On reality barriers

Shorter Brian Crowley:

It turns out that finding "facts" and "evidence" about mythical trade barriers is tougher than I'd realized. In light of this adversity, can't we just agree to accept my unsupported assertions as fact, and impose the most extreme anti-government policy my corporate benefactors can imagine in response?

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

 - Joseph Heath responds to Andrew Coyne in noting that an while there's plenty of room (and need) to better tax high personal incomes, there's also a need to complement that with meaningful corporate taxes:

(A) crucial part of the Boadway and Tremblay proposal is to increase the personal income tax rate on dividends and capital gains. That’s where the “soak the rich” part comes in. The argument — and it is an interesting argument — is that dividends are currently taxed at a lower rate in the hands of individuals, in order to avoid “double taxation,” once in the hands of the firm, again in the hands of the beneficiary. However, if the corporation is able to shift the tax on profits to other constituencies, then the tax paid by corporations isn’t really being paid by shareholders. So by taxing corporations less, and taxing individual investment income more, the Boadway/Tremblay policy makes it more difficult for the rich to shift their tax liabilities onto others.

I can see the argument for this. However, there always the danger of equivocation when talking about “the rich” or “inequality.” There is broad-based economic inequality, of the sort captured by a GINI coefficient, and then there is the specific problem of the very rich (whom we can refer to, for simplicity, as the 1%). While it is true that most Canadians are already able to exempt the entirety of their investment income from taxation (through home ownership, RRSPs, TFSAs), this is manifestly not the case with the 1%, who continue to use corporate ownership as a vehicle for tax avoidance.

Shortly after writing about this, I came across the following working paper, by Michael Wolfson, Mike Veall and Neil Brooks, “Piercing the Veil – Private Corporations and the Income of the Affluent.” It seems to me that before we talk about “soaking the rich,” or about the distributive effect of corporate taxes generally, the issues raised by this paper need to be addressed.

- And Eric Reguly discusses the role of executive pay and stock options in exacerbating inequality:

The rich and the super-rich are getting richer. We all know that. The question is why? Every economist on the planet has a theory. Some blame waning productivity gains or workers' losing their war with the robots. Others argue that the "offshoring" of jobs has suppressed wages, still others that lower taxes on capital gains have benefited the investing class. Thomas Piketty, the suddenly famous French economist whose bestselling book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has fired up the wealth-gap debate around the world, argues that the inequalities in income distribution have risen sharply because of enormous corporate pay packages. He's generally right (even though the Financial Times found fault with some of his historical data) but what he does not do in any detail is break down those packages into their component parts. He and his research colleague, Emmanuel Saez, use U.S. Internal Revenue Service data, which lumps all pay together as "salaries." But salaries make up only a tiny portion of the haul for top executives. The biggest single component is stock-based pay: the realized gains from exercising stock options and the vesting of stock awards.

How did stock-based pay turn into a monster? The simple answer is that no one--not shareholders, not employees, not regulators--has been able to stop the executives from rigging the game in their favour. What seemingly started out as a reasonable idea--handing executives some shares so they would have an extra incentive to boost shareholder value--has tipped so far into the executives' favour that the richest bosses are gaining oligarch status. Through the repricing of options and ever-rising stock awards, many executives have been able to ratchet up their pay even when their company's share price falls.
...
The executive pay system is so well organized, and so sublimely immoral, that it has taken on a racketeering flavour, all in the slick guise of aligning the interests of management and shareholders. Executives pad their boards with yes-men and -women who wouldn't dare suggest their boss is overpaid; compensation consultants are happy to recommend that the CEO's pay should fall in the peer group's top quartile; and the regulatory climate has been benign, thanks to the lobbying power of the companies.

- Alison highlights yet another set of foreign-funded corporate mercenaries complaining that we shouldn't listen to environmental and social groups because they might be foreign-funded. And Kayle Hatt calls out the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's attacks on humanities research and other evidence-based analysis.

- James Moore's latest push toward a national corporate-privilege agreement has apparently given up on identifying more than a single trade barrier in favour of labelling the fictitious as "extraordinarily stupid" in the hope that will make up for the lack of actual examples.

- Finally, Seumas Milne writes that a reversal of privatization is one of the essential building blocks of long-term growth and stability:

Privatisation isn't working. We were promised a shareholding democracy, competition, falling costs and better services. A generation on, most people's experience has been the opposite. From energy to water, rail to public services, the reality has been private monopolies, perverse subsidies, exorbitant prices, woeful under-investment, profiteering and corporate capture.

Private cartels run rings round the regulators. Consumers and politicians are bamboozled by commercial secrecy and contractual complexity. Workforces have their pay and conditions slashed. Control of essential services has not only passed to corporate giants based overseas, but those companies are themselves often state-owned – they're just owned by another state.

Report after report has shown privatised services to be more expensive and inefficient than their publicly owned counterparts. It's scarcely surprising that a large majority of the public, who have never supported a single privatisation, neither trust the privateers nor want them running their services.

Also, James Moore is firmly devoted to swatting flies which threaten the very fabric of space-time

No, the Cons still can't be bothered to try to actually identify mythical "trade barriers" as they push to give the corporate powers that be a practical veto over provincial governments. But they're certainly trying to make the myth sound more terrifying - and they won't meet anything more than mindless repetition from John Ivison.

New column day

Here, on how James Moore's disinclination to care about his neighbours is par for the course from the Harper Cons - and how we should learn the lesson about caring and compassion that Moore and his party are so studiously avoiding.

