Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Joyce Vance writes about the purge of any trace of decency in the U.S. right which has found its ultimate expressio in Donald Trump. And Christopher Guly reports on the reaction to the U.S.' plans to dominate Canada from people who have been responsible for managing Canadian foreign affairs.  

- Dana Drugmand discusses a new Center for Climate Integrity report on the constant barrage of false advertising by the fossil fuel industry. And Chris Rossdale et al. study how petropoliticians are repressing and criminalizing peaceful protest to try to ensure oil barons can keep extracting profits unchallenged. 

- Michael Sainato reports on the Trump regime's attacks on the labour movement and the public bodies responsible for regulating and remedying employer abuses. And Emma Arkell discusses the pattern of interference by Canadian governments to prevent workers from making gains through collective action. 

- Gillian Petit documents the reality of the working poor in Canada, while pointing out that readily affordable supports could provide the dignity and stability needed to improve their circumstances. And Mike Moffatt points out the plummeting incomes of young middle-class males (paired with an increase in income for those over 65), while the Canadian Press reports on the World Happiness Report's observation that Canadians under 30 are now the unhappiest generation in the country. 

- Kate Allen notes that one of the primary effects of arbitrary back-to-office mandates is to cause a spike in preventable air pollution. And Gary Fuller reports on new research showing that air passengers are exposed to extreme amounts of particulate pollution during boarding and taxiing. 

- Finally, Jared Wesley offers his take on what Albertans can do in response to the UCP's attacks on anything resembling democratic governance. 

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Charlie Angus discusses how the second Trump administration has been systematically dismantling both internal democracy and international alliances in order to tighten the executive's grip on power. Stephen Engelberg highlights how its attack on the civil service is based on obvious lies, while Amanda Marcotte points out the absurd yet painful parallels between Gamergate and Elon Musk's obsession with federal workers. And Donald Moynihan writes that the general public will suffer as a result of the destruction of a functional state. 

- Casey Michel writes that the corrupt deal in whic Eric Adams sold out his city to avoid prosecution shows the world that the power of the U.S. government is for sale. 

- As a note of relative hope, Dan Sinker points out how the control exercised by the Ku Klux Klan a century ago was itself dismantled. And Greg Sargent's interview with Leah Greenberg includes the recognition that plenty of people - including some who haven't been politically active before - are eager to counter Trump's abuses. 

- Bert Hubert writes that there's every reason for countries around the world to ensure they're not relying on U.S. tech companies who are subject to political control. And John Herrman points out that AI is already demonstrably cannibalizing itself - making it entirely unsafe to rely on any output that relies on web-based information. 

- Stewart Prest discusses the need for Canada to build a new international coalition in light of the reality that we can't rely on the U.S., while Taylor Noakes implores our media not to normalize Trump's attacks on our sovereignty. And Canada Healthwatch points out the opportunity to welcome doctors (among other workers) fleeing the U.S., while Ashifa Kassam reports on Spain's immense success opening its doors to immigrants. 

- Armine Yalnizyan discusses the choices faced by Ontario voters in their provincial election when it comes to an economoc response the Trump administration - with the MAGA-backing premier who called a snap election for a supposed mandate to deal with the threat being the only leader who hasn't deigned to assemble any ideas. Vanmala Subramaniam reports on the growing recognition that Ontario workers are far worse off as a result of Ford's stay in power. And David Leadbeater highlights how Ford is starving the province's universities. 

- Finally, Christopher Holcroft discusses how Pierre Poilievre is trying to reverse his message to an absolutely laughable patriotism theme after spending his entire time as Conservative leader expressing his hatred for Canada. And Toula Drimonis notes that the fraudsters and fascists who make up the Trump administration are firmly in Poilievre's camp - making him toxic to anybody who doesn't want to see those forces in power. 

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Paul Taylor comments on the rifts in our social fabric which are being highlighted by COVID-19. And Graham Riches argues that the food banks which are being pushed to the limit by the pandemic would never have been necessary if our economy wasn't fundamentally broken to begin with.

- George Packer writes that the coronavirus pandemic is only exposing the U.S. as a thoroughly failed state. And Ed Pilkington and Dominic Rushe discuss how after wasting ample opportunity to prepare the U.S. and minimize the damage from the first wave of the virus, Donald Trump is now looking to make matters far worse with his inability to resist pushing for a hasty relaxation of the rules protecting the public.

- Trish Hennessy suggests that social prescribing may offer a helpful model in remediating the damage COVID-19 has done.

- Arwa Mahdawi notes that it's the wealthiest few who have contributed the least who have lined up for the largest bailout demands. Jayati Ghosh notes that less-developed countries are facing far more difficult circumstances than we are. And Kate Aronoff writes that rather than offering any meaningful help, our global institutions have been set up to push developing countries to fail. 

- Finally, Betsy Donald and Shauna Brail point out how the disruption of supply chains for vital goods has signaled the need to rebuild Canada's manufacturing sector.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Saqib Bhatti and Stephen Lerner point out that the struggle for power between labour and capital is far from over, and that the next step may be to engage on wider questions of economic control:

For too long most unions defined their mission narrowly as winning higher wages and benefits for unionized workers without challenging how companies were managed or how capital was invested and controlled. Unions accepted that it was management’s job to run companies and the broader economy, and that the unions’ primary job was to get as much as possible for their members.

This still dominates labor’s thinking: we focus on income inequality but not wealth inequality; we focus on how to raise the bottom, but not how to stop wealth from concentrating at the top; we deal with our direct employers, but not those who really control the broader socioeconomic conditions in which our members work and their families live.

