Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Elizabeth Renzetti makes clear that we can't count on one-time crowdsourcing to perform the same function as a social safety net:

This is the problem with the wildly popular new online world of what you might call misery fundraising: It semi-solves one small problem while leaving the system in ruins. Crowdfunding someone’s personal tragedy is the equivalent of fixing a broken arm, but closing the hospital.

It used to be that crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter were wonderful places to raise money for cultural projects – movies, plays, even the occasional potato-salad recipe. When the Morgentaler clinic in Fredericton was forced to close, it was able to raise enough money to reopen thanks to an online fundraising campaign. But lately, as the social safety net frays, the needy and desperate have turned to websites such as HandUp, GoFundMe and YouCaring to meet their basic needs. Needs that would have been met, even a couple of decades ago, by community or government services.

Take a look at some of the tales of woe on these sites, each one more miserable than the last: People who can’t afford rent, or shoes, or medical care. People who need bus money to get to work, or wheelchair vans, or help with tuition. Sometimes they’re looking to build memorials to lost children. These are not people looking for a week in Tahiti. And while it’s lovely to see the great generosity of donors, it’s also enraging to think that there are a vast number of people who have had to resort, in essence, to online begging. What should be the work of society is fobbed off onto goodhearted individuals with tablets.

- And Duncan Cameron writes about the social and infrastructure deficits which are being ignored in the name of austerity economics.

- Reuters reports on the Bank for International Settlements' conclusion that oil prices have far more to do with financial maneuverings than supply and demand - making it doubly dangerous to rely on oil revenue as part of a standard budgeting process. And Ralph Surette writes that any forward-thinking government should be moving toward more stable and affordable renewable options.

- Geoffrey Stevens points out Stephen Harper's attempt to erode trust in any safeguards against unfettered executive power. And Michael Harris reminds us what happens when trust breaks down between the public and the people and institutions who are supposed to pursue our interests.

- Finally, Dan Leger discusses the Cons' plan to turn the federal election into a non-stop fear campaign. And John Baglow writes that the Cons have given us plenty of reason to be afraid of fear itself.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Public Interest Alberta takes a closer look at that province's rhetoric about taxes, and finds that in fact most Albertans pay more income tax than they would under the more fair and progressive systems applied in other province:

“Albertans who believe the myth that we pay the lowest taxes in Canada will be surprised to see that they are paying more income tax than if they lived in BC or Ontario. At the same time, people in Alberta with very high incomes are paying tens of thousands less in income tax than in other parts of Canada,” said Bill Moore-Kilgannon, Executive Director of Public Interest Alberta.

An Albertan with a taxable income of $1 million will pay $41,095 less than if they lived in BC and $75,157 less than if they lived in Ontario. However, an Albertan with a taxable income of $70,000 will pay $1434 more than if they lived in BC and $919 more than if they lived in Ontario.

- Andrew Jackson rebuts a few of the zombie arguments against higher minimum wages. And Scott Clark and Peter DeVries highlight not only why there's ample reason for concern about the federal budget, but also why Jim Flaherty's obsession with austerity and naive faith in the confidence fairy may cause yet more economic problems in the years to come.

- Meanwhile, Chantal Hebert wonders whether the Cons' move to claw back billions of dollars for EI training will lead to a backlash from the provinces involved. And that's doubly so given the question of whether the Cons' purpose has anything at all to do with achieving results, or whether it's simply a matter of wanting to be able to engage in another round of gratuitous self-promotion.

- Geoffrey Stevens and the Macleans editorial board both make the case that it's time to take a serious look at abolishing the Senate.

- Finally, Frances Russell contrasts Preston Manning's one-time concern with building a party and a movement which would be broadly acceptable to the Canadian public against his current embrace of Ron Paul and other dubious figures.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Geoffrey Stevens notes that much of the Cons' justification for utterly senseless choices is to point to an imaginary majority:

We don’t have a “silent majority” in Canada. It appears we have instead an “invisible majority.” This mass of unseen Canadians is like Harvey, the invisible rabbit from the 1950 film starring James Stewart. It can only be seen by those who truly believe in its existence — that is to say, by Stephen Harper and his apostles.

This invisible majority persuades the government to embrace policies that make absolutely no sense, decisions that cannot be justified in a rational way, initiatives that can be understood only by those who are able to commune with Harper’s Harvey.

Who knew the long-form census was as an intolerable intrusion resented by millions of Canadians? Who knew a falling crime rate would make a massive prison-building binge essential? Who knew that resurrecting the trappings of our colonial past would be smart politics in the Canada of the 21st century?

The invisible majority knew. The pollsters didn’t hear them, but Harper did, and he acted.
...
What secret intelligence prompted Defence Minister Peter MacKay to talk last week about how Canadian servicemen will be able to stand taller and prouder when the royal designations are restored?

“This is, of course, claptrap, utter nonsense,” commented military historian Jack Granatstein. “The British connection and the monarchy are even grander abstractions with little or no meaning for today’s servicemen and women. … The reality is that Canadians in and outside the Canadian Forces have turned their backs on the monarchy.”

Granatstein is right. He’s a smart man — smarter, I venture, than those members of Harper’s inner circle who follow the dictates of an invisible (if imaginary) majority.

- Alison catches the Globe and Mail editing the NDP out of Canada's political scene.

- Laura Ryckewaert points out how last week's Federal Court ruling on records documenting the RCMP's surveillance of Tommy Douglas fits into the general attitude of the federal government toward access to information:

The Federal Court's decision that the government should release the information it has on former NDP leader Tommy Douglas is an important ruling that shows federal institutions have a lack of respect for access laws, say experts.

"If we treated many of the laws the way we treat access we'd have some significant problems, and in this case it's not ordinary citizens that are not respecting the letter of the law of access, it's government institutions," said Michel Drapeau, a lawyer who specializes in access to information.
...
Mr. Bronskill said he thinks one thing that could be built into the act is with regard to the lack of penalties for the handling of ATI requests.

"Departments miss deadlines all the time, they don't give you records by the deadline that they set for themselves, even when it's a lengthy extension sometimes," he said. "When you don't pay your bank on time, or your cable bill on time it gets cut off. Well when a federal agency misses an access to information deadline what's the penalty? Absolutely nothing."

However, not everyone thinks changes need to be made to the act.

"The only thing that is wrong with the act is the inability or unwillingness of many government institutions to basically apply it as it is," Mr. Drapeau said.

- Finally, for more on Jack Layton, see the latest from Brian Topp on how Layton made decisions, while Peter Kelly has a suggestion as to what comes next.