Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Michael Katz looks back at how the U.S. abandoned its poor - and how that choice continues to affect people across the income spectrum today. And Michael Valpy discusses how Canada can and should avoid travelling any further down the same path - with his "Big Four" ideas focusing on mandatory voting, proportional representation, a guaranteed basic income and protections for vulnerable workers.

- Jeffrey Simpson describes the Cons' narrow focus on about 10 per cent of the Canadian electorate in the lead up to the next federal election, while Andrew Jackson previews what we can expect out of future federal budgets. And Michael Harris laments the fact that Stephen Harper is far more interested in using public money to promote his own image than in actually governing competently:

The Tories carpetbombed the NHL playoffs in 2013 with ads for the Economic Action Plan, tagging this shameless self-promotion with EAP 2013 identifiers. The playoff ads cost $95,000 a pop. But the Harper government had to admit later that the ads did not contain any actual measures from the 2013 budget.

In other words, not only was it a freeloading political announcement paid for by Canadians on behalf of the Conservative party, it was false. The Canada Jobs Grant which was being advertised at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars didn’t even exist.

When Harper himself was forced to explain his profligate ad offensive at the public’s expense in the House of Commons, he no longer talked of informing citizens about government programs, the way Rona Ambrose had. Now it was a matter of national pride — in him.

No one is better at giving himself straight As than this PM. The new explanation went something like this: The ads were worth it because after seeing their key message — that Canada was doing better than any other developed country in tough economic times — Canadians would burst with pride at what a good government they had.

Setting aside the neck-snapping shift in the justification, there was another problem with the ads.  They weren’t true either. Canada does not have the highest growth rate in the G7 — the United States does. Outside the G7, the economies of Australia and some Scandinavian countries also grew faster than Canada’s did.

The Economic Action Plan was a propaganda vehicle originating in the Finance Department to make Canadians think Jim Flaherty is the best finance minister on the planet … you know, ‘STFU’ Jim.

Believers in that steroid pantomime known as Wrestlemania may have been taken in. People who can read are a tougher sale.

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The bottom line? No prime minister has any business spending hundreds of millions of dollars of other people’s money to boast about his accomplishments. If only the PM would unmuzzle his ministers — and give a few interviews where he didn’t supply the questions in advance — the media would be delighted to offer the air time and column inches for free.

What a terrifying concept that would be for a control freak not particularly restrained by the facts — someone who would rather spend pots of public money creating them.

- John Ivison gives us advance warning that there are plenty of years of diplomatic darkness ahead if the Cons get their way.

- And finally, Dan Leger theorizes that we may look back on 2013 as the year citizens pushed back against constant surveillance in the name of security.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Jeffrey Simpson marks Peter Lougheed's passing by discussing what he brought to Alberta's political scene that's been sorely lacking ever since:

Mr. Lougheed, defending Alberta’s jurisdictional turf in conflicts with Liberal and Conservative governments in Ottawa, navigated his province through these shoals. The shame of his successors is that they took two of his cardinal convictions and discarded them in the rush for quick spoils and easy money – that natural resource revenues belong to the people and should be developed in a measured, balanced fashion, and that considerable money from those resources should be husbanded in a Heritage Fund for future generations.
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Mr. Lougheed governed not as an ideological opponent of the state – the red meat of modern-day conservative thinking – but as its ally. The state, he believed, was the people’s friend, which is what Tories tend to believe. And he used the state aggressively, perhaps in a few cases too aggressively, to buy an airline and make public investments, help the early oil-sands industry get its legs, create the Heritage Fund, build new social programs – all the while believing in the free-enterprise system as the best wealth-creation generator. He used the state aggressively, when necessary, against what he saw could be invidious practices of the oil and gas industry, for which he was banned from the Petroleum Club.

Put simply, Mr. Lougheed always understood the importance of the industry for Alberta, but he never directly equated its interests with the wider interests of Alberta.

 - Tim Harper makes the case as to why the Cons should have plenty to answer for in cutting off all diplomatic ties with Iran:

Those who argue that leaving Tehran is a matter of principle, miss the point that we have eyes and ears on the ground, not on principle, but to promote our point of view and our sovereign interests.