We have bought into the notion that the boss is entitled to endless profits and should be allowed to have control of the business and the economy as long as our members win incremental improvements in every contract. But that bargain no longer works.
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(U)nions don’t typically enter into negotiations with the investors. They deal with their direct employer, even though in many major companies investors, even the CEOs, are ultimately constrained by the pressures put on them by investors.

Unions need to start looking to these actors higher up the food chain, to the people who control the money in the public sector as well as the private sector.

In the public sector, state and local officials accurately decry the fact that there is not enough money in public coffers to properly fund public services. However, the reason why there isn’t enough money is that corporations and the wealthy have waged a sustained war on taxes over the past forty years to avoid paying more.

Increasingly, these corporations are owned by Wall Street investors seeking to cut taxes in order to increase their return on investment. These wealthy few have a large part of their wealth tied up in the financial sector.

By trying to squeeze pennies out of public officials while letting the billionaires and bankers off the hook, public-sector unions are fighting with one hand tied behind their back.

- Gabriel Winant also offers a noteworthy look at the state of the U.S.' labour movement. And Tom Parkin points out how a larger self-identified working class may be an increasingly important force in Canadian politics, while Sid Ryan comments on the state of the relationship between Canadian labour and the NDP.

- Mersiha Gadzo identifies plenty of the ways in which Justin Trudeau has combined a sunny disposition with the same dark actions we'd expect from the Harper Cons. But Nora Loreto argues that progressive activists will need to develop new strategies to address Trudeau rather than Harper.

- Finally, Sir Michael Marmot discusses the social causes of economic inequality, while pointing out the need to ensure a greater focus on all social determinants of health.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Rosemary Barton discusses why it's in Canada's best interest on the global stage to work on building strong multilateral institutions (including the UN) rather than counting on bluster to make a difference. But Gus van Harten notes that we're instead signing onto trade deals including the TPP which transfer power from governments of all types to the corporate sector. And Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood examines what's at stake in the TPP in particular, while Susan Delacourt questions why such a major agreement is shrouded in secrecy rather than being subject to any meaningful public assessment.

- Marc Lee rightly criticizes Stephen Harper for taking wholly undue credit for greenhouse gas emissions reductions caused entirely by economic downturns and provincial action. 

- Ned Franks tells Abbas Rana that a Con defeat on a throne speech will mean the opportunity for another party to form government rather than another election. But Bill Tieleman adds a twist to the possibility of the Cons trying to cling to power despite an inability to win majority support in the House of Commons by wondering whether they might seek to hold a leadership convention rather than reconvening Parliament. (And I'd note the risk is greater than Tieleman himself identifies, since for all Harper's spin about "most seats wins" there's theoretically nothing stopping him from following that path based strictly on incumbency no matter what the election result is.)

- Meanwhile, Andrew Mitrovica writes that the media has long been used as a tool for dispersing propaganda - even if the Cons are somewhat more blatant than their predecessors in valuing it as nothing more than that.

- Finally, Karl Nerenberg follows up on the Munk debate, including by pointing out Justin Trudeau's continued lack of an even remotely reasonable explanation for backing the Cons' terror legislation - even as his melodramatic attempt to change the dubject was somehow treated as a victory for him.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Robert Reich writes that the most important source of growing inequality in the U.S. is a political system torqued to further enrich those who already had the most:

The underlying problem, then, is not just globalization and technological changes that have made most American workers less competitive. Nor is it that they lack enough education to be sufficiently productive.

The more basic problem is that the market itself has become tilted ever more in the direction of moneyed interests that have exerted disproportionate influence over it, while average workers have steadily lost bargaining power -- both economic and political -- to receive as large a portion of the economy's gains as they commanded in the first three decades after World War II.

Reversing the scourge of widening inequality requires reversing the upward pre-distributions within the rules of the market, and giving average people the bargaining power they need to get a larger share of the gains from growth.

The answer to this problem is not found in economics. It is found in politics. Ultimately, the trend toward widening inequality in America, as elsewhere, can be reversed only if the vast majority join together to demand fundamental change.

The most important political competition over the next decades will not be between the right and left, or between Republicans and Democrats. It will be between a majority of Americans who have been losing ground, and an economic elite that refuses to recognize or respond to its growing distress.

- Alexander Kaufman interviews Gabriel Zucman about the role of tax havens in entrenching a new aristocracy. And in a related (if dated) story, Rajeev Syal reports on how the Cons' hired gun Lynton Crosby sheltered income through an offshore trust even while running the campaign of a party which feigned concern about exactly that type of abuse.

- Michael Harris slams the Cons for a foreign policy oriented toward war, profiteering and political gain rather than any principle worth pursuing. And Haroon Siddiqui highlights what we've lost in becoming associated with that mindset around the globe, while Steven Chase and Shawn McCarthy report that the Department of Foreign Affairs is well aware of Canada's fading reputation.

- Shannon Gormley writes that contrary to the Cons' spin, the only bogus element of Canada's relationship with refugees is the mindset used to attack people in need of a home.

- And finally, Aaron Wherry takes the Cons to task for their politicking around the niqab as a threat to the very idea of individual rights.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Jennifer Wells writes about the drastic difference in pay between CEOs and everybody else. And Henry Farrell interviews Lauren Rivera about the advantage privileged children have in being able to rely on parents' social networks and funding rather than needing to learn or work for themselves:

One of your most counter-intuitive arguments is that students from working class and lower-middle class backgrounds are less likely to get elite jobs, because they concentrate on studying rather than their social life at college. That’s the opposite of what the conventional wisdom would suggest. How does these students’ devotion to academic seriousness hurt their job prospects?