For further reading...
- Again, Sara Norman's original story is here, while PressProgress and Laura Payton both helped to put it in context.
- My recap of Moore's other events from the week is drawn from his activity in Monday's Hansard, as well as his office's most recent statements as of the time the column was written.
- Thomas Walkom highlights the Cons' general antipathy toward the idea of social responsibility. And Andrew Coyne tries to stand up for Moore - though I don't see how a word of his defence would apply with any less force to Ebenezer Scrooge if one was motivated to treat "are there no prisons? are there no workhouses?" as an appeal to alternate means of palliating poverty.
- Finally, Bill Tieleman looks at the facts about child poverty in Canada.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Bill Tieleman tears into James Moore for his callous disregard for child hunger, while PressProgress reminds us that plenty of the Cons' policy choices reflect Moore's complete lack of concern for his neighbours' children. And Polly Toynbee looks in detail at the UK Cons' attempts to turn support for needy children into a perceived political weakness rather than a matter of basic empathy and compassion:

The dirty war has begun; the early signs are that this will be the most poisonous, socially damaging election campaign for many a long year. Corrosive malice will be poured over anyone on any benefit. The Conservatives are convinced they are laying a killer trap by branding Labour as "the welfare party".
...
The language used by Zahawi captures a swelling theme of the election – dividing the "taxpayer" from the "benefit taker" – with this: "Many couples take the decision to delay having a third or fourth child until they are sure they can afford it." The comments that followed were heavily anti-child: "If you can't afford kids why expect the state to keep them?" and "It's a parent's responsibility to provide, not the government". There lies the great dividing line: why should the state support children at all?

As the Child Poverty Action Group eloquently argues, benefits for children not only spread the cost of living between richer and poorer, but also smooth the bumps in everyone's life cycle. When children are born costs are highest and earnings meagre, but later many will earn more, pay more tax and get less out. The banal moral truth is that children are the future, paying for the care of the childless. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says this government's legacy will be a steep rise in child poverty by 2015: a monumental £12bn benefit cut is in George Osborne's post-2015 plan.
...
Cameron bets the screw can be turned twice as hard, as Osborne enters the election with huge cuts to meet his impossible deficit targets. Labour has no intention of matching his plan. The only way to avoid the Tory "trap" is to tell the truth of where incomes are heading, how child poverty is soaring. Rachel Reeves lays out her policy for the first time in January. Ed Miliband has already said he'd shrink the housing benefit bill by building homes, and the dole with guaranteed jobs for the unemployed and a living wage to ease the cost of tax credits. Labour can never out-nasty the Tories, so nice is the only way to be.

- Elizabeth Benzetti highlights the absurdity of wealthy and privileged scions of the right like Conrad Black and Rob Ford putting on a "woe is us!" routine while calling for life to be worse for mere ordinary citizens. And Andrew Coyne similarly laments the infantilism and lack of principle which form the basis of the right in Canada - though he's too quick to try to distance that impulse from conservative politics.

- Anna Mehler Paperny reports on the state of minimum wage laws in Canada - with not a single jurisdiction providing for the minimum wage above the poverty line. Andrew Jackson takes a look at the composition of Canada's workforce and notes that a majority of workers may have trouble reaching what would generally be seen as a middle class lifestyle. And the Globe and Mail rightly slams Jim Flaherty for positioning himself as the primary obstacle barring the way to a sufficient Canada Pension Plan.

- David McLaren comments on the Cons' decision to restore a colonial philosophy to Canada's foreign policy. And John Baird's spin on the Cons' international priorities is accurate only to the extent that their sole concern is with profits rather than jobs.

- Finally, Sandra Azocar and Noel Somerville take a look at Alberta's experience to make the case against for-profit seniors care:

The inconvenient reality is that, because of acute staff shortages, seniors are not being fed properly and medications are not being administered properly.

The magnitude of the current staffing problem has been well documented in a recent study done by the Parkland Institute. This study, entitled From Bad to Worse — Residential Elder Care in Alberta, demonstrates the deterioration that has occurred in Alberta from 1999 to 2009.

The Parkland study quantifies the differences in care provided in public, not-for-profit and private for-profit facilities. The hours of care per patient in not-for-profit facilities was 83 per cent of that provided in publicly operated facilities. The hours of care per patient in private for-profit facilities was only 71 per cent of that provided in the publicly operated facilities.
...
(T)he availability of long-term care beds in Alberta, relative to the age 75-plus population, has slipped by 20 per cent and is now the second lowest of any Canadian province. This decline is on top of the 40 per cent cut in long-term care beds per capita that occurred in the 1990s. Further, over the study period, the number of assisted living beds which provide much lower level of care, has grown by 187 per cent.

All of these realities suggest that the government is pursuing a continuing care strategy that serves to divest itself of responsibility for providing care to seniors. When it comes to expanding seniors care in this province, this government has opted to give massive public handouts primarily to corporations seeking to profit from the health needs of seniors.

Ironically, Premier Alison Redford won the Tory leadership race in large part by claiming to be devoted to our public health-care system. Yet this government continues its ideologically driven efforts to shift costs and responsibility from the government to individual health care users and to promote increased private-sector participation. Sadly, this is why we are now more than ever hearing heartbreaking stories from seniors and their families that attest to the shabby state of elderly care in our province.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Heather Mallick discusses what Canada stands to lose as Canada Post is made both more expensive and less functional. Ethan Cox suggests that what's missing from Canada Post is a postal bank - which makes postal services elsewhere both more profitable, and more valuable for citizens. And the Star points out that the Cons have stood idly by while allowing the institution to fall apart.

