-aid priorities based on expert advice or partisan concerns?
* And when did the Prime Minister's Office become responsible for campaign-personnel announcements?

- And Lawrence Martin has some ideas about how we should be answering such concerns:

During the Chrétien government years, I reported extensively on malfeasance by the Liberals. To do the math on the Harper government is to conclude that, while it has no sponsorship scandal on its books, it’s already surpassed its predecessor on a range of other abuse-of-power indices.

The government’s arc of duplicity is remarkable to behold. And there are more revelations to come. It may not happen in the next election, but there will be a tipping point and the PM and his ministers will pay the price.

- Meanwhile, whoever is benefitting from Con largesse, we can be fairly certain it isn't the Canadians who need the help the most.

- And finally, from the "making things worse by measuring them" department, Daniel Leblanc reports on the treatment of access to information requests that are seen as not worth bothering with since they're already late:

While many people believe the system basically operates on a first-come-first-serve principle, the reality is far different.

What is happening, in fact, is that departments try to get as many requests as possible out the door within the legally mandated timeframe. That way, when the Office of the Information Commissioner releases its annual report, departments can claim they adequately processed a number of requests, and, hopefully, get a good grade and avoid embarrassment.

That process, however, leaves some files sitting in the system, because they have already been deemed to be failures and no amount of work can restore their status. “Once a file is late, it’s late. There is nothing that can change that,” the civil servant said. “A day late, a month late, a year late, it’s all the same. It’s late.”

In that context, ATI workers focus their efforts on “trying to save the files that they can.” The other files, meanwhile, are left in limbo for years.

And of course it shouldn't escape mention that particularly sensitive files - i.e. the ones more likely to be seen as requiring political oversight which delays the release of anything - would figure to be all the more likely to end up in the "don't bother" pile.

On foreseeable abuses

It's undoubtedly for the best that Jason Kenney is facing heavy scrutiny for misusing both Parliamentary and ministerial resources in trying to strongarm immigrant communities into supporting the Cons. But it's worth keeping in mind that the Cons' manipulations are nothing new or surprising.

In fact, it was under Diane Finley that the Cons first set up a system which allows the minister to set priority lists by fiat. And I noted at that time that such centralized and politicized power would be easily abused:

Remember that as part of the Cons' ethnic targeting strategy, they've already written off "one-fifth of all ethnic groups" as unlikely to vote for the Cons under any circumstances. By assigning to the minister the ability to set up "categories" by fiat, the Cons would be able to conveniently exclude applications from those communities who wouldn't figure to help their electoral cause.

And the potential for abuse only gets worse when considering how the other 80% of ethnic communities would be treated. Particularly if the Cons do plan on paying more attention to economic immigrants than other types, there figures to be a limited number of spots available in other categories - making a position at the top of any category list essential for any community which wants to be able to bring new members across the border in the future. Which would enable the Cons to force different communities to compete as to who does the most to help out their partisan cause, and give top priority to whoever answers the call.

And matters have only gotten worse since Kenney was installed in the position, as he's quite transparently fought to create barriers to citizenship in groups which aren't likely to support the Cons, while sending the message that support for his party is a prerequisite to funding for community groups.

All of which is to say that any effort to dig into the conflict between Kenney's responsibilities as Immigration Minister and his hyperpartisan actions looks highly likely to bear fruit - particularly if the groups who have been set up to compete for the Cons' affections are willing to speak out about what he's been up to. And hopefully the sheer volume of possible stories will help Kenney's abuses to register more with the general public than stories focused on one-time issues.

Update: Impolitical has more.

On choices

Shorter Diane Finley (to the Institute of Marriage and Family, quoted by Paul Wells):

And while we're at it, I'd add indoor plumbing, potable water and shelter to the list of unaffordable luxuries which we should be looking to take away from those lazy, shiftless bums who don't deserve them.

A good start, but...

...it's hard to see how the Cons' proposed EI benefit extension for long-term employees can make much difference in the current path toward an election. If the benefit is passed quickly on its own, then there's still plenty of potential to go to the polls on a non-confidence motion in the near future; if the Cons try to extend their stay in power by delaying its passage (or attach it to anything contentious), then it doesn't look to be anywhere near enough to justify support from any opposition party.

