Saturday Morning Links

This and that to start your long weekend.

- Antonia Zerbisias and Thomas Walkom both discuss the connection between organized labour and the very existence of a substantial middle class. And Janice Kennedy worries about the all-too-prevalent trend toward worker-bashing.

- But Andrew Jackson nicely points out why attempts to undermine unions have nothing at all to do with general economic development, and everything to do with distancing a small elite from the rest of the population:

Further to my earlier post on the “own goal” scored by the Fraser Institute report on North American labour markets, the Table below shows the rankings of the Canadian provinces – out of 60 states and provinces – for (1) labour market performance, 2007-11 and (2) the unionization rate. (I have reversed the Fraser ranking for the latter indicator so that a rank of 1 rather than 60 is given to the jurisdiction with the highest unionization rate.)

The provinces all score relatively well in terms of labour market performance, with 4 in the top 10, and only Nova Scotia not in the top 20. (This indicator is based on job creation, unemployment and productivity growth.)

Provinces make up 9 of the top 10 jurisdictions by unionization. (New York and Alaska have higher unionization rates than Alberta which ranks 12 in North America.)

Obviously a lot of factors are at play in terms of job creation- but, if the data show anything, it is that high unionization is associated with better rather than worse labour market performance.

- Of course, that type of readily-available example might have something to do with the right's desire to ensure we don't have access to facts about where we stand as a society. And Statistics Canada is rightly challenging the most egregious Canadian example by pushing the Cons to reverse at least part of their choice to undermine Canada's census.

- Pat Atkinson notes that Saskatchewan's children stand to lose out from the loss of full-day kindergarten and other forms of early childhood development in the province.

- Finally, George Monbiot highlights the increasingly alarming connection between climate change which far exceeds even the estimates which should have driven us to global action decades ago, and policy-makers either denying or neglecting the problem.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Trish Hennessy points out that there's a debt crisis facing many Canadians that will only be exacerbated by public-sector slashing:

1.57 Trillion
Canadians’ household debt in the second quarter of 2011, reaching an all-time high this year.
...
150.8%
Canadians’ household debt ratio to personal disposable income in the second quarter of 2011, higher than our U.S. neighbours.

148.7%
Canadian households’ credit market debt ratio to personal disposable income, second quarter 2011.
...
1 in 10
Number of Canadians who say even with a credit card or line of credit they would have trouble paying an unforeseen $500 expense.

- Janice Kennedy discusses the Cons' efforts to shout down anybody who expresses even the most reasonable disagreement with them:

If differing opinions were anti-Semitic, then half of present-day Israel could be considered anti-Semitic.

It's like the neo-cons' familiar "anti-American" label routinely hung on Canadians opposed to the most recent Bush administration.

A disparaging word about George W. and his cohorts, and - zap - you were anti-American. Trouble is, such reasoning would have made an awful lot of United States citizens anti-American.

But such charges effectively shut down debate. That's their value.
...
(D)on't hold your breath waiting for some version of Speakers' Corner here. Our neo-con overlords wouldn't stand for it.

They have no qualms about denouncing human rights commissions - which, for all their flawed mechanics, do try to correct wrongs - as "star chambers." As newspaper readers, some of them threaten to cancel their subscription when the paper runs columnists not on their wavelength. They delight in turning up their noses at "political correctness," instead of the, yes, sometimes awkward impulse to reduce the sum total of offence given in the world.

And they apparently relish shutting down, and shutting up, the opposition.

- Naturally I have some doubt about Skippy's claim that conservatism has ever particularly opposed lying, stupidity or creative math. But there's no disagreeing with the reality that any aversion to those problems is sorely lacking from the right on both sides of the U.S. border.

- Finally, the good news when it comes to diversity in candidates in Saskatchewan's provincial election: First Nations are better represented than ever before in the main parties' candidate nominations, with the proportion of aboriginals among the NDP's candidates actually exceeding that in the general population. But then there's the bad news: CBC notes that there's a long way to go toward anything approaching representative levels of women candidates.

Update: Let's add Paul Wells on the NDP leadership race:

The worst thing for the NDP would be a coronation. I’ve been an admirer of Topp’s intelligence and strategic sense since it became obvious, in 2006 or so, that Layton grew bolder and more sure-footed whenever Topp was on hiatus from his labour-union day job to whisper in the leader’s ear. In private, on paper, Topp is the closest any party has to Stephen Harper for political skill. But the things nobody knows about him are most of the things that matter in politics. Can he fill a room with his voice? Stand up to brutal attack? Persuade people who didn’t think they could ever agree with him?

The Liberal lesson is that a problem doesn’t go away just because you wish it didn’t matter. Stéphane Dion’s incomprehensible English was a really big problem. Michael Ignatieff’s eagerness to please was a really big problem. Jack Layton’s last gift to the NDP is this: they have more to lose now than ever before. They should kick the tires on Topp and Mulcair and everyone else, hard.