- But then, post offices are the least of what the Cons have gone out of their way to portray as beneath them - as made clear by James Moore's rightfully-skewered declaration that he doesn't see why he should care about - or do anything to help - hungry children. 

- Meanwhile, Paul Krugman reminds us why inequality matters both economically and politically:

It’s now widely accepted that rising household debt helped set the stage for our economic crisis; this debt surge coincided with rising inequality, and the two are probably related (although the case isn’t ironclad). After the crisis struck, the continuing shift of income away from the middle class toward a small elite was a drag on consumer demand, so that inequality is linked to both the economic crisis and the weakness of the recovery that followed.

In my view, however, the really crucial role of inequality in economic calamity has been political.

In the years before the crisis, there was a remarkable bipartisan consensus in Washington in favor of financial deregulation — a consensus justified by neither theory nor history. When crisis struck, there was a rush to rescue the banks. But as soon as that was done, a new consensus emerged, one that involved turning away from job creation and focusing on the alleged threat from budget deficits.

What do the pre- and postcrisis consensuses have in common? Both were economically destructive: Deregulation helped make the crisis possible, and the premature turn to fiscal austerity has done more than anything else to hobble recovery. Both consensuses, however, corresponded to the interests and prejudices of an economic elite whose political influence had surged along with its wealth.

...

Surveys of the very wealthy have, however, shown that they — unlike the general public — consider budget deficits a crucial issue and favor big cuts in safety-net programs. And sure enough, those elite priorities took over our policy discourse.

 Which brings me to my final point. Underlying some of the backlash against inequality talk, I believe, is the desire of some pundits to depoliticize our economic discourse, to make it technocratic and nonpartisan. But that’s a pipe dream. Even on what may look like purely technocratic issues, class and inequality end up shaping — and distorting — the debate.

So the president was right. Inequality is, indeed, the defining challenge of our time. Will we do anything to meet that challenge?

- And Michael Valpy discusses the plight of the precariat who have been so deliberately excluded from the Cons' political calculations (other than as a source of cheap labour for their corporate benefactors).

- Fortunately, the continued efforts of the Cons and their provincial counterparts to silence the general public are only giving rise to more creative ways to influence the shape of our society. On that front, Lloyd Maybaum suggests that employees who have been arbitrarily denied the right to strike should focus their efforts and their dollars on the political system. And Ashley Renders reports on Unifor's steps to include workers who can't organize through traditional workplace union structures.

- Finally, Mariana Mazzucato makes the case for governments to serve as generators and incubators of big ideas, rather than pools of funding to be exploited for corporate benefit:

(T)he point of public policy is to make big things happen that would not have happened anyway. To do this, big budgets are not enough: big thinking and big brains are key.

While economists usually talk about things that are not done at all (or done inadequately) by the private sector as "public goods", investments in "big" public goods like the UK national health service, or the investments that led to new technologies behind putting a "man on the moon", required even more than fixing the "public good" problem. They required the willingness and ability to dream up big "missions". The current narrative we are being sold about the state as a "meddler" in capitalism is putting not only these missions under threat, but even more narrowly defined public goods.

Public goods are goods whose benefits are spread so widely that it is hard for business to profit from them (or stop others profiting from them). So they don't attract private investment. Examples include transport infrastructure, healthcare, research and education.

Even if you're an avid free-marketeer you can't avoid benefiting, directly and indirectly, from such public investments. You gain directly through the roads you drive down, the rules and policing which ensure their safety, the BBC radio you listen to, schools and universities that train the doctors and pilots you depend on, parks, theatre, films and museums that nurture our national identity. You also gain, indirectly, through enormous public subsidies without which private schools, hospitals and utility providers would never be able to deliver affordably and still make a profit. These are conferred as tax breaks, and provision of vital skills and infrastructure at state expense.
...
The public sector must produce public goods, and through the creation of new missions catalyse investment by the private sector – inspiring and supporting it to enter in high-risk areas it would not normally approach. To do so it requires the ability to attract top expertise – to "pick" broadly defined directions, as IT and internet were picked in the past, and "green" should be picked in the future. Some investments will win, some will fail. Indeed, Obama's recent $500m guaranteed loan to a solar company Solyndra failed, while the same investment in Tesla's electric motor won big time – making Elon Musk richer.

But as long as we admit the state is a risk-taking courageous investor in the areas the private sector avoids, it should increase its courage by earning back a reward for such successes, which can fund not only the (inevitable) losses but also the next round of investments. Instead, calling it names for the losses, ignoring the wins, and outsourcing the competence and capabilities, is ridding it of the courage, ability and brains to create the missions, hence opportunities, of the future. And without brains, all government will be able to do is not make big things happen but simply serve a private sector that is concerned only with serving itself.

Question and answer

Sixth Estate and impolitical have both followed up on the Cons' attempts to attack Canada's opposition parties for having the nerve to ask questions of their government by noting that in contrast to the Cons' spin, the UK offers answers to MPs' questions at a hundredth of the cost. But I'll note that there's plenty more worth comparing between the two systems of questions and answers.

Let's compare the answers to written questions provided by the respective governments of Canada and the UK for October 31, 2012.

