Sunday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Sunday reading.

- Frances Russell notes that the corporate sector is laughing all the way to the bank (and often an offshore one at that) after fifteen years of constant tax slashing, while Canadian citizens haven't benefited at all from the trickle-down theory. And Jordan Weissmann points out that a recent survey on CEO pay is just the latest example of Americans both severely underestimating the level of inequality in their country, and still preferring a far more equal distribution of wealth.

- Elisabeth Babcock writes that in addition to providing a reasonable standard of living, any effort to ameliorate poverty needs to include a concerted effort to overcome the individual stresses created by precarious life. And Chuk Plante reminds us how poverty and exclusion are intertwined with health and economic outcomes.

- Mitchell Anderson highlights how the FIPPA and other business-biased trade deals serve to undermine not only any hope of people-oriented policy, but also the personal and social protections enshrined in Canada's constitution:

Perhaps most importantly, the deal fails to protect aboriginal rights under the Constitution. The implications of this omission are profound. While our federal government has a duty to consult First Nations, Chinese state-owned companies can sue Canada through a secret international arbitration panel for any such accommodation that affects their economic interests.

This would essentially fetter the Crown, which could be successfully sued by either Chinese interests or First Nations depending on whether they respect aboriginal title or not. Put another way, while the FIPA does not specifically override First Nations Charter protections, it could make providing those protections prohibitively expensive. The Hupacasath First Nation on Vancouver Island challenged the FIPA in court based on exactly these concerns and their decision at the Federal Court of Appeal is expected any day.
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 With the prospect of a change in government in 2015, many Canadians are hoping for a period of rebuilding public institutions. The FIPA, however, could lock in Harper’s draconian cuts to federal environmental laws for almost eight electoral cycles — effectively an eternity by political standards.

Future governments could revisit the legislative changes by the Harper government, but if they affect Chinese interests in comparison to what is on the books now, we have to pay. How much? According to the terms just agreed to by Ottawa, the sky’s the limit.

Harper famously proclaimed, “You won’t recognize Canada when I’m through with it.” He has made surprising progress on that dubious goal, and like most politicians I’m sure would like to keep it that way long after he has left office.

This trade deal will persist for as long as we’ve had the Charter. But unlike the Charter, which was the result of months of good-faith negotiations between opposing political parties, the FIPA seems instead an undemocratic and underhanded endgame to lock in our prime minister’s ideological legacy.

- Meanwhile, Mike De Souza reports that the Cons are once again encouraging the oil industry to flout what few environmental laws are left on the books - this time issuing a drilling permit while studiously ignoring scientific evidence about the danger the drilling would pose to endangered beluga whales. Which means that it's more than understandable that affected communities like North Bay are raising concerns about the Energy East pipeline even as it avoids some of the risks and costs of its even more controversial counterparts.

- Finally, as part of Right to Know Week, Sean Holman unveils a new movement - and hashtag - intended to expose government secrecy in Canada.

On distinctions

I've already pointed out the NDP's opportunity to differentiate itself from the Libs as a truly progressive party. And the Libs' corporatist votes against democratic decision-making and basic civil liberties will certainly help that cause.

But if it's possible to draw a clear distinction between Mulcair and Trudeau on basic knowledge of current events, then so much the better:

Mulcair told reporters after question period that the ruling did affirm that Page “had the right to demand those documents” (ie. the information from departments) in the first place.

He was referring to paragraph five of the ruling, which stated that, “neither on the basis of parliamentary privilege nor on the principles of statutory interpretation has Parliament reserved the right for itself to answer Mr. Page’s questions. That task falls upon this court.”

Mulcair told reporters that this effectively destroyed the Senate’s attempt to argue that the PBO’s mandate clarification had breached parliamentary privilege.

“The so-called privilege that existed of Parliament that the government was trying to set up as a barricade for him getting that information was false. That whole argument fell flat and the judge didn’t accept it,” he said.

Mulcair then looked to the future.