Saturday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- Janice Kennedy highlights the consequences of turning back the clock 80 years when it comes to collective bargaining rights:

In the world of Stephen Harper and Co., big business rules. Period. The concept of workers' rights, especially unionized workers' rights, is a nuisance to be swatted away.

The proposition is elementary. Either you believe in collective bargaining and, therefore, in the right of workers to strike. Or you don't.

Clearly the new Conservative government does not.

So they're turning back the clock to an earlier time, a time when labour rights were minimal and unions were great collective personae non gratae. And life here is getting a whole lot simpler.

Not better, though. We are now moving into an era where issues are defined without nuance or subtlety in strict black and white. These days, there are only bad guys and good, and, in labour relations, the battle lines are clear: the ones with the power - whether corporate bosses or government decisionmakers - are the good guys.

Everyone else? Not so much. Especially unionized workers. Especially unionized striking workers. And if you can portray these workers as overpaid, underqualified slackers who exploit contract provisions to greedy personal advantage, working just a fraction as hard as hard-working non-unionized Canadians - why, so much the better. Then the picket line becomes the turf of the out-and-out baddies.
...
To point to the bad apples and extrapolate is irrational and simplistic. Equally simplistic is the conviction that waving a big stick will make troubles disappear, that justifying the use of legislative force on the flimsiest of grounds is the way to labour harmony and greater productivity.

And yet, here we are. This is the new Canadian landscape. We'd better get used to it.

- But then, as Thomas Walkom notes, the Cons have already done plenty to prove they're neither willing nor able to govern competently, with the AECL selloff looming as just the most recent example:

(T)axpayers aren’t guaranteed any money from this sale. In fact, when the back and forth is totalled (Lavalin gives Ottawa $15 million; Ottawa gives Lavalin $75 million), we end up paying $60 million for the privilege of no longer owning that chunk of AECL.

Lavalin gets the lion’s share of the nuclear technology company’s $1.1 billion worth of assets — including land, buildings and tools.

The public, on the other hand, is stuck with all of all of AECL’s $4.5 billion worth of liabilities.

That means, says Lavalin vice-president Leslie Quinton, that the public is still responsible for decommission existing AECL atomic reactors and disposing of their waste.

Canadian taxpayers are also on the hook for any cost overruns from past and current AECL projects, including an estimated $1 billion that New Brunswick says it is owed for its Point Lepreau nuclear power station.

Oh yes. And Lavalin is expected to lay off at least 40 per cent of AECL’s 2,000-person commercial reactor division. Most are scientists and engineers.

In short, we pay Lavalin to take the good stuff and slash high-tech jobs. We’re left with the debts — plus the promise of unspecified royalties in the future.

Which is a pretty good deal for the Montreal-based firm. If I’d known what patsies Harper’s Conservatives are, I’d have tried to “buy” AECL.
...
As the only bidder, Lavalin was in the driver’s seat. It took full advantage of its position. Who can blame it?

Blame instead the government. Conservatives insist that government has no business being in business. The hapless AECL saga suggests rather that Conservatives have no business being in government.

- Fortunately, Brian Topp points out that voters and leaders around the world are starting to wake up to the dangers of doctrinaire right-wing government:

It is Papandreou's conclusions about the future that merit thinking about next. “Are we too weak to deal with the financial and banking system?” he asked. “Are we too weak to deal the need for transparency in the financial markets? Are we too weak to deal with the ratings agencies? Are we too weak to fight tax havens?” He noted that bond rating agencies could destroy Greece's financial plan with a single additional downgrade. They have more power over the future of Greece than its people or its Parliament, “and that is totally unacceptable.”

Precisely so – which is why responsible social democrats in all jurisdictions are, and should be, allergic to excessive reliance on debt to finance government.

This is in stark contrast to conservatives in their modern form, eager as they are to finance tax cuts for their friends and other reckless spending through public debt. Doing so provides a perfect pool shot from their perspective. The rich get richer, and government is destroyed. Perfect!

But what we are seeing on our television screens from Athens is the inevitable consequence.
...
The immediate financial crisis – so similar in its essentials all around the world, triggered by neo-con recklessness and misrule, and the limitless greed of financiers and speculators – needs to be addressed.

Countries around the world need to be put back on their feet -- to survive, and to win, as Papandreou says.

And the root causes of all of this madness needs to be addressed in the style Prime Minister Papandreou is using to address the crisis here in Greece, against overwhelming odds – calmly, thoughtfully, and with determination.

- Finally, Sixth Estate catches the Fraser Institute citing out-of-date disclosure guidelines in an attempt to pretend it's being transparent about research funding.