The Harper Cons answered two questions in the following terms:

Question No. 827-- Mr. Hoang Mai:

With regard to environmental assessment on the proposed new bridge on the St. Lawrence River at Montreal: (a) why was this assessment done using a screening type of assessment rather than a comprehensive study; (b) what type of assessment will this project be subject to, under the new regulations and changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act as proposed in bill C-38; (c) how many comments did Transport Canada receive concerning this project, before the April 4th Transport Canada deadline, in terms of the Draft Environmental Assessment Guidelines under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, (i) how will these comments be assessed by Transport Canada, (ii) will these comments be made public; (d) what specific expertise will the following federal authorities contribute with respect to the environmental assessment, (i) Health Canada, (ii) Parks Canada, (iii) Federal Bridge Corporation Limited/Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges Incorporated, (iv) St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation; (e) what are the financial costs of the environmental assessment; (f) is Consortium Dessau Cima+ the only firm in charge of environmental assessment, (i) have they agreed to respect the preliminary timeline of mid-2014, (ii) will the drafting of the reports by all firms be made public soon after this date, (iii) what are the details of the contract, number T8080-110362, reference number 236518; (g) have the responsible authorities delegated the performance of the environmental assessment to any other party and, if so, (i) have the other parties agreed to respect the preliminary timeline of mid-2014, (ii) will the drafting of the reports by all firms be made public soon after this date; (h) what is the government’s policy in the eventuality that the responsible authorities conclude that the project is likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects; (i) what are the public consultation processes involved in the environmental assessment and their timelines; (j) have the responsible authorities established a list of main interested parties and, if so, is it public, and, if it is not public, why not; (k) how many public consultations have been organized to listen to local constituents’ concerns, what was discussed, and are reports available; (l) which First Nations were included in the consultation, when, what points in the process what were discussed, and are reports available; and (m) will the official opposition have the opportunity to examine and comment on the environmental assessment according to subsection 18(3) of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act?

Hon. Denis Lebel (Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities and Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, on January 22, 2012, the minister announced the launch of the environmental assessment, which is expected to be completed by December 2013.

The federal government announced on April 23, 2012, that the consortium Dessau/Cima+ of Montreal has been retained to complete the federal environmental assessment for the new bridge for the St. Lawrence. The assessment will include the environmental and technical components required to formulate recommendations to minimize repercussions of the project on the environment and on communities. The public, the local consultative groups, the private sector and the community groups will have an opportunity to participate in the environmental assessment process. 

Question No. 863-- Ms. Marie-Claude Morin:

With regard to Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission decision 2011-291: (a) what measures are in place to guarantee service for the 13,000 households in Quebec that could be deprived of service; (b) how much funding has been allocated to this issue; and (c) in case of loss of service, what is the plan to provide telephone and high-speed Internet services to the affected residents?

Hon. James Moore (Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, with regard to (a), the CRTC can assure Canadians that they will not lose service due to this decision. One of the key policy objectives of the Telecommunications Act is to render reliable and affordable telecommunications services of high quality to all Canadians in both urban and rural areas. This includes the households served by small incumbent telephone companies in Quebec. The CRTC generally has two approaches to achieving this objective.

One approach is to rely on market forces to deliver high-quality service at a reasonable price. Where competition is strong, customers have a choice of service providers and these companies provide customers with innovative new services. In Quebec, wire line services will soon be available from competitive service providers. These will complement advanced wireless and satellite providers that already offer voice and Internet services to rural subscribers in Quebec.

With regard to (b), in areas where there is not enough competition to achieve this objective, the CRTC’s approach is to provide an annual subsidy to incumbent carriers in order to ensure access to telephone services at affordable rates. In 2011, the total amount of subsidy provided to incumbent carriers across Canada was $156 million; $6.5 million of this subsidy went to the small incumbents that provide service in Quebec.

With regard to (c), it should be noted that the CRTC monitors telecommunications markets across Canada, including the Quebec markets in question. The CRTC has broad powers under the Telecommunications Act that can be used as necessary to achieve its policy objectives, which include access to telecommunications services. 

By way of contrast, here are the three first questions and answers from a much longer list of UK questions from the same day:

Northern Ireland

Billing

John Woodcock: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what the average time taken by her Department to settle invoices to external suppliers or contractors was in each of the last three financial years. [125307]
Mike Penning: My Department publishes prompt payment statistics in its Annual Report and Accounts each year.
Comparable figures for the Northern Ireland Office as it is now configured are not available following the completion of the devolution of policing and justice functions on 12 April 2010. In 2010-11, the Department paid 97% of suppliers within 10 days; 43% of payments were made within five days. In 2011-12, the Department paid 97% of all suppliers within 10 days, and 30% within five days.

Press: Subscriptions

Jonathan Ashworth: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to which magazines, journals and newspapers her Department subscribes. [125350]
Mike Penning: My Department does not subscribe to any publications but have the following newspapers delivered for which we are billed monthly by the newsagents:

Irish Independent (Monday to Sunday)

Irish Times (Monday to Saturday)

Daily Mail (Monday to Friday)

The Telegraph (Monday to Friday)

Financial Times (Monday to Friday)

The Guardian (Monday to Friday)

The Independent (Monday to Friday)

The Sun (Monday to Friday)

The Times (Monday to Friday)

The Spectator (Monday to Friday)

Belfast Telegraph (Monday to Saturday)

News Letter (Monday to Saturday)

Irish News (Monday to Saturday)

The NI Daily Mirror (Monday to Friday)

The Sunday Life

Communities and Local Government

Billing

John Woodcock: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what the average time taken by his Department to settle invoices to external suppliers or contractors was in each of the last three financial years. [125304]
31 Oct 2012 : Column 214W
Brandon Lewis: The following table shows the average time taken by the Department for Communities and Local Government to settle invoices to suppliers during the last three financial years.

Financial year	Average time (in days)
2009-10	6.29
2010-11	4.33
2011-12	4.15

The invoices included in the table are for all suppliers as DCLG does not distinguish between supplier types.