“I think that this decision is so solid and so categorical that the Conservatives can’t play their game of continuing to try to shut down the Parliamentary Budget Officer, that any future (PBO) will be able to use that judgment to demand the documents and everything will be fine with that,” he said. “I don’t think that any further litigation is required. I think that the judgment is crystal clear in that regard.”
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A few minutes after Mulcair left the microphone in the Foyer of the House of Commons, almost two hours after the Court delivered its ruling, Trudeau stepped forward. Asked for a comment on matter, Trudeau simply said, “I’m not aware of the court’s decision yet.”

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Paul Adams rightly points out that there's no inherent value in centrism merely for the sake of centrism - especially when the spectrum of choices is itself shaped by decades of distorted assumptions:

(T)he reality of modern politics is that the muddled middle is no answer at all to the issues facing us. On economic and social policy, what divides Canadians is their attitude towards three decades of market-liberating policies that have weakened our middle class, increased inequality, corroded social programs, undermined the ability of working people to negotiate a living wage, and left us all more vulnerable and insecure.

There is certainly a discussion to be had about how quickly and by what means these policies should be moderated, revised or reversed — and issues of priority, pace and technique may divide the Liberals and the NDP.

But first, both parties need to decide whether they really stand for a change in direction or not.

This is even more starkly true on the issue of climate change. The last time they were in office, the Liberals talked a great deal about it but did absolutely nothing. This is one issue on which finding a middle ground between action and inaction probably means not doing enough and condemning our children to an uncertain future.

- And contrary to some poorly-defined complaints, there's a clear choice between the NDP and the Libs when it comes to the FIPA - with the NDP actually challenging the deal absent some explanation as to how it's supposed to improve matters for Canadians, while the Libs hew to the line that any criticism of a free trade agreement is heresy.

- Meanwhile, Matt McClure reports on Alberta's willingness to let $120 million in corporate taxes get funnelled offshore. And Ramsey Hart and John Jacobs highlight the fact that Ontario is giving away its resources at fire-sale prices - even as the Lib government there slashes corporate taxes and services in the face of an eleven-figure deficit.

- Finally, Paul Krugman discusses how a similar focus on prioritizing corporate interests and financial markets over workers has turned out for the unemployed in the U.S.:

Mr. Ghayad then did an experiment, sending out résumés describing the qualifications and employment history of 4,800 fictitious workers. Who got called back? The answer was that workers who reported having been unemployed for six months or more got very few callbacks, even when all their other qualifications were better than those of workers who did attract employer interest.

So we are indeed creating a permanent class of jobless Americans.

And let’s be clear: this is a policy decision. The main reason our economic recovery has been so weak is that, spooked by fear-mongering over debt, we’ve been doing exactly what basic macroeconomics says you shouldn’t do — cutting government spending in the face of a depressed economy.

It’s hard to overstate how self-destructive this policy is. Indeed, the shadow of long-term unemployment means that austerity policies are counterproductive even in purely fiscal terms. Workers, after all, are taxpayers too; if our debt obsession exiles millions of Americans from productive employment, it will cut into future revenues and raise future deficits.

On unbalanced trade

When it comes to trying to justify perpetually-increasing restrictions on democratic governance in the guise of "free trade" agreements, advocates present two polar opposite views as to what such agreements are intended to accomplish.

The first - and more plausible - view of the actual and intended effect of trade agreements is that they primarily serve the purposes of the parties who push and negotiate them. When corporate interests and their pet Randians meet behind closed doors to draft agreements which will be subject to zero public accountability, it's a safe bet that it's the general public which stands to lose out as a result. And there's certainly a constituency for the view that democracy should be subordinate to the profit motive - making trade agreements into a rational if cynical strategy to tie the hands of elected officials while ensuring that business ultimately rules everywhere.

But that constituency is rather smaller than the number of people who might be persuaded that there's a problem with encouraging plutocrats write the rules of international trade in a way which lets them override the democratic will of the public. And so we also tend to hear another excuse for free trade agreements: that such agreements aren't intended to protect wealthy investors or corporate interests at all, but instead to ensure the availability of the greatest range of goods and services at the lowest possible cost to consumers.

