Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- John Moore questions the much-hyped assertions of a permanent Republican Conservative majority by pointing out that Canadian values haven't changed at all even as the Harper Cons have tried to use public money to change the channel. And Justin Ling sees the Cons as a product of elections being seen as periodic job interviews rather than tests of underlying principles.

- Frances Russell critiques the Cons' hierarchy of human rights - with protection of (some people who practice some) religions taking precedence over such trifles as life and liberty.

- Thomas Walkom is right to note that the main formal issue surrounding Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin is their lack of a permanent residence in the province they're supposed to be representing. But the more important question is whether there's any useful purpose to having a patronage-based Senate in the first place - and Tim Harper recognizes that Duffy, Wallin and Patrick Brazeau are just the latest cases in point as to why the answer is an emphatic "no".

- Finally, The Regina Mom points to the sudden decision to close Regina's historic Connaught school as another sad example of an alarming trend toward non-consultation - while offering a petition in response.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Yves Engler thoroughly discusses how the Harper Cons' foreign policy has included bullying countries around the world into placing the profits Canadian mining interests over the needs of their own citizens - and the effect that action has had on Canada's reputation:

Under Harper all levels of Canadian diplomacy have promoted mining. Anthony Bebbington, director of the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University, told the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development in February 2012 that a "sub-secretary in a [Latin American] ministry of energy and mines" told him "as far as I can tell, the Canadian ambassador here is a representative for Canadian mining companies." The Massachusetts-based academic also quoted an unnamed Latin American environment minister, who complained about Canadian lobbying and mining, saying: "I don't know if Canada has been quite so discredited in its history."
...
Further south, the Conservatives signed a free trade agreement largely to protect $5 billion in Canadian mining investment in Peru from the type of legislative changes Ecuador implemented. Signed in the midst of intense mining conflict, the 2010 trade agreement -- with environmental and labour safeguards "even weaker than NAFTA's" -- was designed to remove any future Peruvian government's ability to change mining regulations or to expropriate the properties of Canadian companies. In June 2011 indigenous Aymara in eastern Peru led a wave of anti-mining protests. Six protesters were killed when 1,000 demonstrators tried to occupy the Inca Manco Capac Airport near Lake Titicaca. In response to the protests the Ministry of Mines and Energy withdrew Vancouver-based Bear Creek Mining's concession to develop a silver deposit. After the company's concession was withdrawn Bear Creek CEO Andrew Swarthout threatened the Ministry.
...
In at least one case the Conservatives established diplomatic relations with a country simply to serve mining interests. In April 2008 Agence France Presse reported: "Canada will establish a new trade mission in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, this year to help Canadian companies active in the region's mining sector."
...
With some 20 Canadian mining companies active in the country, Canada was the second largest investor in Mongolia. Ottawa's biggest concern was Vancouver-based Ivanhoe, which owned a copper and gold project in the Gobi desert. This $6 billion project, noted the Financial Post, "was the major campaign issue" in Mongolia's 2008 election. In April 2006 at least 3,000 people marched against foreign mining in Mongolia's capital, with protesters burning an effigy of Ivanhoe's Robert Friedland. The ire directed towards Friedland was partly because of comments he made in 2005. Friedland explained his Mongolian venture to an investor's conference this way: "So we're coming in from outer space and landing at Oyu Tolgoi... And the nice thing about this: there's no people around; the land is flat, there's no tropical jungle; there's no NGOs. We're only 70 kilometres from the Chinese border. It does not snow here. You've got lots of room for waste dumps." The company also took heat for loaning $50 million to the government in exchange for tax concessions.

The Conservatives actively lobbied the Mongolian government on behalf of Ivanhoe. A Globe and Mail Report on Business headline described a Jan. 2008 trip to Mongolia by Trade Minister David Emerson (who joined the board of a mining company after he left public office): "Emerson to push for Ivanhoe deal in Mongolia." As part of its efforts to woo the country's decision-makers, the Conservatives doled out tens of millions of dollars in aid to Mongolia. In Aug. 2011 development minister Oda visited Mongolia and CIDA ramped up its funding to a country with limited historic ties to Canada.

- And recognizing the difference between Canada's actual economy and the narrow interests being pushed by the Harper Cons, Thomas Walkom suggests that our premiers work together on the former point without expecting the federal government to offer any help at all.