LR – Working and lower-middle-class children are less likely to participate in structured extracurricular activities than their more privileged peers while growing up (and when they do, they tend to participate in fewer of them). This hurts their job prospects in two ways. First, it affects the types of schools students attend. Elite universities weigh extracurricular activities heavily in admissions decisions. Given that these employers—which offer some of the highest-paying entry-level jobs in the country—recruit almost exclusively at top schools, many students who focus purely on their studies will be out of the game long before they ever apply to firms. Second, employers also use extracurricular activities, especially those that are driven by “passion” rather than academic or professional interest and require large investments of time and money over many years, to screen résumés. But participation in these activities while in college or graduate school is not a luxury that all can afford, especially if someone needs to work long hours to pay the bills or take care of family members. Essentially, extracurriculars end up being a double filter on social class that disadvantages job applicants from more modest means both in entering the recruiting pipeline and succeeding within it.

- In a similar vein, the Economist examines the high costs of living in poverty. And Justin Kong points out how an improved minimum wage would go a long way toward providing needed income security.

- Daryl Copeland discusses how the Cons have trashed Canada's reputation on the international stage, turning us from a productive partner into a pariah. And Derek Stoffel reports on how the tarnished perception of Canada as a country is extending far beyond the diplomatic sphere.

- Thomas Walkom writes that Ontario voters may learn a lesson from the political scene as Kathleen Wynne, one of the main faces of the federal Libs, collapses under the weight of scandals and broken promises.

- Finally, Alice Musabende raises the concern that Canada's political parties are being too quick to pull candidates over minor controversies.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Manuel Perez-Rocha writes about the corrosive effect of allowing businesses to dictate public policy through trade agreements:

(C)orporations are increasingly using investment and trade agreements — specifically, the investor-state dispute settlement provisions in them — to bring opportunistic cases in arbitral courts, circumventing decisions states deem in their best interest. And now investor-state dispute settlement provisions may be enshrined in two new treaties: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and Trans-Pacific Partnership, currently under negotiation between, respectively, the United States and the European Union, and the United States and 11 Asia-Pacific nations. If the final agreements contain these mechanisms, we can expect a flood of cases like Pacific Rim v. El Salvador.

Investor-state dispute settlement provisions feature in many significant pacts, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, and nine U.S.-E.U. bilateral investment treaties. Foreign investors can sue over alleged violations of myriad “investor protections,” including public-interest regulations that would reduce their profits. But it doesn’t cut both ways: Governments or communities affected by foreign investors cannot bring claims. Equally troublesome, tribunal operations are often opaque.

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The investor-state dispute settlement mechanism is like playing soccer on half the field. Corporations are free to sue, and nations must defend themselves at enormous cost — and the best a government can hope for is a scoreless game. As the T.T.I.P. and T.P.P. negotiations continue, Pacific Rim vs. El Salvador should remind us not to privilege foreign investors to the detriment of the national — or global — good.

- And that corporate privilege stands in particularly stark contrast to the limited rights of citizens - as evidenced by the Ontario Court of Appeal's recent decision that individuals can't even make out an arguable case for a Charter right to housing.

- Joseph Heath examines the reality that dirty and hard-to-extract oil reserves should be seen as stranded assets for the sake of our planet, rather than relied on as a source of future wealth.

- Keith Neuman and Ian Bruce comment on the growing consensus that we need to take strong action to fight climate change. Martin Lukacs suggests that public ownership within the energy industry would go a long way toward getting greenhouse gas emissions in check. And the Fraser Institute helpfully points out that the alternative to mitigating climate change is to abandon cities built in locations which will suffer its most extreme effects.

- Finally, Thomas Walkom discusses the Cons' habit of cultivating foreign enemies in order to paper over their lack of interest in governing in the interest of Canadians.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Martha Friendly highlights how families at all income levels can benefit from a strong child care system:

Isn’t it the Canadian way to include people from diverse groups and social classes in community institutions like public schools, community recreation facilities, public colleges and universities so all can learn to live, play and work together? Indeed, research shows that early childhood is the ideal time for beginning to learn to respect differences and diversity by engaging with and getting to know children and adults of all varieties.

Childcare as an inclusive community institution is great for families, as well as children. Childcare that’s responsive to the community can unite families from diverse origins through participation in common activities related to their children. This can demonstrate to adults and children that co-operation among social classes and ethnic groups is possible and valued. Thus, the idea of good childcare as an agent of social change that fosters social inclusion is an important aspect of a vision of Canadian childcare in the future, and one that is already embraced by many quality childcare programs.

- Meanwhile, Jordan Brennan and Jim Stanford examine the effect of increasing the minimum wage - which improves equality without affecting employment growth. And for good measure, Danny Vinik highlights a new U.S. study confirming the same point. 

- Murray Dobbin writes about the Harper Cons' Orwellian foreign policy:

Harper's amoral political calculations about who and when to bomb people has little to do with any genuine consideration of the geopolitical situation or what role Canada might usefully play -- or even in what Canada's "interests" are. So long as he is prime minister it will be the same: every calculation will be made with the single-minded goal of staying in power long enough to dismantle the post-war activist state. The nurturing of his core constituency includes appeals to a thinly disguised pseudo-crusade against Islamic infidels, a phony appeal to national security (preceded by fear-mongering) and in the case of Ukraine, a crude appeal to ethnic votes.

Reinforcing this legacy is a mainstream media that lets him get away with it, and in particular, refuses to do its homework while the bombing -- or posturing -- is taking place and then refuses to expose the negative consequences of the reckless adventures. The result is what cultural critic Henry Giroux calls "the fog of historical and social amnesia."