In principle, this second argument is entirely vulnerable to a fairly obvious criticism. If the need for free trade agreements is based solely on a desire to reduce and ultimately eliminate our own tariffs, then there's a far more direct path to that goal: reduce and eliminate our own tariffs, rather than signing agreements which carry a myriad of other consequences including asymmetrical rights for businesses to extort their desired policy from states. But most of the time, we don't get to test whether advocates of the consumer-focused position will be as interested in tariffs when they aren't linked to government suicide pacts.

Well, the Harper Conservatives have created just such an opportunity. In the midst of a campaign to lock Canada into ever more dubious free trade agreements - granting preferential trade and investment status to Colombia despite (if not because of) its recent history of anti-labour goon squads, granting China a multi-decade stranglehold over Canadian public policy, and apparently increasing the cost of prescription drugs to appease big pharma as represented by European negotiators - the Cons have declared that they're implementing an increase in tariffs on imports from developing countries. Which in principle represents both a beggar-the-poor philosophy from the perspective of those who see tariffs as primarily affecting producers, and a direct cost to Canadian consumers for those who see trade policy primarily in terms of purchasing power.

Now, it could be that there's a long game being played by the Cons: the affected countries might well get pushed into negotiating free-trade agreements if their exporters demand some means of reversing the tariffs. But once again, that explanation wouldn't hold water as a matter of consumer interests: the end result would simply be the elimination of the Cons' new tariffs, accompanied by a superfluous set of giveaways to the investor class.

In other words, the Cons have made clear that their gleeful pursuit of any free trade agreement which another country can find time to sign is rooted solely on the first argument: as a means of exacerbating inequality in wealth and power, with consumer interests serving at best as an excuse to implement that agenda. And I'll be curious to see whether we see adherents to the second theory show anywhere near the level of concern about the Cons' direct and deliberate increase in consumer prices that they tend to offer whenever progressive voices point out the real effects of free trade agreements.

Update: Following up on the conclusion above, Stephen Gordon and Mike Moffatt step up to the plate.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

On precedence

There's not much doubt that Canada's debates over the FNOOC/Nexen takeover bid and FIPPA investor privilege treaty with China have become intertwined. But it's worth noting that some observers seem to be misreading how the two will relate to each other - and we should be wary of confusion on both fronts.

Let's take for example Michael Den Tandt:

There are legitimate questions, as I have noted before, about both the detail of the FIPA, and the CNOOC-Nexen deal. The Harper government should have addressed these up front. Instead, it has played catch up. Its likeliest way forward now is to approve the takeover, but with stringent conditions. Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that CNOOC has accepted a requirement that the acquired company have 50 per cent Canadian representation on its board and in management.

If true, that is fascinating: Article 7 of the Canada-China FIPA says that “a contracting party may not require that an enterprise of that Party ... appoint individuals of any particular nationality to senior management positions.” The agreement allows that a majority of a board of directors be “of a particular nationality or resident of the territory of the Contracting Party,” but only if that does not “materially impair the ability of the investor to exercise control over its investment.”

For CNOOC to accept a 50-50 board and executive-suite split, therefore, would denote appreciable flexibility in the interpretation of the FIPA, to Canada’s benefit — perhaps driven by knowledge on both sides that the deal has become a hot potato.

Apparently, Den Tandt assumes that CNOOC's agreement to accept restrictions on its board and management will supersede the terms of the FIPPA. But there's another possibility as well: that CNOOC is perfectly willing to publicly accept a restriction which won't actually be effective.

After all, FIPPA contains no exception for restrictions on board and management entered into by agreement - only for ones already in place by the time the FIPPA enters into force. And so CNOOC may well be happy to go along with the Cons' desire to draw out the approval process, push to have the FIPPA approved first, then avoid any public commitment through the operation of a treaty which supersedes its promise.

Of course, there's a separate issue that a one-time restriction will do nothing to affect the interpretation of the FIPPA once it's put in place. And as Don Davies has noted, any ability to further monitor CNOOC's operations will be lost as soon as a one-time takeover is approved.

But while it's bad enough that we're being told yet again to accept one-time assurances in exchange for long-term fetters on public policy, there's a real risk we we'll end up getting neither.