- Susan Delacourt wonders whether conditional promises will turn out to be one of the lasting political developments of Canada's 2011 election campaign. But I'm far from sure we should see that development as a plus to the extent it offers an excuse for inaction based on outside factors which may or may not be beyond a government's control: better instead to identify problems and paths to solve them which will be pursued to the extent possible, rather than announcing massive promises coupled with an intention not to start pursuing them until much later.

- Finally, John Moore follows up David Macdonald's demolition of the Fraser Institute's spin on inequality and poverty with a rebuttal based on his personal experience:

The Fraser Institute study hinges on the false premise that because someone starts their career in the salary basement, they are necessarily “poor,” in the sense of the word that is commonly understood. By that assumption, a 22-year-old commerce-degree holder from a first-rate university who’s doing a Bay Street internship while sleeping on a friend’s sofa is exactly the same as a high-school drop-out from the wrong side of the tracks who will spend the rest of her career working the cash at a supermarket. Almost all of us set out from the same set of starters blocks, but we’re not all running the same race.

There’s no doubt that some poor people do manage to lift themselves out of poverty. One of my radio listeners wrote to tell me about being born in Montreal’s Griffintown to a family of six kids. She put herself through night school working for $80 a week at Dominion Textile and today is a highly successful career woman. That is a great story of grit and determination. Probably also luck and mentoring. But it’s not a common one. And to pretend it’s the story of most Canadians ignores issues of poverty, race, status, gender, education and countless other variables that factor into lifetime economic outcomes.

Far from blowing myths out of the water, the Fraser Institute is merely muddying the currents.

Saturday Afternoon Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- Doug Saunders points out that we have a relatively simple choice between seeking to exact revenge on criminal offenders and actually reducing crime:

We know exactly why Norway has such lower recidivism numbers. Prisoners, being under constant observation, are very easy to study, and they’ve been studied like mad. Cambridge University criminologist Friedrich Lösel recently compared scores of studies in a dozen countries and found they reached almost identical conclusions.

He found that what causes prisoners to reoffend at lower rates, everywhere, is basic education, vocational and employability programs, anger management and therapy while behind bars (or, in Norway, no bars). On the other hand, things that cause prisoners to reoffend more after release include longer sentences, strict discipline, deterrent “shock incarceration” programs and regular sanctions (such as withdrawal of privileges).

In other words, we have a stark choice: We can punish people more, or we can reduce crime more. One cancels out the other. Sadly, though, it is a sense of anger and vengeance that motivates policy decisions in most countries these days.

- Gerald Caplan observes that there are indeed radical foreigners spending large amounts of money to silence Canadian voices when it comes to the oilsands by highlighting both the ownership interests and the propaganda factory funding of the Koch brothers.

- Tim Kiladze writes that economic bubbles tend to develop as a matter of herd behaviour even when participants have perfect information about what investments are really worth - making it all the more dangerous to have corporatist governments eager to play into the hype of indefinite, single-industry growth.

- John Moore nicely sums up how Quebec's protesting students are only seeking a fair shake compared to the system which allowed their parents an affordable education. But I'll particularly highlight his point as to how those quickest to demand sacrifices from young people (and others) are typically the most privileged themselves:

We hear a great deal these days about how we have to be reasonable about the times we live in. Corporate officers pulling in massive salaries and bonuses even as their companies lose money say average working men and women have to understand that the age of job security, pensions and even a middle-class wage are behind us. Have any of them offered to take the lead by surrendering even a fraction of their benefits? Are Federal Labour Minister Lisa Rait and Quebec Premier Jean Charest prepared to trim their gold-plated pensions to set an example to the students and workers they condescendingly lecture about the “new reality”?

Today’s youth face a grim future not of their own making. Is it any wonder that they’re angry about it? What they are asking for is what previous generations so eagerly gobbled up for themselves. If those generations now believe their entitlements were too generous, then, perhaps, in the spirit of sharing the burden, they might want to give some of them back.

 - Finally, while I don't agree with all of Chris Selley's take on the Quebec protests, he's at least right in pointing out that activism is a natural outcome when people have reason to doubt that democratic outcomes will reflect their concerns:

It is often said that if young people want to make a difference, they ought to vote. The hackneyed nature of the observation belies the gobsmacking truth of it – assuming, that is, that governments are actually capable and willing to give voters what they want. In the May 2011 federal election, for example, just 39% of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 24 cast a ballot. That likely represents something like two million unused votes. Add in 25-to-34-year-olds, who voted at a 45% clip, and you’re up to about four million votes, or roughly a quarter of the total ballots cast. Young people would not have to vote monolithically to increase their clout hugely. But if they voted predominantly left-wing, they might change the political and policy landscape at a stroke. Presumably tuition fees would then increase at a slower rate, if at all – again, assuming political parties actually respond to their supporters.