- And Frank Graves' issues chart likely explains the Cons' obsession with spreading fear at home and abroad, as "national security" and "crime" are the only issues where they seem to have any meaningful advantage over the other federal parties. But the good news is thatfewer and fewer Canadians are showing any interest in settling for what the Cons are offering.

- Finally, Ryan Meili and Danyaal Raza make the case to make health impacts a central consideration in developing all kinds of public policies.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- The Star criticizes the Harper Cons' selective interest in international cooperation - with war and oil interests apparently ranking as the only areas where the Cons can be bothered to work with other countries. And Catherine Porter reports that the Cons have demonstrated their actual attitude toward global cooperation and development by making huge cuts to foreign aid.

- Geoff Dembicki interviews Corinne Lepage about France's rightful resistance to oil lobbyists. But while it's well and good for individual countries to register their willingness to stand up to the fossil fuel industry, that doesn't much help when multilateral agreements limit a country's authority to act on its values. And on that front, Brent Patterson laments the impact of CETA on oil and gas regulation, while Murray Dobbin writes that the CETA looks like a prime example of a step taken solely for the benefit of the oil industry and other corporate interests:

While there has been attention paid to some key provisions of CETA -- such as its investor state rules, its impact on Canadian drug pricing and its curbs on governments' ability to buy local -- there has been almost nothing in the media about CETA's chapter on domestic regulation. But a new Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report on CETA suggests there should be, because the articles of that chapter seem designed to kill efforts to regulate the resource industry. In other words just as governments need to get deadly serious about reducing our dependence on fossil fuels they are tying their own hands through new restrictions on their right to regulate.

CETA's domestic regulation chapter would be more aptly called "Gifts for the Oil and Gas Industry." These CETA provisions are so biased in favour of corporations it is easy to picture industry execs sitting at the elbows of CETA's negotiators, guiding their pens as they draft the agreement. Short of an international treaty banning all government regulations outright, CETA gives the oil and gas industry virtually everything it has been asking for, for decades. Of course these anti-regulation gifts are also available to other sectors, including the mining industry, but given the special place in Harper's universe reserved for Alberta's oil patch it's not hard to see where the impetus came from.
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CETA places an absolute value on the ease with which corporations can get approval of their projects. It demands that parties ensure "that licensing and qualification procedures are as simple as possible and do not unduly complicate or delay the supply of a service or the pursuit of any other economic activity." (Art. 2, Sec. 7) Requiring that oil and gas companies do environmental assessments, archaeological studies or get approvals from different levels of government is clearly a process that could be made simpler by doing away with these requirements altogether. Obligations to consult with the public and First Nations certainly complicate the regulatory process and cause delays.

Whether or not governments have simplified their licensing processes to the absolute maximum extent possible and are not causing "undue" delays or complications would be up to a panel of trade lawyers to decide in the event of a dispute. They could look at examples from the most deregulated jurisdictions to determine what is "as simple as possible." China, for example, allows corporations to ignore requirements for environmental impact assessments (EIA) and just pay a small fine after the fact.

- Katherine Scott writes about the challenge of identifying and measuring poverty, but rightly concludes that we should be seeking to eradicate it in any form. And Carol Goar discusses how the Cons' war on science has resulted in the destruction of extremely important work on the spread of poverty in Canada.

- Meanwhile, Mike De Souza highlights the Environment Commissioner's findings about the Cons' gutting of federal environmental review processes. 

- Finally, Gerald Caplan observes that the Cons' hype of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights is in stark contrast to their contempt for the real thing.

On consensus-breaking

Having earlier dealt with Stephen Harper's attempt to justify war by building up hatred and hype toward ISIS, I'll note the other main rationale on offer from the Cons - which can generally be described as government by wrong answer to a rhetorical question:

If Canada wants to keep its voice in the world…and we should since so many of our challenges are global…being a free rider means you are not taken seriously.
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And when our allies recognize and respond to a threat, that would also harm us, we Canadians do not stand on the sidelines. We do our part.

Or in shorter form:

Canadians: If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do the same?
Harper: Of course. In fact, I take pride in following along.

So what's wrong with the "but everybody else is doing it!" argument?

Let's start by noting that the issue isn't one of other countries actually requesting Canada's military participation at all. Instead, the best evidence is that even as Harper falsely claimed to be responding to U.S. requests for help, he was instead positively begging to be dared to join in.

But more fundamentally, Harper can't claim to value the common views of other countries with any consistency.

In fact, he's consistently thumbed his nose at the rest of the world on issues ranging from climate change to asbestos to indigenous rights to financial regulation, ensuring that risks far more severe than ISIS would go unaddressed. And in those cases, his contempt for consensus actually stood in the way of international action - unlike in the case of Iraq, where some military intervention would almost certainly go ahead regardless of what Canada does.

Of course, the other common thread is that in those cases, Harper's determination to thwart arose out of the Cons' service of corporate interests, with a particular focus on the resource sector.

But surely that confirms that Harper doesn't value multilateralism as a general principle, only as a means to the ends which he wants to pursue anyway. And in this case, that means using allies as excuses to drag Canada into war for its own sake.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Linda Tirado writes about life in poverty - and the real prospect that anybody short of the extremely wealthy can wind up there:

I haven’t had it worse than anyone else, and actually, that’s kind of the point. This is just what life is for roughly one-third of Americans and one in five people in Great Britain. We all handle it in our own ways, but we all work in the same jobs, live in the same places, feel the same sense of never quite catching up. We’re not any happier about exploding welfare costs than anyone else is, believe me. It’s not like everyone grows up and dreams of working two essentially meaningless part-time jobs while collecting food stamps.