New column day

Here, on the need to question both the importance of trade agreements compared to other forms of interjurisdictional cooperation in general, and the Cons' warped priorities in particular.

For further reading...
- Again, here's the Council of Canadians' note on the Cons' insistence on cutting human rights out of the CETA, along with CBC's report on the Cons' leaked trade-only foreign policy plan.
- And Gus Van Harten raises the point that the push for ever more trade agreements is largely being led by the people who benefit most from their passage (and are using them in ways they say we shouldn't see as possible).

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- David Macdonald takes a closer look at a Fraser Institute study on income mobility, and finds strong evidence that there's a significant lack of mobility at both the bottom and the top of Canada's income distribution:

What should be very shocking to people is that in the shorter term panels, 50% of the poorest people in 2002 were still in the poorest category five years later (table 3).  That’s a pretty stunning conclusion.  For the second poorest category, a shocking 69% either ended up in the second poorest category or the poorest category (making even less).  So about 60% of the people in the bottom poorest categories were stuck there between 2002 and 2007.  That’s a lot of people living on very little income.  They are a bit mobile, but they are mobile between very poor and poor.  That’s not really the kind of mobility we should be looking for.

While the study focuses on the low end, there are some very interesting things going on at the upper end.  Take a look at table 6 for the top 20%.  The table does a “where are they now?” analysis over 19 years from 1990 to 2009.  For people that were in the top 20% in 1990, how many are still in the top 20% in 2009?  The answer is a whopping 64%.  Six out of 10 people that were in the top 20% in 1990 are still there today, two decades later.  Over a 10 year period between 1990 and 2000, almost 80% of the wealthy stayed at the top.

This is the opposite of income mobility, if you manage to slip into the exclusive club of wealthy Canadians it looks like you get a 10, if not a 20-year membership.  None of the other income groups are anywhere near that level of exclusivity.

- Meanwhile, Allison Jones reports on a Campaign 2000 study pointing out that it's possible to end child poverty in Canada by redirecting assorted tax credits. But I'd note that the contrast between universal benefits and the most narrow focus possible only serves as a means of pitting the currently-poor against the nearly-poor who are likely to lean heavily on the universal benefits - meaning that the real takeaway should be that it's possible to muster enough resources to end poverty in one form or another.

- Anne McGrath suggests applying a seven-generation test to Canada's international agreements, and finds the Cons' planned investor privilege pact with China to be sorely wanting by that standard:

The Iroquois had a rule: when making a major decision, consider its effects on the next seven generations.

It’s a good rule, one the Conservatives would do well to adopt. The reluctance of this government to submit the Canada-China FIPA (Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement) to parliamentary analysis and oversight deepens the apprehension many Canadians feel about the way we are pursuing trade and investment with China. Despite the government’s assurances, many remain unconvinced that the FIPA will be good for Canada in the long-term. Even its supporters acknowledge that further study and debate would be beneficial.
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Given that under the current government Canada has gone from a $26 billion trade surplus to a $50 billion trade deficit, we cannot simply take it as gospel that a trade deal exempt from parliamentary scrutiny is in this country’s best interest.

Critics argue that FIPA promotes corporate rights at the expense of Canada’s democratic, environmental and social rights and may have negative consequences for this country for years to come. In the agreed terms, FIPA cannot be terminated for 15 years. What’s more, any investments made prior to the date of termination will stand for a further 15 years.

The North American Free Trade Agreement, in contrast, can be cancelled with six months’ notice. The impact of FIPA will be felt well beyond its 31-year duration and Canadians deserve to know it in detail.

 - But unfortunately, the Cons look to be applying a rather different lens to their dealings with the world.

- Finally, Bill Curry reports that the Senate is determined to remind people of its existence (and make a wrong-headed claim to relevance) by trashing a bill passed by Canada's actual elected representatives.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Duncan Cameron highlights the choice between austerity and prosperity facing the governments of both Canada and the U.S.:

The economic realities faced by working people in both Canada and the United States need to be addressed. Talk about putting the fiscal house in order is code for taking money away from working people. It does not preclude giving grossly indecent fiscal advantages to corporations.
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The debate about the fiscal cliff is important because it helps focus attention on how government policy can have negative or positive effects on quality of life, and living standards.