Then and now

Then:

"The contents of the EI working group are confidential," Ryan Sparrow, the newly installed spokesman for Human Resources Minister Diane Finley, said in a brief interview.

"We hope the Liberal party maintains that confidentiality as well."

Now:

The blue-ribbon panel on employment insurance reform that saved Canadians from a summer election is not going well.

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley emerged from a summer Conservative caucus meeting on Parliament Hill today and went straight to the waiting microphone.

The minister responsible for EI suggested the six member panel is at loggerheads and blamed Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.

“Over the summer we've been conducting meetings on EI and Mr. Ignatieff and the Liberal members have publicly stated they are not willing to move off their 360 hour entry point for Employment Insurance,” she said, describing the position as “academic fantasy land.”

She said the Liberals must come forward with specific, detailed proposals that won't require a raise in taxes.

Of course, a major part of the problem has to do with the fact that the Libs chose to put themselves in a position where they have to rely on the Cons' goodwill to accomplish anything - with results that were obvious from day one. But in case anybody was operating under the misplaced belief that the Cons were suddenly going to take the EI panel as an opportunity to try being reasonable for the first time, the answer is no such luck.

Theatre of the absurd

Sure, the Cons may not have actually accomplished anything useful during their time in office. But one has to give them credit for pushing the boundaries of politics as purely as a matter of stage management rather than actual governance - and it looks like they're setting another new low in that department:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to present a rosy picture of his Conservative government's handling of the recession Thursday in a slick made-for-TV presentation designed to forestall a quick summer election.
...
The presentation will be moderated by Senator Mike Duffy, a former television journalist, and feature Harper, flanked by Human Resources Minister Diane Finley and Gary Goodyear, the local MP and Minister of State for Science. It will include a staged interview segment between Harper and Duffy.

That's right: a Con hack "moderator" will not only get to conduct something designed to look like a panel discussion rather than the Con infomercial it's sure be in terms of content, but will also get to hearken back to his career in journalism without the work of doing anything but asking exactly the questions which Stephen Harper has had scripted for his own political benefit. And rather than being embarrassed about that fact, the Cons apparently see that format as more deserving of advance press than the content of their report - which can only speak volumes about how little they can even pretend to have accomplished in substance.

(Edit: fixed wording.)

Long tenure, short shrift

There's been plenty of discussion this week about the Cons' lack of any sympathy or respect for the Canadians suffering at the hands of the Harper recession. But now, the Cons are also putting their disrespect for workers into action:

One program for "long tenured workers" will require them to use part of their severance money to pay for retraining if they want Employment Insurance benefits.

...

The mandatory use of severance money prompted an angry response from Irene Mathyssen, the New Democratic Party MP in whose riding Harper touted his government's spending plans.

"He is basically saying we are going to bleed these people dry who have already lost their jobs and a great deal of hope for their future," she said.

It would seem obvious that the last thing any terminated worker needs is for the federal government to go out of its way to make matters worse. But for "long-tenured workers", that's exactly what the Cons are doing.

After all, before the budget made any changes, those workers would have been able to collect EI after receiving their severance. But thanks to the Con/Lib budget, they're now facing either a requirement to use their own severance money to fund retraining which may not serve any individual purpose, or a loss of the EI benefits which they've helped to fund in their previous tenure at work.

Which is a particularly rich move coming from the government which has built its brand around "putting money in pockets" through random tax cuts aimed at buying votes rather than achieving positive policy results. But apparently seeing laid-off workers as unlikely to support the government which oversaw their termination, the Cons have decided to further punish those who are already feeling the brunt of the economic downturn - and shown exactly where their priorities lie in the process.

On omissions

Aaron Wherry asks one interesting question arising out of Diane Finley's signature turning up on a petition against OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino. But I'd see a couple more worth tossing into the mix.

Did the Cons somehow miss "signing petitions" on their list of actions which MPs can't take without the PMO's approval?

And if so, what's the over/under on the number of minutes after the CP story went public before that changed?

A new spirit of openness...

...won't be found within the Harper Cons anytime soon:

CMHC is a federal agency that has been supplying mortgage insurance since 1954, and is currently overseen by Human Resources and Social Development Canada.

In response to a question about its accountability, CMHC said in its statement: “The lines of accountability are very clear, like all Crown corporations CMHC is accountable to Parliament through its minister.”