Those who would argue that Tehran wasn’t listening to us anyway, miss the point that we should still have Canadian eyes on the ground to bear witness. Waving the white flag, taking our ball and going home, is hardly the high road.
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Largely unheralded, they do not remain in dangerous environments because they are welcomed but because they subscribe to the well-worn dictum that you hold your friends close, but you hold your enemies closer.

We have kept embassies open during wars. We did not shut down during the darkest days of the Cold War.
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Harper is correct that our diplomats are not soldiers, but often they are the next closest thing.

He owes it to the foreign service, allies and Canadian voters to give us a fuller accounting of why we decided to leave Iran behind.

-  But then, Aaron Wherry reminds us why the Cons' talking points are more safely presumed to be farce than fact.

- Rick Salutin discusses why any positive change in our schools needs to be based on treating teachers and unions as essential stakeholders in any functional education system - rather than adopting the Lib/Con position that they're enemies to be beaten down.

- Finally, Travis Waldron posts about the latest evidence that tax cuts aimed at the already-wealthy don't do anything at all to help the wider economy.

A dose of reality

I won't argue with Andrew Steele's take that the latest WikiLeaks document disclosure is probably closer to "gossip" than "whistleblowing". But I'd argue that there's room for a far more positive response than the one he seems to expect:

Today, national leaders of other countries will provide less information to Americans and the West generally, fearing it will become public.

Take Saudi Arabian, United Arab Emirate and Egyptian opinion that Iran's President is "another Hitler." These leaders will face abrogation not only from Iran but from some within their own country over siding with Israel against another Muslim country.

If the criticism becomes strong enough within government and power structures, they could have to alter their positioning publicly and privately to compensate, making concessions to Iran to demonstrate solidarity.

And that is bad for the world.

It weakens the prestige and attraction of the very democratic institutions Mr. Assange claims to be supporting, at just the time when another model of state-operating is becoming fashionable.

From my standpoint, Steele's concern raises a fairly important question: how sustainable can any institution be if it can't survive the revelation that its actors are mere people, subject to holding strong opinions and occasionally lapsing in judgment just like anybody else?

If anything, the value in the latest documents looks to be some much-needed confirmation that for all the prestige we may seek to ascribe to diplomatic institutions, they - like the military, and the police, and the other groups who have been built up as requiring public support and fealty at all costs - are ultimately made up of human beings who are both fallible and opinionated. And maybe the better course of action is to avoid blowing out of proportion the revelation of the obvious and predictable, rather than stoking outrage as an excuse to clamp down more tightly on the escape of the occasional bit of truth.

Weaker in the world

The CP reports that the Cons' efforts to ignore the world outside North America (and the U.S.' war zones) are gathering momentum, as several Canadian consulates will likely be closed due to unnecessary budget cuts at the Foreign Affairs Department:

Up to 19 more Canadian diplomatic offices could be closing their doors, as the Conservative government continues belt-tightening at the Foreign Affairs Department

Sources say missions in Cambodia, Latvia and the Balkan states are among those being considered for the chopping block, as well as a number of small consulates in Africa. Late last year, the government closed two consulates in Japan, one in St. Petersburg and another in Milan to save money.

The department is coping with a budget decrease of $142.8 million in the coming year, and the cuts will continue through to 2009, a trend that began under the Liberals. Officials have been dropping broad hints for months that more cuts to missions are coming.

It's hard to see how cuts to Canada's representation abroad can do anything but reduce both the services available to Canadians elsewhere, and the potential to draw tourism and investment from the areas who lose their Canadian presence.

But the Cons (like their Lib predecessors) seem perfectly happy to pour time and money into making us more dependent on the U.S., while reducing our involvement around the globe. And whether through the direct effects of being tied to the U.S.' economy or simply a weaker bargaining position based on the Cons' chosen lack of alternatives, Canada as a whole figures to be worse off in the long run for its withdrawal from the world.