Getting agreement on the link between spending increases and prosperity would be an improvement over falsehoods put about in Canada and the U.S. about how austerity is necessary to reduce deficits. It is not, and will not. All austerity does is reduce the standard of living of citizens.

 - But David Macdonald worries that the Cons have already made their choice - and that they'll use an economy that's weaker than (oh-so-loudly) advertised as an excuse to make matters all the worse for Canadians. And Thomas Walkom's hope that Jim Flaherty might be merely wrong rather than outright crazy doesn't seem particularly reassuring - particularly keeping in mind that his government's response to the 2008 crash was to push austerity from day one until political calculations intervened.

- Michael Geist explains how the Cons' copyright legislation will affect content creators and users.

- And Andrew Nikiforuk discusses the risks the Cons are pushing on Canada through an investment-protection racket with China.

- Finally, Paul Adams points out the significance of California voters simultaneously voting to raise their own taxes, and giving state Democrats the supermajority they need to have room to maneuver. But I'd think the even more telling sign that tax protest messages may have run their course is that even with an explicit tax increase on their ballot, California voters turned out in relatively low numbers - meaning that anti-taxers weren't able to motivate citizens to vote against it.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Barbara Yaffe writes about the continual rise in food bank use and the underlying political choices which have brought it about:

(I)n the last decade food banks have been helping Canadians through both good times and bad.

Doubtless, the latest food bank numbers, at least in part, are related to the private-sector propensity since the 2008 recession to maintain or boost profit by reducing employee numbers.

Also, as anyone who frequents a supermarket knows, food has grown noticeably more expensive in the past few years.

And Canadians are more indebted.

The public sector also is being constricted, with the robustness of social programs being diminished.

“As governments cut the size of the public workforce, emphasize low taxes and restrict new spending, social policy ... is at risk of neglect.”

 - Gus Van Harten reviews how FIPA investment deal with China being forced through by the Cons looks to have disastrous effects for Canada. And Rick Mercer rants about the Cons' refusal to accept debate or accountability on the deal:


- Amy Minsky has been reporting extensively on the Cons' anti-union bill - first highlighting the dishonesty involved in labeling the bill as a private member's legislation when Stephen Harper's own chief of staff has been documented meeting with the anti-worker lobbyists behind it, then covering the resulting committee hearings.

- And finally, Michael Harris discusses how direct interference by the Cons has led to the termination and silencing of journalists who dare to question their actions rather than serving as meek stenographers.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Heather Scoffield reports on the Canadian Index of Wellbeing's stunning finding that Canadian quality of life declined by a quarter between 2008 and 2010, while the Vancouver Sun and Lindor Reynolds comment on the collapse in well-being far beyond the economic damage of the recent recession. And Jane Gleeson-White puts the need for such measures of well-being into a global context:

GDP is a partial and misleading measure of national wealth and wellbeing. The problem is that it does not measure key goods in our economy, those unpriced but priceless services carried out by domestic workers and by nature – for example, the coastal defence of coral reefs, the pollution-filtering of wetlands, the nutrient recycling done by the soil and the unpaid work we do in our homes.

And yet GDP does include bad elements such as pollution, crime, cigarettes and their related health costs and environmental disasters, which boost GDP and so generate economic growth.
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Under current GDP measures, countries that cut down forests for timber exports, dynamite their reefs for fish, pollute and degrade their soil for intensive agriculture and allow farms and factories to contaminate their waterways get rich.

The services provided by nature and households are not included in GDP because we consider their work to be free. But these services are not free – and we are beginning to pay their hidden costs in environmental destruction and climate change.