It’s just that there aren’t many other options for a lot of people. In fact, the Urban Institute found that half of Americans will experience poverty at some point before they’re 65. Most will come out of it after a relatively short time, 75% in four years. But that still leaves 25% who don’t get out quickly, and the study also found that the longer you stay in poverty, the less likely it becomes that you will ever get out. Most people who live near the bottom go through cycles of being in poverty and just above it – sometimes they’re just OK and sometimes they’re underwater. It depends on the year, the job, how healthy you are. What I can say for sure is that downward mobility is like quicksand. Once it grabs you, it keeps constraining your options until it’s got you completely. I slid to the bottom through a mix of my own decisions and some seriously bad luck. I think that’s true of most people.

While it can seem like upward mobility is blocked by a lead ceiling, the layer between lower-middle class and poor is horrifyingly porous from above. A lot of us live in that spongy divide.

- Meanwhile, Rebecca Vallas and Melissa Boteach offer ten suggestions to improve the plight of workers across the income spectrum. And oddly enough, neither state-imposed indentured servitude nor a world-lagging set of policies on temporary employment makes the list.

- Ashley Renders points out that in planning to reduce our reliance on dirty energy, it's essential to have cleaner alternatives available. But Vivek Radhwa writes that we're not far off with the renewable energy sources we've already developed.

- Joseph Heath observes that hard power is of extremely limited effectiveness in dealing with both armies around the world and crime at home.

- Finally, Aaron Wherry discusses the price of democratic accountability. And Glen McGregor reminds us that the Cons will tolerate nothing of the sort - as most recently evidence by their systematic disposal of any comment critical of the FIPA.

Saturday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- Lana Payne examines the Cons' economic record and finds it very much wanting:

Inequality has deepened under Mr. Harper’s watch, job quality has declined, wages have stagnated, economic growth has been anemic, social protections have been reduced while corporate profits and CEO pay soar.
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(E)mployment and labour force participation rates are lower today than they were in 2006, part-time employment is up, corporate taxes are significantly lower (22.1 per cent in 2006, 15 per cent today) business capital investment saw no increase and has been static at 19.1 per cent of GDP, business R&D spending as a percentage of GDP has declined, exports as a percentage of GDP from 2006 to today have dropped significantly from 36.7 per cent of GDP to 30.8 per cent.

Not exactly great economic numbers. Add to this the over $600 billion in cash being hoarded by corporate Canada and Mr. Harper is heading into a federal election with more than a few economic weak spots.

Throw in the fact that wages are stagnant and inequality is growing and the only folks doing better are those at the top who are accumulating more and more wealth under Mr. Harper’s failed economic policies.
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Inequality and poor jobs are not inevitable. Nor are they just because of technological change and globalization, as some would want us to believe. We can, with good economic policy, make a difference for the citizens of Canada, but we have to first believe that government has a role to play.

- And Bill Curry reports on the Cons' latest moves to undermine the Canada Revenue Agency when it comes to "aggressive tax planning" and other abuses at the top end of the wealth scale - which of course only figure to make inequality worse.

- Meanwhile, Larry Haiven discusses the utter failure of corporate social responsibility as a check on business abuses. And Molly McCracken questions the point of a one-night "sleep outside" event which will mostly figure to provide cover for a complete lack of public inaction to combat homelessness.

- Jesse McLean reports that the Cons' strategy of letting drug companies decide for themselves whether their products are safe (rather than, say, meaningfully regulating them) has led to the distribution of ingredients found to be unfit for U.S. consumption. And it's hard to see how a name-and-shame approach to health and safety will do any particular good when it's directed at utterly shameless corporations.

- Finally, Jeffrey Simpson highlights the Cons' continued wilful ignorance about Iraq. And Michael den Tandt and Thomas Walkom both note that the NDP is right to challenge the deployment of troops when the Cons have no clue what they're supposed to accomplish.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Linda McQuaig discusses how a politically-oriented audit of the CCPA fits with the shock-and-awe part of the right's war against independent (and public-minded) thought:

In the conservative quest to shape public debate in recent years, no tool has proved more useful than the think tank. Nobody understood this better than the director of the ultra-right wing U.S.-based ATLAS Foundation, who once stated that his mission was “to litter the world with free-market think tanks.”

Mission accomplished. Certainly the Canadian landscape is cluttered with right-wing think tanks — the Fraser Institute, the C.D. Howe Institute, the Montreal Economic Institute, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, the Frontier Institute, just to name a few — all well-funded by a business elite keen to have its message packaged in a manner that makes it appear grounded in serious research.

These right-wing policy shops have played a huge role in implanting an ideology that treats the rich as ‘wealth creators’ who must be freed from government regulation — and whose goodwill must be constantly cultivated, lest they be discouraged from investing. This has boiled down to a simple message — government bad, private sector good — that has become the mantra of our times, the guiding force in shaping public policy.
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For years, the corporate world has bestowed bountiful, tax-deductible resources on right-wing think tanks, allowing them to baffle the public with this sort of misinformation.

Meanwhile, alone and often ignored by the media, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives keeps churning out quality research exposing the fallacies of the right-wing arguments that have come to dominate our public conversation.

What choice is there for a paranoid, controlling, undemocratic, right-wing government but to call in the auditors?

- Meanwhile, Matt Bruenig argues that capitalism in its current form falls far short of any of the theoretical justifications for rewarding greed. Melissa Boteach and Shawn Fremstad note that matters are only getting worse even in the face of what's supposed to be an economic recovery. Andrew Brenier comments on the connection between fossil fuel use and inequality. And Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett discuss what we've learned since The Spirit Level brought the issue to the forefront:

Most important has been the rapid accumulation of evidence confirming the psychosocial processes through which inequality gets under the skin. When we were writing, evidence of causality often relied on psychological experiments that showed how extraordinarily sensitive people are to being looked down on and regarded as inferior.