Now, I haven't been a regular reader of the UK's questions and answers, and presume that the above examples are in keeping with how questions are normally dealt with. But I've watched Canada's Hansard closely enough to see the sample above as being normal if not downright generous as an example of the Cons' responses (as they're at least relatively free of spin if equally lacking in substance).

So what differences can we see between the two sets of questions and answers?

To start with, Canadian MPs seem to be far more effective at asking detailed questions which would actually tell an important story if a useful answer were provided, with Hoang Mai's question #827 serving as a prime example on that front. And one might see that as a basis to think we'll get good value paying more for answers.

Here's the problem, though: while the questions and answers would seem like an important means of holding the government accountable, they're rather less useful when the answers consist of nothing but boilerplate talking points and PR messages vaguely related to the subject area of the question asked. And that's all the Cons are deigning to provide. 

While Mai's question includes a specific inquiry as to the number of comments received on the St. Lawrence River bridge project, Denis Lebel's answer utterly fails to provide that piece of information which should be readily available - sticking to pointing to the Cons' own press releases as somehow reflecting a full answer.

Likewise, James Moore's answer to question #863 conspicuously ignores Marie-Claude Morin's question as to the amount of funding allocated to services affected by a particular CRTC decision - instead pointing to overall program funding amounts which have nothing at all to do with the question.

Needless to say, that consistent obfuscation is in stark contrast to the UK's responses, which consist of little more than facts generally responsive to the questions asked. And the difference signals the utter breakdown in accountable government in Canada under the Harper Cons.

We should expect any remotely competent government to ensure that questions can be answered without too much cost or difficulty - whether a question originates within a federal department, or from an MP. And the UK example shows it's entirely possible to get that done.

But the Cons have apparently decided that their interest in limiting the flow of potentially useful information to opposition parties outweighs any sense that a government should actually inform elected representatives about its actions. 

In pursuing that strategy, they first decided that it's easier to not answer questions than to actually address them. And to add insult to injury, they're now trying to claim it's the opposition parties' fault that the Cons can't cut and paste unresponsive content from their own press releases for an average cost of less than $4,000 per question.

The key takeaway is then that the Cons are both inefficient and ineffective in answering simple and direct questions which are intended to hold them to account. And that should serve as yet more evidence that the Cons are in fact far more interested in making sure government doesn't work than in operating it with even the bare pretense of competence.

Friday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to end your week.

- Tim Harper suggests that the Cons are running out of options to try to push the Gateway pipeline on a thoroughly-opposed public in British Columbia. But in keeping with the Cons' general view of the world as nothing but a public relations problem to be shouted down for financial gain, James Moore and Gwyn Morgan are sure they have the answer: more high-priced spin from Enbridge and other tar-sands operators. And pogge rightly notes that part of the anti-environment strategy figures to include an effort to paint all environmental activism and advocacy as "terrorism".

- Carol Goar comments on the continuing efforts of Canadian doctors to save health care for refugees from the Cons' cuts:

Rashid, a family physician, is one of the founders of Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care, which has vowed to track and report cases of death or serious harm resulting from Kenney’s $20-million-a-year cutback.

It took effect a month ago. But reports already are coming in: a 7-year-old epileptic boy in Hamilton was hospitalized for a severe seizure because he could not get medicine; a woman who had endured multiple rapes after she was sold into the sex trade couldn’t get an ultrasound for the fetus she was carrying; a Colombian man is desperately fundraising to pay Toronto General Hospital for life-saving abdominal surgery; two refugee claimants in Ottawa — one Peruvian, the other El Salvadoran — have stopped taking their post-traumatic stress medications.

By fall, the doctors hope to have a compendium of cases from across the country. A local delegation of medical workers will show up every time a cabinet minister makes an announcement, the government calls a news conference or Parliament holds public hearings to highlight specific cases. “None of us wants to disrupt meetings, but we really feel we have no choice,” said Tim O’Shea of McMaster University, who works as a medical consultant at the Shelter Health Network in Hamilton.

Since April, the doctors have been asking Kenney for a meeting on this issue. So far he has refused.

- Meanwhile, the Star rightly points out that the Cons' thoroughly-discredited finger-pointing over Attawapiskat did nothing to help the underlying housing crisis.

- Finally, the Star-Phoenix weighs in on the need for some answers about Robocon:

It is rare for Elections Canada officials to speak out about investigations before they are concluded, and the agency receives dozens of complaints after every election. Often it takes years to clear these files.

But the allegations that voters in some ridings received socalled robocalls misdirecting them to wrong voter stations, or calls from people alleging to be from particular parties who acted in an obnoxious or insulting manner in an apparent attempt to discourage their votes, is a little more serious than candidates complaining their signs have been defaced.

If these allegations are true, it strikes to the heart of Canada's electoral system. For a democratic system to function properly the electoral process must be considered trustworthy. And for a democratic government to rule with authority, the public must have confidence it legitimately came to power.

Double standards

Last December, two Con cabinet ministers called a press conference to invent an "iPod tax" - going out of their way to cite numbers fabricated by their party which to this day haven't been traced to any reputable source. Jane Taber's review:

It was the perfect pre-Christmas shopping announcement designed to put a smile of the face of consumers and a frown on those of songwriters. A little opposition-bashing was even thrown in for good measure.

Today, the NDP called a press conference, introducing its new arts caucus and proposing increased support for the arts without delving into specifics. And based on the lack of invented numbers, here's Taber's contrasting review:

When you’re no longer the third party but the government-in-waiting and you hold a news conference about nothing, you will be criticized. And the NDP was on Tuesday.