So, what are young Quebecers’ options in this regard? Well, Mr. Charest and his Liberals are the enemy, tired and perhaps more than a bit corrupt – we shall see what Justice France Charbonneau’s inquiry finds. There is the separatist Pauline Marois and her Parti Québécois, which backs the protesters. But then, 15 years ago, as education minister in Lucien Bouchard’s PQ government, she was the one proposing tuition hikes. You don’t have to be very cynical to suspect she’s being a bit cynical. François Legault, leader of the Coalition Avenir Québec, urges the students to compromise. Why not just spit in their faces?

Friday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to end your week.

- John Moore points out why the Canadian public is mourning Jack Layton with as much sincerity and energy as we've seen over the past week:

He wasn’t the only nice guy in politics, but he was one of the few to ever achieve such heights. He was on a permanent charge fuelled by an eternal optimism. At the core of the public’s reaction to his death is the recognition that he had a vision of Canada and of a society, and he was unwavering in his advocacy for it. Other politicians might pander with foolish and populist policies, or denounce things they actually believe in for political gain. Jack stayed the course. Is principal (sic) now so rare that a man who stands firm for those things he believes in is seen as vainglorious, self-serving and stubborn?
...
People liked Jack as a man and his sunny celebration of our country was infectious. The Prime Minister has recognized this unique bond by making the unprecedented offer of a state funeral. There’s a reason why Canadians mourn this week. It’s the appreciation of personal qualities and uncompromised political vision that they wish all politicians drew on.

- And Nick Taylor-Vaisey notes that politicians of all political stripes who have participated in keeping Layton on the front pages can largely been to have done so as a result of the public outpouring of grief:

At some point, someone suggested a candlelight vigil that evening, so it happened. Ottawans weren't alone. People across Canada coalesced around similar vigils.

Layton's other home, Toronto, reacted similarly. Its people flooded Nathan Phillips Square with a chalk memorial, and when rain washed it away, they wrote even more tributes. No one choreographed that routine. Later, a Facebook group popped up that urged the CN Tower to beam out orange light on the night following Layton's funeral. Soon enough, Gord McIvor, the vicepresident of Canada Lands Corp., said the tower would go orange for the night.

Even the lights on Niagara Falls, more than an hour's drive from Toronto, will shine orange that evening - another response to public wishes.

Each of these campaigns was driven by the crowd, and each memorial, or tribute, saw authorities of some kind reacting to that crowd. It's not what we're used to. Often, when we hear news about crowds doing things, it skews negative. They're rioting in Vancouver or, more recently, some parts of the United Kingdom. They're irrational, or at least ill-meaning. Left to their own devices, they're not to be trusted. They're why we have authority figures, elected or otherwise, in the first place, right? Don't we need them at times like these? Isn't that why we have protocol? So that people can follow direction?

The last few days at least make the case that it doesn't have to be so. The crowd that lined up on Parliament Hill to pay respects to Layton was sombre, and patient. They joined hundreds of strangers in that line, and advanced forward in unison. The sea of people set the tone. They took control of their Parliament, peacefully and respectfully, and then gave it back.

Next month, the people we elected will again take their seats. Let's hope they're as respectful as those who mourned the only MP who won't be back.

- There's been plenty of fabricated outrage over the NDP's work in making sure that Canadians can live up to the Layton family's last request for donations to the Broadbent Institute.

But it's worth pointing out how the workaround to run donations through the party first - while perhaps necessary when the institute still has some structural decisions to make - may serve to limit how much seed money it has to work with. After all, the direction of donations through the party also makes them subject to the annual individual limits under the Canada Elections Act - while donations directly to the institute wouldn't face any caps at all.

- Finally, Jay Rosen's take on how media coverage of politics should work is well worth a read.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday...

- Maybe it's true that Stephen Harper doesn't bother paying attention to Canadian media after all: why bother when he's spending tens of millions of dollars for others to do it for him?

- Barbara Yaffe seems to take a huge leap in associating the message with Jack Layton's future plans. But she's right on target in taking up Layton's call to limit the most obvious abuses from the Senate:

Layton's comments on the Senate Wednesday were nuanced and thoughtful.

He noted that a New Democratic Party government would seek to scrap the upper chamber, a mission-impossible project requiring constitutional change.

But, for now, all he wants Prime Minister Stephen Harper to do is stop appointing Conservative hacks to the $90-million-a-year body -- and to ban senators from fundraising for their parties.