When The Globe contacted Human Resources Minister Diane Finley, her spokeswoman replied: “We will have to decline and allow CMHC to respond to the questions applicable.”

Classified information

There's plenty of reason for skepticism about the theory behind today's Star article on immigration. But it's worth remembering that immigration is another area where the Cons seem to have conveniently timed the election to avoid having to answer for their most important policy plans.

After all, the main purpose and effect of the immigration changes within the Cons' Bill C-50 - which became law in mid-July - was to allow the responsible minister to act both quickly and arbitrarily in deciding whose applications would be prioritized. And all indications are that a round of closed-door consultations were to have ended in mid-August. As a result, the Cons have had time to present their first set of categories before going to the polls if there was any actual urgency to doing so.

By choosing not to do anything, the Cons have effectively confirmed that their justification for ramming the changes through was false all along. But for those who stand to be affected if Diane Finley or a Con successor does get a chance to start the process later, the failure to act before the election is even more important, as it means the Cons have deliberately chosen not to allow voters to see exactly which kinds of applicant they'd favour and which ones they'd cut off entirely. And the fact that they don't think they can defend a plan which is surely ready to be unveiled at a moment's notice should give voters reason for concern that they won't like what's in the works.

Shut out

There was never much reason to think that a one-time consultation process would counter the obvious potential for abuse resulting from the Cons' immigration power grab. But the Star points out today that the Cons have started in with arbitrary preferences long before any immigration "instructions" are issued, as even the consultation process was set up to avoid hearing from anybody but the Cons' choice of stakeholders:

Immigration Minister Diane Finley has promised that implementation of her sweeping new powers under changes to the Immigration Act will be "fair, open and transparent."

But it doesn't bode well that the promised cross-Canada consultations she is just completing have been closed to the public, the media and a variety of concerned community groups who wanted to attend...

While some groups, such as the Chinese Canadian National Council and the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, were included in the list of "key stakeholders" invited to the Toronto consultation session, others were not.

These include the Canadian Arab Federation, the Workers Action Centre (a group concerned about a potential increase in labour rights violations under the government's expanded temporary workers program), and the United Steel Workers (the union that represents many vulnerable immigrant and temporary workers)...

The behind-closed-doors consultations will conclude with a round table involving "national stakeholders" in Ottawa in mid-August. Again, the session will be by invitation only. This is not a government that is open to conflicting views.

Again, the end result figures to be much the same in any event. Regardless of what's said in the consultation process, the Cons have shown a clear intention to prioritize corporate wishes first, potential Con voting blocs second, and anybody else to the smallest extent possible.

But it's still striking that the Cons can't even be bothered to pretend to care what groups on their political write-off list have to say about major immigration changes. And even among those who were granted an audience with Finley this time, the Cons' selective invitations have to be cause for concern for those groups whose votes might not be seen as so important the next time the Cons decide which doors to slam shut.

On categorization

Greg highlights one point which deserves more discussion about the latest machinations around the Cons' plan to centralize control over immigration in Diane Finley's hands. But there's one other aspect of the story which seems to have been largely lost in the shuffle - particularly in the Libs' messaging.

The Libs seem to be focusing their current critique on the possibility that the Cons would value economic immigrants (particularly the temporary workers who they're already trumpeting to mask a decline in permanent immigration) rather than any other type. Which is reasonable enough as a point of dispute, but falls far short of telling the whole story.

Remember that as part of the Cons' ethnic targeting strategy, they've already written off "one-fifth of all ethnic groups" as unlikely to vote for the Cons under any circumstances. By assigning to the minister the ability to set up "categories" by fiat, the Cons would be able to conveniently exclude applications from those communities who wouldn't figure to help their electoral cause.

And the potential for abuse only gets worse when considering how the other 80% of ethnic communities would be treated. Particularly if the Cons do plan on paying more attention to economic immigrants than other types, there figures to be a limited number of spots available in other categories - making a position at the top of any category list essential for any community which wants to be able to bring new members across the border in the future. Which would enable the Cons to force different communities to compete as to who does the most to help out their partisan cause, and give top priority to whoever answers the call.