They demonstrated that social relationships, insecurities about social status and how others see us have powerful effects on stress, cognitive performance and the emotions. Almost absent were studies explicitly linking income inequality to these psychological states in whole societies. But new studies have now filled that gap. That inequality damages family life is shown by higher rates of child abuse, and increased status competition is likely to explain the higher rates of bullying confirmed in schools in more unequal countries.

We showed that mental illnesses are more prevalent in more unequal societies: this has now been confirmed by more specific studies of depression and schizophrenia, as well as by evidence that your income ranking is a better predictor of developing illness than your absolute income.

Strengthening community life is hampered by the difficulty of breaking the ice between people, but greater inequality amplifies the impression that some people are worth so much more than others, making us all more anxious about how we are seen and judged. Some are so overcome by lack of confidence that social contact becomes an ordeal. Others try instead to enhance self-presentation and how they appear to others. US data also show that narcissism increased in line with inequality. The economic effects of inequality have also gained more attention. Research has shown that greater inequality leads to shorter spells of economic expansion and more frequent and severe boom-and-bust cycles that make economies more vulnerable to crisis. The International Monetary Fund suggests that reducing inequality and bolstering longer-term economic growth may be "two sides of the same coin". And development experts point out how inequality compromises poverty reduction.

- Stephanie Levitz reports on the Mowat Centre's latest study of income-splitting - which finds that in addition to being grossly inequitable in handing money to the people who need it least, the Cons' pet policy would also siphon billions out of provincial treasuries.

- Connie Walker reports on the Cons' choice to summarily discard any proposals from the Assembly of First Nations and other individuals and groups who want to see both meaningful studies and policy responses to the crisis of murdered and missing aboriginal women.

- Finally, Scott Feschuk rightly skewers Stephen Harper for a foreign policy that's all bluster and no substance.

[Edit: fixed typo.]

Saturday Morning Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- Andrew Jackson writes that public investment is needed as part of a healthy economy, particularly when it's clear that the private sector isn't going to put massive accumulated savings to use. Bob McDonald notes that we'd be far better off using public money to fund basic research instead of funnelling it toward the business sector. And Ed Keenan looks to Ontario for examples of how far more money is flowing into questionable corporate handouts than toward basic human needs.

- Meanwhile, Lana Payne exposes the Cons' efforts to both downplay and reduce the federal funds available to improve both economic and social conditions if they had any interest in getting things done:

Martin serially underestimated the size of federal surpluses, surpluses the Conservatives quickly spent when they took power, mostly on reckless corporate tax cuts. The Conservatives then continued the trend started by Martin, who had reduced federal corporate taxes to historic lows. Apparently not low enough for the Conservatives, who lowered them again and again.

This has been the extent of Canada’s tax debate for a generation: tax cuts. Even the political left has bought into the mantra, to a certain extent. Political parties, for the most part, want to avoid having an adult conversation on what a fair tax system in Canada would look like.And, as a result, there is little to no fiscal room to build and deliver on the needs of the next generation of Canadians or to meet the demands of an aging population.

The Conservatives have continued the austerity agenda, slashing programs and services and laying off more than 20,000 employees.  They have overstated the size of the deficit. Indeed, for the first three months of fiscal year 2014-15, the federal government has been in official surplus.

The parliamentary budget officer (PBO) has been critical of the federal government’s continued austerity, noting that the measures have slowed economic growth and resulted in fewer jobs. The PBO has also predicted a $7-billion surplus for 2015.

These slash-and-burn austerity policies have served to keep the expectations of Canadians low, but they have also fundamentally changed and diminished the role the federal government has played in Canadian society.

This, of course, has been the point and some of the rationale behind the reckless tax cuts — empty the federal coffers, strangle the expectations of Canadians and then repeat.

- Linda McQuaig writes about the costs of allowing corporations to engage in tax-evasion maneuvers like the Burger King/Tim Hortons takeover:

We’re always told we should try to lure corporations here with low taxes. But such a strategy — even if it did result in some benefit to Canada — is ultimately self-defeating.

The more we cut our tax rates, the more other countries feel obliged to cut theirs. Round and round it goes, with less and less revenue for vital public programs everywhere. It’s a race to the bottom only corporations can win.

Instead, we should be supporting the Obama administration in its efforts to stop international corporate tax dodging. The White House is now locked in a fierce battle with powerful corporations over tax inversion schemes and also over the U.S. corporate tax rate, which — at 35 per cent — is one of the highest in the world. Corporations want it slashed.

The outcome of this showdown will affect us all. If the multinationals succeed in coercing the mighty United States government to cut its corporate tax rate, it will be much harder for less powerful countries to resist the corporate tax-cutting juggernaut.

The race to the bottom will be on in earnest — with the corporate world happily handing out steroids.

- Mike De Souza reports that the Cons refuse to let Health Canada or its scientists talk about the effects of oil-industry toxins on Alberta residents (other than to dismiss out of hand the research which actually shows harm to human health caused by the tar sands).

- Finally, Rick Salutin highlights the foreign policy that's actually threatening us at home at abroad:

Yes, there’s a threat of domestic 9/11-type attacks by ISIS: either in the name of global proselytization or to teach the West what it’s like to be bombarded at home. But it’s the predictable result of western policies since 9/11: invasions, occupations, brutalizations in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Western leaders and policy mavens knew these would elicit further 9/11s. That’s what I find despicable. They surely try to stop them but eventually some will probably get through — and they’re prepared to accept those, along with the terrorization of their own populations, as the price of their agenda.