These are reasonable requests but almost surely will be rejected by the PM who, having recently acquired a majority in the red chamber, is delighted his government's legislation now will be rubber-stamped by Senate seals.
...
For all his talk of Senate reform, Harper has given red velvet seats to his former press secretary, a Conservative party president, a former national campaign director and a bunch of defeated Conservative candidates.

It's fair for Canadians to assume that, in return for their appointments, partisan senators serve the interests of the Conservative party more than those of taxpayers.

- Meanwhile, John Moore rightly criticizes the Cons' perpetual demand for tax cuts regardless of the timing or budgetary implications:

Taxes are like food. You can slim down a fat guy by putting him on a diet, but when he reaches his ideal weight he still needs to eat. Conservatives are like fiscal anorexics. They just can't stop obsessing over portion reduction.

Cutting taxes inevitably brings about diminishing returns. Ireland was the darling of the international business set thanks to its 12.5% tax rate--up until the country went bust.
...
Naturally the Conservatives and their allies in the business and think-tank communities think lower corporate taxes are always a good idea. Children think not having a bed time is a good idea.

- And finally, Jim Stanford expands on his basis for concluding that more corporate tax slashing may cost up to 46,000 jobs:

Corporate tax cuts have very little positive impact on employment, since they induce very little change in business capital investment spending. Historical evidence in Canada since 2000 (when the corporate tax rate, then 29.1%, began to be dramatically reduced) indicates that business investment has deteriorated since then - whether measured as a share of GDP, as a share of the existing capital stock, or as a share of corporate cash flow.

Indeed, business capital spending in recent years has fallen below realized business cash flow; companies have been accumulating cash and other liquid assets as a result. By the third quarter of 2010, the cash and short-term financial assets of non-financial businesses in Canada had reached $480 billion - almost a half-trillion dollars (source: Statistics Canada Balance Sheet data, CANSIM database). Since the advent of the recession two years earlier, businesses socked away an additional $83 billion in new cash. (This is in stark contrast to the behaviour of consumers and governments during this time, who incurred substantial new debt in order to finance expanded spending.) Further enhancing the cash flow of business, with no strings attached to incremental investment undertakings, will accomplish nothing other than enhancing that large stockpile of idle cash even further.

When governments allocate large sums of revenue to corporate tax cuts, those resources are no longer available to fund other priorities - like extending EI benefits for laid-off workers, investing in infrastructure or housing, or supporting public programs through transfer payments (like health care or education). All of those programs create far more jobs than corporate tax cuts. Therefore, shifting money from EI benefits (or infrastructure or public services) into corporate tax cuts destroys net jobs.

Well said

John Moore nicely rebuts the claim that we should be grateful for the privilege of paying obscene amounts to our corporate betters:

The average working Canadian earns $43,000 a year. The average for the top 100 CEOs is 155 times that. Roll that figure around for a second. Think of what you earn in a year. Now imagine being paid 155 times more. Not twice as much. Not 10 times. 155 times.

That’s not merit. That’s not about stockholder value. That’s a shakedown. And it’s further proof that when elites are responsible for their own pay, they make out like bandits. Kelly insists that boards of directors set executive compensation based on shareholder value, ignoring the fact that directors come from the same spoiled-rotten, self-entitled class as the CEOs they hire and pay.
...
These aren’t entrepreneurs, venture capitalists or private company owners. They are nothing more than high ranking employees. Yet they expect their earnings to rival those of people who risk all and genuinely create wealth. And often they grow their companies through massive layoffs of those who earn less.

In his column lampooning the executive-compensation study, Kelly McParland insists “the money doesn’t come from your pocket or mine.” It most certainly does if we are shareholders. More importantly, thanks to the vagaries of Canadian tax laws, when executives exercise their generous stock options, taxpayers are on the hook. The average lost tax revenue for each of the 100 top paid CEOs in Canada amounted to $467,000. That’s a heck of a lot more galling than the sundry restaurant receipts of some scandal-plagued assistant deputy minister, but it seems the fans of big business can’t get worked up about it.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content for your holiday reading...

- John Moore points out why expertise shouldn't be considered a bad thing:

I don’t know about you but I like specialized knowledge. I like people with a mastery of their trade flying my planes, performing my surgery and designing my bridges. Experts are people who know stuff. They use their specialized knowledge to plan urban transportation strategies, establish the acceptable level of poison in our food and draw up plans for things like nuclear plant meltdowns.