The press conference was convened to talk about arts and culture – no announcements, no numbers – but it was really aimed at showing off the party’s impressive new strength from the arts community. Unimpressed, reporters asked NDP MPs why they were even holding a news conference and accused them of being ill-prepared – a taste of what may be in store for the party in its new role as Official Opposition.

Which leaves one of two lessons to be learned by the NDP now that it's in the spotlight. Either back up points with fabricated numbers, and stick with the conjured-up figures no matter how many times they're debunked. Or, expect once again to be held to standards which don't apply to the party which actually holds power.

Fighting truth with lies

Whatever one thinks about the relevance of James Moore's writings on abortion just months before he was first elected to Parliament, surely the more shocking part of the story is his campaign's thuggish response to what by all accounts is an accurate reproduction of what he wrote:

Mr. Moore did not immediately respond to the Globe and Mail's requests for comment Friday evening, but in an interview with CTV News, he affirmed his pro-choice views and called the Liberals' claims “garbage” and “a lie.”

He then suggested if the article was reported on by the media, he would send out a press release falsely accusing the Liberal opponent in his riding, a university student, of cheating on all his exams, CTV reported.

In other words, Moore quite explicitly threatened an opponent and the media to stop telling the truth about him, lest Moore start spreading known lies in response.

That would be a serious enough abuse coming from a staffer who could be thrown under the bus. But coming from one of Stephen Harper's perceived star cabinet ministers, the incident looks like confirmation that the Cons are rotten to the core. And I'd think it's well worth pressuring the entire party - from Harper on down - as to just how many times they've followed through on Moore's publicly-stated strategy of spreading known lies to try to change the channel from the truth.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted material for your weekend:

- Your latest Con copyright talking point: if someone from an opposing viewpoint hasn't presented draft legislation, they deserve to be ignored. Which makes for an interesting political strategy: presumably the goal is to provoke somebody to draft something that the Cons can attack, but isn't there some serious risk involved in dwelling on procedure while allowing the opposite side to argue on principle?

- From the standpoint of dealing with short-term deficits without damaging (and indeed perhaps even improving) the theoretical long-term incentive to boost economic development, Andrew Jackson's suggestion of a one-time capital levy makes a world of sense. Needless to say, I never expect to hear of it again.

- Michael Harris weighs in on the Libs' latest Afghanistan capitulation:

The chill Stephen Harper has put on parliament is still looking for a spine to run up in the Liberal Party. The only Liberals standing up for anything are men and women whose loyalty requires official silence outside of caucus. Dion’s questioning of the training mission is a thundering rebuke of the elitist appeasement that plagues the party at the top.

- Finally, the Free Press's coverage in Winnipeg North paints a rather stark distinction as to how two of the campaigns are doing in actually getting people interested in participating:

Chief, a political rookie, is facing Liberal Kevin Lamoureux, a strong constituency man and formidable campaigner who has represented 75 per cent of the sprawling federal riding at one time or the other in his 18 years as an MLA. The NDP hopeful boasts a team of more than 300 volunteers.

The other main contender is Julie Javier, acting executive director of the Philippine Canadian Centre, who has run a low-profile campaign in which she has avoided two all-candidates meetings and ducked media interviews (she only consented to a brief telephone interview for this piece and refused to pose for a photograph, emailing one of herself instead) to concentrate on door-knocking. She said this week she has 10 volunteers working on her campaign.

And the distinction looks to be more a matter of bad news for the Cons than anything: doesn't it seem downright stunning that a governing party would be unable to summon up more than 10 volunteers from one of Canada's ten biggest cities for a by-election campaign?

Thursday Morning Links

- The Cons' international failings have dominated the news lately, it's worth keeping in mind the damage they're doing at home as well - such as the latest phase of their plan to sell off as much as they can push out the door.

- Meanwhile, the NDP offers up another worthwhile idea of the type that tends to get ignored on the federal scene, with Alex Atamanenko proposing a plan for food safety and security.

- James Moore is getting duly slammed for his attacks on anybody interested in fair copyright - including with the new tagline above from Charlie Angus. But it's particularly worth pointing out that the main object of the Cons' "radical extremist" label was being cited by the Cons themselves as the leading authority on copyright just last year.

- Finally, Alice at the Pundits' Guide has added another piece to the puzzle in analyzing the operations of federal parties and candidates. For now, go read her post on riding-level returns and finances - but the new information will be particularly useful in tracking the resources of riding associations in specific ridings over time.

On consumer interests

Gavin M serves up the appropriate level of mockery in response to the efforts of a right-wing pundit to pretend there's absolutely no difference between consumer interests and business interests:

On this day in history, that first sentence could be the one that’s the most dense-packed with stupid of all sentences in an Erickson post, and therefore, until proven otherwise, in all of human discourse. “Continue to screw consumers with laws against business” is almost beautiful. It’s a stark, unadorned construction of ideas that required literally decades of work by the postwar right, first in the building of institutions and infrastructure, then in releasing payload after payload of bad-faith claims and contorted analyses into the atmosphere, until at last, a sufficient degree of besozzlement was realized that a sensible moderate-income American might expect to encounter such a phrase outside of the nearly plotless string of laugh-lines that make up a Sinclair Lewis novel.
...
The almost-beauty of Erickson’s word-sculpture, and I’ll repeat it: “continue to screw consumers with laws against business,” is that anybody with a lick of, and I quote again: “basic economic sense,” knows that consumers and business are inherently, tautologically, by the nature of what ‘consumers’ and ‘business’ are, opposed in their basic interests. For example, buyers want low prices, while sellers want high prices.