- Meanwhile, the Cons continue to work more on illusions than reality - as John Geddes discusses the millions of public dollars being spent to bolster Conservative branding and gloss over the gross failures that have led to our decline in well-being:

These are not supposed to be political ads. They feature no Conservative politicians. Still, they hardly feel like public-service spots. They aim to set a mood, rather than convey practical information. And get ready for more of the same on other key Tory themes. Under fire from the Opposition NDP for planning to gradually raise the eligibility age for Old Age Security to 67 from 65, starting in 2023, the government has budgeted $8 million for OAS ads. With Harper’s image as an economic leader tied so closely to streamlining approval of natural-resource projects, his government has $5 million earmarked for ads to promote that thrust. “The problem with this kind of advertising,” says Queen’s University politics professor Jonathan Rose, “is that it serves no public policy purpose.”
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Beyond the content of federal ads, serious questions surround how much money is being spent on them. Approved ad budgets for each department are disclosed quarterly on the website of the Treasury Board, the central agency overseeing federal spending. But those quarterly figures don’t seem to be a reliable predictor of actual advertising outlays. In 2010-11, the last year for which final figures are available, $65.4 million in ad spending was approved on a quarterly basis, but $83.3 million was ultimately spent, according to the government’s annual report on advertising. Asked to explain how $17.9 million more was spent that year than initially approved, a Treasury Board official said departments are allowed to dip into their general budgets to top up ad spending.

- Lawrence Martin rightly wonders why the Cons' attempt to lock Canada into a long-term investment deal with China absent any discussion or debate hasn't resulted in more of a reaction. But then, with Jim Flaherty looking to sell off the CMHC, it's not as if there's been a lack of other issues similarly demanding a response.

- Finally, the Star weighs in on Jason Kenney's grab for unilateral and unaccountable power to determine who's able to enter Canada:

(T)here is well-founded concern that this new law could be applied inconsistently and arbitrarily. And proponents of free speech may argue that it shouldn’t be the role of the government to keep out those with views we may find collectively reprehensible.

Yet Kenney says he will try to ensure that the law can’t be abused. He intends to issue a list of criteria by which one can be denied before the parliamentary committee, and reach out to his own party and the opposition for feedback. He insists he isn’t looking for “some broad generalized power to prevent the admission of people to Canada whose political opinions we disagree with.”

But the question is: if Kenney can already step in for “exceptional cases” at the border, why the need to enshrine it in law? And given his government’s track record, how can we be sure the law won’t be abused? We can’t. This is a bad plan and the minister would be wise to drop it now.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- The Toronto Star's Public Editor Kathy English discusses the wall being built around information by the Harper Cons. But at least as interesting to me is the Cons' determination to put up roadblocks in the way of information which can obviously be obtained through other means - such as this example from a report on their axing of Harold Leduc from the Veterans Review and Appeal Board after he exposed their breaches of privacy:

An outspoken member of a veterans appeal board, who said his privacy was violated and that the federal agency treats ex-soldiers with disrespect, won't be reappointed.

Harold Leduc and two other members of the troubled agency have been shown the door, and in their places the Harper government has appointed a nurse with extensive experience in addiction treatment and former military officers.
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Federal officials, speaking on background, refused to identify the other two board members who were dropped, but the names William Watson and Ellen Riley do not appear on the latest order in council lists.

- Pierre Martin offers up two examples in support of an implicit theory that we should take fairer taxes on higher-income individuals off the table. So let's ask a question about one of those examples: would Barack Obama be happy to win only the votes of people who want tax cuts for the rich to expire?

(Hint: It might help to do some research before answering.)

- Alice takes a closer look at the upcoming federal by-election campaigns. And it seems particularly noteworthy that the NDP is seeing hotly contested nominations in both Calgary Centre and Durham after placing little emphasis on those seats in past federal elections.

- Finally, Michael Harris suspects that the Cons' secretive trade deal with China may be the type of action that forces MPs to start genuinely challenging Stephen Harper's decision-making:

(I)t is British Columbia that may prove to be Stephen Harper’s Waterloo. Has anyone ever been interred by a pipeline? Has anyone drowned in an ocean of bitumen? Or strangled on a tangle of national giveaways of the kind that lay snarled in the recent trade deal with China, the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Act (FIPPA)? The deal is so bad for Canada that it was consummated with all the secrecy of the Manhattan Project. Astonishingly, it is set to become law on November 1, 2012 – without a word of parliamentary debate. 

And Deep Rogue Ram offers its own take on the China pact: