Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Trevor Hancock writes that if we're going to designate anything as a public health emergency, poverty should top the list:

I was pleased to see the B.C. Ministry of Health use the powers of the provincial health officer to designate opioid drug overdose deaths a public-health emergency. But this is not the only, nor is it the largest, such emergency.

Of the likely candidates for designation as a public-health emergency, none seem as important as poverty, especially in B.C.
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Personal experience and common sense, as well as a great deal of evidence, tell us that poverty results in poorer health. There is little doubt that inequalities in income translate to inequalities in health, which translate into additional health-care costs. It is time the B.C. government recognized that if opioid overdose deaths are an emergency, poverty is a far greater and more long-lasting emergency.

We need a concerted plan to reduce poverty and the health inequalities and economic impacts that result. Among other things, this plan needs to include a fair minimum wage, so people who work full time are not left in poverty, a level of social assistance that respects human dignity and a solid commitment to ensure that no child in B.C. grows up in poverty.

- Frances Ryan points out that major social issues like child poverty and the failures austerity have been driven out of the U.K.'s headlines as a result of the Brexit vote.
 
- Don Pittis writes that we shouldn't expect the public to put up with trade deals which undermine employment, while Daniel Kitts interviews Maude Barlow as to what type of agreement would actually be worth pursuing. And John Holmes and Jeffrey Carey take a look at the Trans-Pacific Partnership's fine print to see how it looks to undermine Canada's auto sector.

- James Wilt discusses how lobbying rules are easily evaded by the corporate interests whose influence over government is most problematic. And Mike De Souza reports on Jean Charest's secret meeting with the National Energy Board after he had been hired as a consultant by TransCanada as a glaring example.

- Finally, Christo Aivalis points out that the major issue in dispute between CUPW and Canada Post is the former's refusal to sell out future workers. And H.G. Watson outlines the issues being bargained while pointing out the need for the Trudeau Libs to rein in management run amok.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted material for your end-of-week reading.

- Chris Selley points out just how odd it is that Michael Ignatieff is serving as an apologist for arbitrary security measures:

Michael Ignatieff was asked on Wednesday if he’d endured the new indignities being foisted upon air travellers, which are the subject of an ongoing backlash on both sides of the border. “I’ve long ceased worrying about these issues,” he responded. “We have to keep this country safe and the people I feel strongly in support of are the hardworking security scanners.”

In other words: Everything Transport Canada approves must be designed to keep us safe, right? Why else would they do it?

This seems an oddly credulous thing for any leader of the opposition to say — his duty being, in part, to oppose the government. It’s odder still for an ostensibly liberal leader of the opposition. And it’s downright bizarre for a leader of the opposition who was once celebrated as a human-rights brainbox. We’re talking about the needless, hideously expensive violation of basic privacies Westerners used to take for granted.

- Sometimes, the system doesn't work - and the G20 example looks to be glaring enough to raise questions about whether it was ever intended to. After all, even if it's difficult for an outsider to determine which police were responsible for which abuses, shouldn't it be possible to do so, presumably at least some of the officers at the scene would have some idea who had done what - making the lack of any answers look highly suspicious.

- Just when you thought the HST was nearly done with as an issue, it looks to be back on the front burner in Quebec. And if the Bloc indeed sides with the Quebec government (which doesn't seem like a sure thing to be given that harmonization would result in an unpopular federalist government ceding authority to Ottawa), then the NDP's efforts on the issue in Ontario and B.C. should put it in perfect position to capitalize.

- Finally, I don't entirely disagree with Norman Spector's theory that the NDP can do more to build and shape a protest movement on Afghanistan among other issues. But one would think Spector should take the time to at least check, say a simple Twitter feed to see what NDP MPs are doing across the country before pretending that they're nowhere other than in Ottawa.

On healthy outcomes

There's little reason to think Jean Charest's attempt to impose health-care user fees will be the last provincial attack on the Canada Health Act, and plenty of work to be done to improve our health care system at both the provincial and federal levels. But it's still well worth celebrating a victory in preserving a universally accessible system when we get the opportunity. So congratulations to the activists who have now pushed Charest to abandon his scheme.

The reviews are in

The Chronicle Herald lends its voice to the cause of reversing the Harper and Charest governments' shameful insistence on exporting asbestos even while acknowledging that it's not fit for use at home:

Not surprisingly, there’s virtually no use of asbestos in construction anymore in this country.

But for many years, Canada, to its shame, has led an ugly and hypocritical campaign to keep asbestos markets open wherever possible worldwide. Worse, Canada has even fought to keep information on the abundant dangers of asbestos from being distributed — via the UN-sponsored Rotterdam Convention — to countries importing the substance. More than 50 countries have banned the use of asbestos.
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As the Quebec government pondered a $58-million loan guarantee to revive an old asbestos mine, a group of international health experts issued a stinging rebuke to governments worldwide that have failed to ban the material, despite "overwhelming agreement" that no safe level of exposure exists. It was published last week in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

The politics behind continued production — entirely in Quebec — and export of asbestos is killing people.

On voluntary restrictions

It shouldn't be news that the claims relied on by the Harper Cons to suppress information from Parliament and the public - including that of cabinet secrecy - reflect areas where Harper and his government are choosing to hide the truth, rather than cases where there's any particular obstacle to providing full and accurate information to Canadians. And Jean Charest has offered up a prime example of what a government can do to open up its operations to the public where it wants to do so:

Premier Jean Charest is forcing the hand of former justice minister Marc Bellemare by lifting some cabinet secrecy restrictions, allowing him to testify before the inquiry looking into the nomination of judges in the province.

Bellemare had refused to testify before the Bastarache Commission, because he said he could not break cabinet confidentiality rules.
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In a statement released on Friday, the premier's office confirmed an order of cabinet had been adopted suspending the obligation of confidentiality for Bellemare and a handful of others...

Of course, the purpose of pointing out Charest's action isn't to suggest that he's setting any particularly useful standard for transparency. After all, Charest's motives look to be entirely self-interested in wanting to allow an inquiry to test damaging allegations against his government, rather than genuinely opening up his government's decision-making in general for greater scrutiny.

But it's still worth remembering that cabinet confidences can be (and are) opened up where that course of action serves a government's purposes. And the fact that the Harper Cons consistently throw every excuse they can in the way of accountability for their own actions should provide ample reason for concern as to what lurks behind their blanket of secrecy.

On bailouts

Kathleen Ruff points out that the serious problems with Canadian asbestos exports are on the verge of going away on their own due to declining markets for a toxic good. But instead of letting that happen, the Charest and Harper governments are using public resources to artificially extend the lifespan of the industry:

Apart from the moral issue of exporting asbestos disease for profit, taxpayers might want to take note of how two supposedly business-minded political leaders are risking public funds and Canada's international political capital to resuscitate an industry that is notorious for its record of economic disaster and public health tragedy.
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The industry tried unsuccessfully to get financing from private investors. Last year it seemed that a Chinese investment company might do so, but it withdrew at the last moment. Now Charest is stepping in with public funds where private enterprise refused to go.

If the negotiations currently underway succeed, the new mine will open shortly. It will export 200,000 tonnes of asbestos every year for the next 25 years to Asia and, the industry hopes, to Africa, where protections are virtually non-existent and resulting suffering and death will be enormous for decades to come.

With Charest providing financing, Harper has promised to provide international political protection to stop the industry being regulated. Harper is the only Western political leader and the only national Canadian leader to support asbestos. There seems to be no limit to the help he is willing to provide to the industry, including sabotaging a UN convention.

While ruthlessly cutting funding from scientific research on climate change and aboriginal healing programs, when it comes to the annual quarter of a million dollar funding for the asbestos industry's lobby group (the Chrysotile Institute), the Harper government gives the funds without a moment's hesitation, dismissing appeals by the Canadian Cancer Society and health experts.
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Harper has given the industry his commitment that, as long as he is Prime Minister of Canada, he will support export of asbestos and will block a UN environmental agreement, the Rotterdam Convention, so as to prevent chrysotile asbestos from being put on a list of hazardous substances, as repeatedly requested by the convention's expert body.

Blocking the Rotterdam Convention is an important gift to the industry and one the industry has lobbied the government hard for, using its government-given funds. Sales would suffer if countries were informed of the hazards of asbestos and the necessary safety measures, such as a national inventory of every place where asbestos-containing products have been placed, and specialized equipment, training and processes whenever renovation or demolition takes place.
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Premier Charest and Prime Minister Harper are about to give the asbestos industry a new life for the next quarter century. History will not forgive this betrayal of our country and of common human decency.

If we, as citizens allow them to do this, we will be seen by the world as the ugly Canadians.

On costly fees

We're still waiting on a strong national response to the Charest government's plan to impose health user fees. But Thomas Walkom offers a reminder as to why there's a need for one:

Quebec Premier Jean Charest says he plans to make patients pay a $25 user fee each time they see a doctor. Federal Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff says that sounds fine by him. If this is the so-called adult conversation the country is planning to have on health care, we're in bad shape.

The reason? We've had this hoary, old conversation before – over and over and over again. Mike Harris suggested user fees for medicare when he won the Ontario Tory leadership in 1990. Former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien mused about them in 2001, as did Ralph Klein, then Alberta's Conservative premier, a year later.

Each one eventually dropped the idea. First, monkeying with medicare is political dynamite in Canada. But second and more important, user fees don't work.

That's the conclusion of study after study. Earlier in this decade, a Senate committee looked into medicare user fees and, indeed, was initially keen on the idea.

But in the end, it concluded that a low user fee would cost more to collect than it would raise in revenue. And a high user fee would deter the sick from seeking necessary medical help early, contributing to higher costs later on.
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(O)ff-loading medicare costs onto the sick might make governments look better in the short run. But in the end, we all end up paying as much or more.

A measured agreement

A couple of weeks back, Dalton McGuinty and Jean Charest announced a plan to negotiate some regulatory harmonization which received comment here and elsewhere. The apparent consensus then was that the deal had the potential to turn into either a TILMA-style disaster, or a relatively reasonable means of addressing the ever-overblown issue of internal trade barriers.

Today, the Financial Post's Patrick Grady offers up the anti-government view on the talks. And from his reaction, it looks somewhat more likely that the McGuinty/Charest deal will fall into the latter category - if much to the chagrin of pro-corporate ideologues across the country.

Here's Grady's attempt to criticize the Ontario/Quebec announcement:

The TILMA between British Columbia and Alberta, the new gold standard for trade deals, addressed the two key generally recognized defects of the AIT, namely its lack of coverage and its ineffective dispute-settlement mechanism. The TILMA, unlike the AIT, includes all measures that restrict or impair the movement of goods, services and labour between the two provinces unless they are specifically excluded, and not just those specifically included. The TILMA also introduced a binding dispute-settlement mechanism, with easier access for private parties and significant monetary penalties (up to $5-million). Spurred by the TILMA, the Committee on Internal Trade is now also considering introducing monetary penalties to make the AIT dispute-settlement mechanism more effective. What exactly is Ontario and Quebec proposing to do to address these deficiencies in the AIT as it affects trade between them?...

(I)n contrast with the TILMA, which tackles regulatory barriers head on, the Ontario and Quebec governments only talk of eliminating "unnecessary" barriers and express their belief that "eliminating such barriers and restrictions can and must occur simultaneously with maintaining and enhancing governments' policies for labour, environmental and consumer protection standards, health, education, culture and regional economic development." This isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of the need to eliminate regulatory barriers and really isn't any more ambitious than the existing AIT.

Now, it speaks volumes about Grady's dedication to the anti-regulation cause that he's willing to criticize the Charest/McGuinty deal both for recognizing that there's a difference between necessary and unnecessary regulations, and for highlighting the continued need for provincial governments to be able to govern. And the fact that Grady simultaneously describes the TILMA as his "gold standard" should offer a strong hint that the TILMA itself does nothing of the sort.

Fortunately, it seems fairly likely from Grady's commentary that Canada's most populous provinces have indeed decided that an attack on the very concept of provincial regulation isn't in the cards. And if they end up sticking to that position, then the Harper Cons will be hard-pressed to try to force the TILMA onto the two provinces most crucial to their drive for a majority.

On regulatory measures

The CP reports that Ontario and Quebec have reached an agreement to negotiate regulatory harmonization. And it'll be interesting to see whether the move by Canada's most populous provinces sounds a death knell for the spread of the TILMA, or instead signals that the Charest government is giving in on the fight to preserve provincial autonomy:

Quebec and Ontario signed an agreement Monday to start talks to remove interprovincial trade barriers in an effort to help businesses - especially the struggling manufacturing sector - but the federal government needs to do "its share," said Premier Jean Charest.