In a larger sense, the great project of the right in America since the reaction against Jacksonianism, or fundamentally since Hamilton, has been to advance the interests of the propertied and wealthy, the employers and sellers, in a system set up to respond to the will of the majority, who necessarily will mostly be employees and buyers.

This is not possible to achieve except by fooling the majority that their interests are different from what they are, manipulating them to exert their political power in various foibles and whoopsies...

But is there any way to turn up the scorn by about 40% to answer the same blatant deception in official government position form from Con cabinet minister James Moore?

Update: And I'm thinking we'll need to add another dose to account for Moore telling his favourite consumer group that the Retail Council of Canada are "radical extremists".

On commercial significance

As expected, Michael Geist's first response to the Cons' new DMCA is worth a read (and some followup action). And Geist is right to draw primarily a distinction between a needlessly complex series of exemptions, and a single, strict rule about digital locks which trumps any consumer-based considerations. But let's note another aspect of the bill - and in fact the digital lock provision - which truly gives away the Cons' priorities:

41.1 (1) No person shall
...
(b) offer services to the public or provide services if
...
(ii) the uses or purposes of those services are not commercially significant other than when they are offered or provided for the purposes of circumventing a technological protection measure...

A similar standard applies to the provision of any "technology, device or component" under the proposed section 41.1(c)(ii).

So what makes that wording important? In order to escape prosecution for making available any product or service which has any potential to circumvent a "technological protection measure", an individual has to demonstrate that the product or service has some "commercially significant" uses or purposes. And that means in effect that any defence based on the fact that a product or service has valid, legal purposes other than infringement is available only to business interests - as a product or service which is made available freely rather than for profit wouldn't seem to fit the definition of "commercially significant".

In other words, the Cons' bill turns the development of freeware or open-source software into a source of potential legal liability, even if it's developed and distributed for a generally valid purpose which only has incidental potential for infringement. But the development and distribution of the exact same software for profit is considered to be above reproach.

So C-32 reflects a stark division between commercial interests which are given top priority, and all other interests which are seen as insufficient to justify any relaxation of the media industry's demand for total control over content. And the fact that the same theme is pervasive throughout the bill should offer reason for this latest attack on consumer interests to be met with just as much outcry as the previous ones that have been stopped in their tracks.

Necessary measures

CC picks up on the absurdity of Con MP James Moore criticizing the CBC for simple food and travel expenses incurred just around the time that the minister then responsible was billing the public purse thousands of dollars for limousine rides. But there's another part of the story which also deserves to be pointed out:

Moore wants the CBC's board to make sure that kind of spending doesn't happen again.

"I would therefore ask that, as president of the board of trustees of the CBC, you take the necessary measures to ensure the highest level of accountability to taxpayers," Moore wrote. "As minister responsible for the Canadian Heritage portfolio, I would ask to be informed as soon as possible of what these measures are."

In other words, Moore couldn't be bothered to suggest a single "necessary measure" that might actually improve matters. Far easier instead to force the CBC to spend its own time and resources - likely at a cost greater than the expenses in question - in order to guess at what it could do differently to pacify the Cons. And all this even while both sides know that the Cons have a strong incentive to slam the CBC no matter what it does in order to motivate their donor base.

Fortunately, the CBC need not be solely at Moore's mercy. And with the NDP ranking as the strongest contender for Moore's Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam seat, now might be a great time to ensure that accountability applies to the Cons as well as to the federal institutions they're looking to trash.

A well-defined role

As part of her entertaining live-blogging of the Cons' latest Cabinet shuffle, Kady O'Malley wonders whether James Moore's promotion to a Secretary of State position means that he'll no longer be the Cons' attack dog on the Cadscam file. But I'd think that his new responsibility for Official Languages is entirely in keeping with his Cadscam role. After all, what position could possibly give Moore a better platform to continue his longstanding push to drain the words "financial considerations" of their normal English meaning?

Choosing the messenger

Following up on yesterday's post about some of the more important remaining questions in Cadscam, I'll briefly take issue with one of Scott's underlying assumptions. While James Moore may be the talking head currently assigned to the file, there's no reason why he should be expected to deliver any of the relevant answers; instead, it's Stephen Harper alone who can actually provide any useful information if he chooses to do so.

After all, Moore isn't the plaintiff who's seeking to suppress Tom Zytaruk's recording of his conversation with Harper, and thus making the strategic choices Scott wonders about.

Moore wasn't privy to the conversation between Harper and Zytaruk, such as to be able to provide any explanation as to what context could possibly provide any justification for Harper's recorded words.

And Moore isn't the party leader who has apparently chosen to close ranks rather than ordering any investigation into his own candidate's sworn statement that two party representatives tried to bribe her husband.

Aside from anybody who can shed light as to who actually made the million-dollar insurance policy offer on May 17, 2005 that Dona Cadman has sworn to hearing about, nobody from the Cons other than Harper himself can possibly pretend to have anything relevant to say about the matter. And the more the Cons choose to present people who obviously have nothing useful to say as their public voices on the topic, the more reason there'll be to wonder what those in the know are hiding.

A matter of opinion

For all the examples of the consistent gap between the Cons' fantasy world and reality, there may be none better than how Deceivin' Stephen and company have treated publicly-funded opinion polling. And this week - with surprisingly little public attention - the Cons added yet another indication of their utter distaste for the factual.

Remember that before the Cons took power, one of their frequent (and not entirely unjustified) slams against the Libs involved the amount of public money spent on opinion research.

Of course, once they took power, the Cons immediately increased polling to a record level - which only became public when a report designed to embarrass the Libs instead blew up in the Cons' face. In response, the Cons promised to cut polling expenses by $10 million per year - being over 30% of the amount previously being spent across the federal government.