In other words, they don’t invade or attack to stop future 9/11s. They accept future 9/11s as the cost for invasions and attacks with other purposes.

Such retaliations can arise in any society that’s been buffeted by outsiders, though they’re easier to mount in the globalized era. They already occurred in Ireland and Algeria. They often come from religion-based groups because those have deep roots and seem better able to survive repression than secular resistance movements. Occupiers like the U.S. are willing to risk the retaliation since, though terrifying and barbaric, it doesn’t menace them existentially: neither economically nor militarily. They’ll survive, and meanwhile have an excuse to tighten the screws on domestic dissent, further eroding personal security.

New column day

Here, questioning whether Canadians share Stephen Harper's newly-professed aspiration to spend tens of billions of dollars more every year to prop up U.S. and U.K. military contractors.

For further reading...
- David Pugliese reported on this week's NATO summit.
- NATO's most recent spending calculations are here (see PDF link), showing that Canada currently spends about 1% of GDP on its military. Note that while this number pegs Canada's current spending at about $18.4 billion per year, I reference the $19 billion figure used by both government and outside sources in the previous link.
- While some of us think it's worth asking whether military spending is actually intended to accomplish anything in particular, at least some Very Serious People are arguing that there's nothing more important than spending gobs of money to prove that we're indeed Very Serious.
- By way of comparison to the price of meeting the proposed military spending standard, see here and here (PDF) for estimates of the raw cost of national child care and pharmacare plans respectively. (In the latter case, I treat the added price of additional use as reflecting the new cost of a federal plan.)
- Finally, Jim Stanford rightly highlights how Canada has ignored another international funding target in the form of a significantly smaller foreign aid commitment. But I'd think it's well worth recognizing a contrast between the two which fits the theme of my column: helping those who need it most seems to fit perfectly as something worth aspiring to, while it's hard to see what normative value there can be in arbitrary military spending numbers.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Brian and Karen Foster question why steadily improving productivity has led to increasing stratification rather than better lives for a large number of people:

(W)ith all the optimism, why hasn't technological progress actually opened up a world where we all work, and we all work less? Why do we still have some people working overtime while others sit idle, wishing for employment? Why are we not seeing the spread of work-sharing schemes, where the duties of one job are divided into two or more jobs?

We have a government program that helps companies do this for a short time instead of laying workers off, but generally the closest we come to work-sharing is splitting a job that was once full-time and salaried into a suite of part-time, short-term contracts with no benefits. Conceivably, we could spread the work around without diminishing job security and drastically cutting wages. We could use work sharing as a long-term employment strategy rather than solely as a crisis response.

Sticking with the idea of long-term strategies, why haven't we seriously considered the success and promise of Basic Income schemes -- like the one tested and then quietly abandoned in Dauphin, Manitoba?

At the very least, why haven't we shortened our work week in recognition of our increased productivity? (Because it is increasing, despite all the fear mongering; the worst that happens, generally, is "poor growth.")

Why, as Bertrand Russell wondered nearly a century ago, have we chosen "to have overwork for some and starvation for the others" when "modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all"?

- And Carol Goar recognizes that paper wealth doesn't do much to help anybody who hasn't managed to siphon off real money from the increased price of houses and other assets:

• Families’ net work may have increased, but their cash buffer is gone. On paper, they’re better off because of a 47-per-cent appreciation in the value of homes since 2005. But that kind of wealth can shrink — or vanish — for reasons beyond their control. All it would take is a run-up in mortgage rates, a tightening of credit conditions or a real estate sell-off by aging baby boomers.
• Younger families didn’t do nearly as well in the survey as their baby-boomer parents. Households with a principal breadwinner between 35 and 44 had a median net worth of $182,500. Those with a primary earner between 55 and 64 had almost triple that amount ($533,600). With baby boomers holding so much of the nation’s wealth, it’s not surprising Trudeau and Mulcair are picking up distress signals from the next generation of voters.
• Household debt rose at a faster pace than assets. “Because assets are far larger than debt, net worth still increased,” explained economist Leslie Preston of Toronto Dominion Bank. But that was little comfort to middle-class families carrying a large mortgage, a car loan, a line of credit and a couple of maxed-out credit cards. If interest rates climb — even one or two percentage points — they’ll be in financial trouble.
• The poorest 20 per cent of the population — some 2.7 million families — lost ground. That quintile now includes many Canadians who considered themselves middle class before the recession. The contraction of the manufacturing sector, corporate downsizing and outsourcing eliminated well-paid jobs, pushing them down a level.

These developments reshaped people’s attitudes and expectations. Working hard was no longer the key to upward mobility. A good education didn’t necessarily lead to employment. A job didn’t mean a pension. Career planning became an oxymoron. Condos were the only homes most young couples could aspire to own.
...
What is beyond dispute — no matter whether wages, income or wealth is used — is that inequality is growing. Those at the top are getting richer and those at the bottom are sinking deeper into poverty.

Canadians in the middle see themselves moving down, not up. Even if they hang on, their kids — burdened with debt, struggling for a foothold in the job market, still living at home — will fall back.

That is what Trudeau and Muclair are tapping into. It’s not acute financial distress. It is a gnawing conviction the ladder of opportunity is broken.

- In a similar vein, Robert Reich identifies inequality as the major problem in the distribution of what we produce. And Rhys Kesselmen highlights how the Cons are going out of their way to exacerbate that inequality by setting up and expanding new tax shelters like TFSAs, while Penny Kome interviews Allyson Pollock about P3s as another means of converting social resources into private profits.