Charest and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty agreed to begin negotiating an accord to strengthen the economies of both provinces by eliminating red tape and unnecessary regulations, saying provinces need to work together to meet global challenges...

Under the new deal, negotiators will look at harmonizing regulations that govern everything from the weight of trucks to health-care professions to find ways of making it easier for companies to operate in both Quebec and Ontario in hopes of increasing the $70 billion a year in trade between the two provinces.

Now, two major caveats are in order with the announcement. First, the issue of "internal trade barriers" doesn't deserve even a small fraction of the attention it's received over the past year and a half. And second, the last agreement which was announced to involve negotiation as to harmonized standards turned out to have far more damaging effects.

Indeed, there's some dangerous language even in the article: the contemplated "accord" could well signal that the intention is to negotiation a TILMA-type agreement rather than the actual standards in question. And it remains to be seen whether the public announcement is as deceptive as the one regarding the TILMA was last year.

That said, there's some reason to think today's announcement could nonetheless offer reasonably good news.

After all, the concept of harmonizing regulations makes plenty of sense as long as it's carried out with the goal of ensuring mutually effective standards - not the goal of gutting regulation entirely as is implicit in the TILMA. And the willingness of Ontario and Quebec to at least alert the public to their plans makes for far more transparency than the TILMA signatories ever offered.

Moreover, the federal Cons have made clear that they're willing to impose drastic measures on the provinces to try to ensure that trade takes precedence over all else. And while giving in to Harper's wishes to any extent is seldom an effective strategy for long, it may be that the willingness of Quebec in particular to negotiate some regulatory standards later will help to avoid the Cons going nuclear while the Libs don't dare to oppose them.

Update: Erin has more.

On popular opposition

Danny Williams' landslide win in Newfoundland's provincial election may not be receiving the attention it deserves on a national scale. But it isn't likely a coincidence that the premier who's attacked Stephen Harper most directly (despite sharing relatively similar ideological leanings) has managed to significantly improve his position as a result - while the one who received the most Con largesse to try to improve his electoral position, as well as the next three most Con-friendly provincial governments to face their voters, all lost ground within their provinces.

In case there was any doubt, this should provide an obvious hint as to the upside of presenting a strong challenge to the Cons' federal government - as well as an indication that Harper's supposedly deft political touch is more myth than fact. And it may not be long before Harper's own federal party is the next to learn that lesson the hard way.

Lacking in judgment

The convention about giving party leaders a free pass into legislative bodies has always struck me as a bizarre concept - and based on how sporadically it gets applied, it seems that plenty of others agree. But while it's weird enough when parties voluntarily step aside in the first place, Jean Charest is taking the absurdity a step further by trying to score political points based on Mario Dumont's failure to follow suit in immediately standing down for Pauline Marois:

Premier Jean Charest says Action democratique du Quebec Leader Mario Dumont is being immature by trying to block the election of the Parti Quebecois leader to the legislature.

Charest has said he will not run a Liberal candidate against Pauline Marois in a byelection in Charlevoix riding and wants Dumont to do the same. Dumont has said he will leave it up to the local riding executive to decide, adding there is no precedent for allowing the leader of a third-placed party to run unopposed.

"He is lacking in maturity and judgment in wanting to block Mme. Marois," Charest said.

Now, there can be little doubt that the party leaders in Quebec are on the lookout for the slightest point they can make to improve their relative standing. But it still seems amazing that Charest is reaching as far as he is in order to find a difference to criticize.

After all, the aftermath of the last Quebec election was marked by talk of how the ADQ's opposition contingent included a large number of first-time members of the National Assembly (including many who may never have expected to win their seats) - raising the prospect of a regular stream of gaffes. And judging from the party's platform, one would think there's plenty of room for public criticism even when the ADQ stays on message.

What's more, while the issue of stepping aside for Marois is most likely one that people simply won't care about, I'd have to suspect that most voters who actually thought about the question of stepping aside in any depth would prefer to see a leader leave the decision to the riding level - rather than forcing his party to follow convention for the sake of following convention.

Again, the most likely result is that Charest's poor attempt to gain ground will be quickly forgotten. But it's hard not to see it as symptomatic of some serious problems within his government. And if Charest's party really doesn't have anything more to talk about than this, then it may soon be Quebec's Libs looking to extend the convention to their own new third-place leader.