Of course, any categorization would be subject to the Charter and to other applicable law. But it wouldn't figure to be all that difficult to find non-partisan excuses for a set of choices which would have serious partisan effects. And the Cons have done nothing to suggest that this would be an exception to their general rule of governing in their party's interests rather than those of the country as a whole.

Needless to say, neither a system based on politics rather than genuine merit nor a system skewed in the Cons' favour would figure to be anything but a disaster for Canada in the long run. And that - not the contrast between economic and other types of new arrival - looks to be the aspect of the Cons' bill that needs to be highlighted to show what's most wrong with the Harper government.

Conservative vapours

The Cons are apparently responding to the accusation that they've run out of ideas by doing as much as they can to prove that point. And the CP reports on what looks to be the most pathetic excuse for a policy idea yet:

The Conservative government is set to unveil new legislation aimed at keeping foreign strippers out of Canada.

Government sources say the announcement will come Wednesday from Immigration Minister Diane Finley. They say the legislation would let the minister instruct immigration officers to deny work permits to foreign strippers, but they offer few details about how the law would work.

I suppose if one squints hard enough, one can see a few potential political benefits in such legislation. In addition to offering the Cons a paper-thin excuse to discuss the Libs' tenure in government rather than their own, the measure will presumably play relatively well both to the religious right and to the anti-immigration crowd.

But from the standpoint of what the bill says about Harper's government, it's hard to tell what's more striking about: its sheer frivolity, or its tendency to raise exactly the kinds of fears which the Cons presumably want to dispel.

On the frivolity side, the closest the article mentions to an actual problem which the bill is intended to resolve is a claim that the intention is to "protect women from exploitation". But there's absolutely no basis for thinking that the bill would actually prevent exploitation: indeed, it seems highly likely that most applicants seeking to immigrate to Canada in search of work as a stripper will would to make that move largely based on the likelihood of being less exploited in Canada than in the applicant's former country. And even if the Cons genuinely have a warped enough world-view not to see that fact, it's hard to imagine that there aren't far more pressing issues which Finley and the Cons generally should be addressing first.

As for the larger overtones, the bill hints at two obvious hooks for the "hidden agenda" discussion the Cons presumably want to avoid. First, there's the attempt to inject what the Cons presumably perceive to be a morality issue regarding the propriety of stripping into a completely unrelated policy area. And second, there's the spectre of establishing arbitrary, class-based restrictions on immigration - which will surely offer plenty of fodder to those concerned about the Cons shutting Canada's doors.

Fortunately, the bill doesn't appear on its face to be one that any of the opposition parties would want to support - meaning that the Cons' most laughable idea yet should remain nothing more than a gleam in Diane Finley's eye for the time being. But whether this bill is actually the best the Cons have to offer while in power or simply a signal as to where they'd want to take Canada given the control that comes with a majority, it offers plenty more reasons why Canadians will want to make sure to put the Cons' reign out of its misery.

Unreal

In case anybody thought the Cons would learn anything about trying to keep their claims of support at least vaguely plausible after Al Gore rightly shot down John Baird, there's little reason for optimism. Instead, the Cons took another step toward absurdity when Diane Finley went out of her way to cite the chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board chair who just resigned over the Cons' woeful management of Canada's refugee system:

Hon. Diane Finley (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, CPC):
Mr. Speaker, the fact that there are vacancies is just one more example of why we need to fix it. The Liberals could not recruit people.

I am not the only one who believes there is a problem. Let me read a quote. The current chair of the IRB, Mr. Fleury, has said, “the Board could be an even more effective, efficient and ultimately fair tribunal”. That is the current chair speaking and I agree with him.

Sadly, it doesn't seem likely that Fleury will be able to respond immediately as Gore did, since his resignation doesn't take effect until March 16.

But it hardly takes a direct correction from Fleury himself to see just how far Finley had to stretch to find something to defend the Cons' record. After all, the quote amounts to a politically-neutral and indeed relatively innocuous statement of fact - effectively "this board isn't perfect", which presumably applies to any person or entity in existence (other than perhaps the Cons in their own minds). And even to find that kind of quote, Finley apparently had to stoop to misrepresenting the view of somebody who clearly can't be taken to approve of the Cons' management.

Suffice it to say that if the Cons' answers based on publicly-available information are this far removed from reality, we can only wonder just how brazenly the Cons are misinforming Canadians when it comes to information which can't be contradicted on the public record.