It doesn’t mean the experts are right about everything, nor that we have to lie down and take everything government dishes out, but when a career statistician says a voluntary long form census is useless, I tend to put that advice ahead of the “gut feeling” and “mother instinct” so prized by the Tea Partiers.

Of course I know that by writing this column, I’m just part of the problem. That’s the caprice of populism; it’s buttressed by a form of epistemological closure. Anyone who dares question the new anti-snobbery is merely trying to protect his sinecure and privilege.

But as American senator Sam Rayburn once said, “Any jackass can kick a barn down. It takes a carpenter to build one.”

- Though sometimes it is worth noting when an expert's self-interest can lead to counterproductive results. And Bruce Livesey makes much that point in picking up on the harms of financialization in Canada's steel industry:

In a paper he co-wrote earlier this year, Lazonick says “financialization” is where corporate executives are obsessed with distributing value to shareholders at the expense of investment in innovation and jobs. He says it’s having a pernicious affect on the North American economy facing aggressive challenges from Asia, especially China. “In the 2000s the financialization of the US business corporation undermined the innovative potential of marketization and globalization, thus not only exacerbating inequity and instability but also restricting the potential for economic growth,” writes Lazonick. “Despite the financial meltdown of 2008, there are scant signs in the 2010s of institutional changes that will constrain the destructive behavior of financialized corporations.”

One of the results of the aggressive invasion of hedge funds and investment funds into the Canadian steel industry was its demise as a nationally-owned industry. Between 2005 and 2007, the entire Canadian steel industry was sold off to foreign corporations.

At the very time that Canada’s industrial base is in such dire straits, one of our essential industries was bartered away. And finance capital had a lot to do with it.

- Don Boudria and other Libs are up in arms over the addition of MPs to the list of "public office holders" for the purpose of lobbying registration. But while I'm sympathetic to the argument, wouldn't it sound a lot more plausible if the Libs weren't so eagerly giving away far more fundamental elements of Parliamentary privilege?

- Finally, pogge is entirely right in noting that by negotiating (however meager) wage increases while refusing to even consider actually funding their cost, the Cons are effectively enlisting civil servants in the destruction of their own departments.

The reviews are in

John Moore offers a reminder of which federal party and leader has had the right idea all along when it comes to the future of Afghanistan:

Afghanistan is not Europe. And the Taliban are not the Nazis. Afghanistan is a Godforsaken country of largely illiterate peasants loosely affiliated with rival tribes and gangs. If every last member of the Taliban was magically lifted from the land it’s possible nothing would change. This isn’t Holland waiting for western liberation. It’s a country so riven with violence and instability that citizens show loyalty to no one lest they find themselves on the wrong side should the fighting ever stop.

So yes, sometimes you have to talk to the enemy. In fact post-WW2 realpolitik has shown sometimes you even have to get into bed with the enemy.

So almost four years after Layton suggested talking with the Taliban the minister acknowledges this is now official policy. For a guy who was labeled a soldier-hater and a Taliban-lover Jack Layton is remarkably gracious about the turnaround. I asked him recently if he was planning to ask for an apology and he demurred. “As long as the right thing gets done I don’t really care”.

There’s another lesson the Conservatives could learn from the NDP leader. He’s man enough to set partisanship aside when his rivals are actually getting something right.

Well said

John Moore reminds us of the purpose for the Cons' selective presentation of carefully-staged images of Stephen Harper, as the media is far too readily being used to distract from the reality of who currently occupies 24 Sussex:

What’s being sold, as so often happens in TV advertising, is the aura that surrounds the product, not the merits of it. And it is being deftly done. The trick in selling a politician and his policies on TV is to offering a commercial that looks like a news story. And in the instance of the rock ’n’ roll dad, what Our Glorious Leader’s handlers are doing is taken from the Ronald Reagan era in U.S. politics – allowing the cameras to film the leader often in his R&R time to show he’s a regular guy, not a professional politician.

We all know, intuitively, that this is a marketing campaign. We all know intuitively that it is timed to distract from the reactionary, hard-line, ideological PM who emerged through his position on maternal health and the abortion issue. We all know that the scary reactionary is being softened into a regular dad with a missus mad about the gardening.

While we know it intuitively, it needs to be said, aloud and often. That short piece of media analysis on Canada AM was one of the very few times recently when the selling of Our Glorious Leader was laid bare.

Poor excuses

Shorter John Moore:
Shouldn't we at least consider the possibility that Tom Lukiwski launched into his anti-gay diatribe because he cared too much?