- Michael Harris wonders whether the Cons' big bang is coming soon. And Josh Wingrove reports that they're using their majority to stifle any discussion of their own admitted lies to Parliament, while Paul Adams laments their hollow-threat diplomacy on the international stage.

- But Alex Boutillier notes that the NDP is looking to set a more positive example for political consultation, planning to hold its own public hearings into the Cons' election legislation if Harper and company refuse to allow for any to occur through Parliament.

New column day

Here, on how Canada's federal privacy law actually prohibits our own federal government from conducting secret surveillance (so long as it's actually followed) - as well as how little that law means if countries don't recognize that privacy applies beyond their borders.

For further reading...
- Michelle Shepard reported here on Canada's history of surveillance activities. 
- The federal Privacy Act is here. See in particular section 11's obligation to public lists of personal information collected by each government institution, as well as the treatment of exempt data banks in section 18. 
- CSEC allows Canadians to make requests for their own information here. But it points to this generic list of personal information banks, rather than mentioning that any set of "data trails" on Canadians might be collected.
- Meanwhile, CSEC points proudly to its "foreign intelligence allies" here - with a couple of countries well known for excessive surveillance looming prominently on the list. And Peter MacKay is trying to use the "foreigners" dodge in responding to questions about CSEC's activities - while pogge highlights why we need international pushback against the surveillance state. 
- I don't see much value in the proposal floated by Jack Harris and Hugh Segal to brief a small number of parliamentarians on spying activity - as the provision of information which can't be used as part of a public discussion only figures to make it more difficult for anybody to ask tough questions.
- Finally, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart has weighed in with her own confirmation that metadata should be treated as protected personal information.

#mtlqc13 Priority Resolution - International Affairs

The NDP's position on trade policy has of course been a hot-button issue both inside and outside the party - making it the area I'd see needing some discussion in Montreal. And while a number of other resolutions deal with the issue, one offers a particularly neat means to add an explicit commitment to the bigger picture while allowing for the approval of reasonable trade agreements (and avoiding unnecessary modifications to what's already a well-worded section of the policy book).

4-21-13
Resolution on Unfair Trade Practices Submitted by Beaches-East York
BE IT RESOLVED the following clause be added to Section 4.5 of the policy book, after clause b, and that subsequent items be reordered accordingly:
[4.5 New Democrats believe in] c) Classifying wage suppression, union suppression and lax environmental regulation as prohibited "unfair trade practices“ in international trade agreements.

Of course, there's room to import some other principles as well - such as ensuring that "unfair trade practices" aren't merely enforceable by corporate interests or measured in terms of lost profits. And if the resolution can be further strengthened to account for those types of considerations, then all the better.

But the starting point in addressing trade should be a concrete commitment to ensuring that social values are strengthened rather than undermined by international trade. And the resolution from Beaches-East York fits that goal.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Lori Theresa Waller provides her own take on the Canadian Foundation for Labour Rights' study on labour rights and inequality:

In the 1970s, all provinces used the simple card check system, whereby an employer must legally recognize a union if the majority of workers sign membership cards. Since then, B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia have moved to requiring that workplaces also hold a vote before the union will be legally recognized.

...Studies have found that the additional requirement of holding a vote decreases the success of union organizing drives by between 9 and 20 per cent.
...
A 2012 study by five UBC economists concluded that roughly 15 per cent of the growth in income inequality in Canada throughout the 1980s and 1990s was directly linked to falling rates of unionization.

- Meanwhile, the Canadian Labour Congress offers up a handy quiz about corporate tax giveaways.

- Thomas Homer-Dixon observes that the Obama administration could do Canada a favour by rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline and encouraging some much-needed thought as to how to build a sustainable economy:

There is a less obvious but no less important reason many Canadians want the industry stopped: it is relentlessly twisting our society into something we don’t like. Canada is beginning to exhibit the economic and political characteristics of a petro-state. 

Countries with huge reserves of valuable natural resources often suffer from economic imbalances and boom-bust cycles. They also tend to have low-innovation economies, because lucrative resource extraction makes them fat and happy, at least when resource prices are high. 

...

Both the cabinet and the Conservative parliamentary caucus are heavily populated by politicians who deny mainstream climate science. The Conservatives have slashed financing for climate science, closed facilities that do research on climate change, told federal government climate scientists not to speak publicly about their work without approval and tried, unsuccessfully, to portray the tar sands industry as environmentally benign.

The federal minister of natural resources, Joe Oliver, has attacked “environmental and other radical groups” working to stop tar sands exports. He has focused particular ire on groups getting money from outside Canada, implying that they’re acting as a fifth column for left-wing foreign interests. At a time of widespread federal budget cuts, the Conservatives have given Canada’s tax agency extra resources to audit registered charities. It’s widely assumed that environmental groups opposing the tar sands are a main target.

This coercive climate prevents Canadians from having an open conversation about the tar sands. Instead, our nation behaves like a gambler deep in the hole, repeatedly doubling down on our commitment to the industry.

- And Kate Allen reports that the Cons' muzzling of scientists has earned them an impending investigation by the federal Information Commissioner.

- Finally, Dr. Dawg comments on Stephen Harper's decision to turn Canada into a hermit kingdom rather than a significant international actor. And Paul Heibecker writes that the Cons' withdrawal from the international community goes far beyond the drought treaty that's received so much recent attention:

There is a disappearing character to contemporary Canadian multilateral diplomacy. Like Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire cat, soon all that may remain of our country at the UN is a grin or, more accurately, a scowl.