Which brings us to this from Thursday's Hansard:

Mr. Chris Warkentin (Peace River, CPC):
Mr. Speaker, for years the former Liberal government wasted huge amounts of money on public opinion research with little or no oversight. Liberal-friendly firms conducted hundreds of unnecessary surveys and polls at the expense of Canadian taxpayers.

Recently, the government made a strong commitment to bring the free spending Liberal ways of the past to an end and ensure that public opinion research is used in an effective way.

Can the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works please update the House as to what progress has been made up to this date and what Canadians can expect moving forward?

Mr. James Moore (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services and for the Pacific Gateway and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics, CPC):
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to answer this question from my good friend from Peace River and I will answer this question very clearly.

We recently announced reforms in order to change the public opinion research regime that is in place in different departments. I am pleased to report to the House and to taxpayers that we have reduced public opinion research and polling by departments by 20% over last years, saving taxpayers millions of dollars.

That's right: the Cons have now failed to meet the target which they promised on a percentage basis, even when they've conspicuously limited that percentage to "departments" rather than including entities which wouldn't fit under that classification (which seems worded to exclude the Privy Council in particular). And what cuts the Cons have made only appear have put spending back at the same level which they used to criticize coming from the Libs.

Now, this surely wouldn't be the first time the Cons have fallen short of their own supposed standards, or taken up the kind of behaviour they used to decry while in opposition.

But then there's the Cons' response - which may be the only part of the whole story which actually does set them apart. Rather than seeing their track record of feigning outrage then breaking promises as cause for the slightest bit of embarrassment, the Cons are apparently sufficiently proud to want to highlight it for themselves - and even to claim that it somehow sets them above the party which used to earn their vitriol for doing the exact same thing.

All of which suggests that the first and most profound obstacle to holding the Cons accountable for their actions is that they're either dim enough not to recognize their own shortcomings, or detached enough from reality not to care. And it's hard to see those attributes polling well under any circumstances.

Material witnesses

It doesn't seem to have attracted much attention at the time, but Gilles Duceppe's question on Cadscam yesterday points out an interesting thread in James Moore's answers in Parliament:

(T)he Prime Minister, like everyone in our caucus, knew that Chuck Cadman had received an offer to rejoin our caucus, run for election and be re-elected as a Conservative.

Now, to date Deceivin' Stephen has largely succeeding in funneling all questions through himself, Moore and Peter Van Loan for their usual combination of non-answers and non sequiturs.

But Moore's answer would seem to suggest that the Cons' caucus as a whole was informed of at least some discussions about Cadman in 2005. And that would add dozens more names to the list of individuals who may also be able to shed light on at least some of the party's internal discussions about Cadman - not to mention far more likelihood than before that somebody outside Harper's most trusted cadre of advisors knows something worth bringing to light.

On creative insults

For all the justified talk about Cadscam this weekend, I'm surprised one tidbit seems to have passed without notice even as Garth Turner blogged about his exchange with James Moore:

Hon. Garth Turner (l): Thank you, speaker. When I was a Conservative member of parliament, before that party threw me out, I heard the prime minister call Chuck Cadman a poor M.P. The prime minister said Mr. Cadman was more concerned with ethics and with the country than he was with political organization and power.

Mr. Speaker, I have always wondered why the prime minister was so angry at the late Chuck Cadman, but now we know a lot more. Was it simply because he could not be bribed?

The speaker: The honourable parliamentary secretary to the minister of public works.

James Moore (c): Mr. Speaker, how dare — the member from Halton never served with Chuck Cadman. He didn’t know Chuck Cadman. Chuck Cadman supported the prime minister when he was leader of the opposition, supported him in his leadership races. The prime minister wanted him to rejoin the Conservative party.

Chuck Cadman was a dear friend of mine from a neighboring riding. And we always supported Chuck Cadman. He was a fantastic human being, a great member of parliament and a dear friend. He has no proof. He has no evidence that the prime minister ever said that about Chuck Cadman. That’s outrageous.

We honour Chuck Cadman’s memory. He was a dear friend. The member from Halton should withdraw that ridiculous question and statement.

From what I can tell, Moore's response offers one of the best examples yet of Cons' crass partisan focus - and the gap between that narrow-minded view and what Canadians would actually expect from their government.

Turner's question can be broken into two premises: that Cadman was known to put ethics and principles ahead of purely partisan interests, and that as far as Harper was concerned that made Cadman a "poor M.P.". The lone statement about Cadman personally is the first one, while the latter is obviously a matter of Harper's judgment rather than a direct slight to Cadman.

But Moore's choice of responses - which of course fit with the Cons' set of talking points last week - was to the effect that Turner's question somehow represented an affront to Cadman, to the point where it would be necessary to rebut it with a positive opinion of Cadman. Which leads to the question of what in Turner's question could possibly be offensive to Cadman personally.

From what I can tell, Moore's attempt to claim outrage on Cadman's behalf only makes sense if one assumes either:
- that it's actually an insult to describe somebody as more concerned with ethics than political power; or
- that Harper personally is infallible, such that the mere fact that he had offered his disapproval must be a sign of bad character on the part of the subject without even considering whether Harper was in the wrong.

What's truly sad is that based on how the Cons have operated under Harper, it's entirely possible that one or both could be seen as true within the party. But it seems highly likely that most of the swing voters who they're now courting would disagree strongly with both - and that the more Harper's "Cons over country" philosophy gets aired in public, the less likely those voters are to provide Harper with the power he's so bent on pursuing.