Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Jeremy Warren reports on the latest Canadians for Tax Fairness events working to ensure that Cameco and other megacorporations pay at least their fair share. And Sheila Block and Kaylie Tiessen point out that Ontario could do plenty to reduce its deficit by reining in regressive tax giveaways.

- APTN documents the devastating reality that people who can't afford overpriced food in Northern communities are having to forage through garbage dumps in order to scrape by. And naturally, Leona Aglukkaq and the Cons are concerned...that anybody's finding out about that fact, leading them to try to gag the officials speaking up.

- Which is to say that if the Cons were to apply the standard proposed by Michael Harris - taking the simple step of removing each cabinet minister who can reasonably be seen as the last person fit for the job - they'd be left with no cabinet at all.

- Gary Mason observes that there's ample reason for an increasing number of political leaders to raise red flags about pipelines - as that stance merely reflects the public's concern about climate change and other environmental damage:

Despite conditional approval from the National Energy Board, most believe the Northern Gateway pipeline will never get built because of opposition to it. The courts have given First Nations new powers to fight developments that encroach on their land. Outside of aboriginal communities, public opinion regarding pipelines is at best divided – although there seems to be a growing societal angst about climate change that is palpable.

Kinder Morgan, which also wants to add a pipeline to the West Coast, is encountering that sentiment now. Protests at Burnaby Mountain, where the company is trying to do some exploratory work, have become daily events and have spawned arrests and ugly international headlines. Once upon a time, the odds of the Kinder Morgan pipeline going ahead were considered extremely good. Not any more.

 - And CBC reports on Kinder Morgan's failed attempt to criminalize opposition to its pipeline expansion.

- Finally, the new chair of the Transportation Safety Board argues that Canada is well short of having appropriate regulations in place to be able to count on the safe shipment of oil by rail.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Zoe Williams interviews George Lakoff about the need for progressive activists and parties to work on changing minds rather than merely pursuing an elusive (and illusory) middle ground:

(T)he left, he argues, is losing the political argument – every year, it cedes more ground to the right, under the mistaken impression that this will bring everything closer to the centre. In fact, there is no centre: the more progressives capitulate, the more boldly the conservatives express their vision, and the further to the right the mainstream moves. The reason is that conservatives speak from an authentic moral position, and appeal to voters' values. Liberals try to argue against them using evidence; they are embarrassed by emotionality. They think that if you can just demonstrate to voters how their self-interest is served by a socially egalitarian position, that will work, and everyone will vote for them and the debate will be over. In fact, Lakoff asserts, voters don't vote for bald self-interest; self-interest fails to ignite, it inspires nothing – progressives, of all people, ought to understand this.

When he talks about the collapse of the left, he clearly doesn't mean that those parties have disintegrated: they could be in government, as the Democrats are in the US. But their vision of progressive politics is compromised and weak. So in the UK there have been racist "Go home" vans and there is an immigration bill going through parliament, unopposed, that mandates doctors, the DVLA, banks and landlords to interrogate the immigration status of us all; Hungary has vigilante groups attacking Roma, and its government recently tried to criminalise homelessness; the leaders of the Golden Dawn in Greece have only just been arrested, having been flirting with fascism since the collapse of the eurozone. We see, time and again, people in need being dehumanised, in a way that seems like a throwback to 60 or 70 years ago. Nobody could say the left was winning.
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Lakoff's work on the conceptual systems around morals and politics (and how they show up in language) has yielded two-dozen metaphors for morality, most of them universal across cultures. Of those, the two key frames informing political judgment involve the idea of government as a family: the strict-father model (conservative) versus the nurturant-parent model (progressive).
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If the two systems are poised in pure opposition, if they are each as moral, as metaphorical, as anciently rooted, as solidly grounded as the other, then why is one winning? "Progressives want to follow the polls … Conservatives don't follow the polls; they want to change them. Political ground is gained not when you successfully inhabit the middle ground, but when you successfully impose your framing as the 'common-sense' position."

- And Sean Holman highlights USA Today's challenge to its readers as to why they focus more on celebrity gossip than substantive news.

- The CCPA takes a look at the cost of living in Regina - and finds that a living wage for a family with two working adults would be $16.36 per hour.

- Alison cuts through some of CSEC's spin about its tracking travellers passing through Canadian airports. And Ron Diebert asks what we can do now that we know about CSEC's belief that it can spy on Canadians with impunity:

The CSEC presentation describes ubiquitous surveillance programs clearly directed at Canadians, involving data associated with Canadian airports, hotels, wi-fi cafes, enterprises and other domestic locations. The presentation outlines the challenges of discerning specific internet addresses and IDs associated with users within the universe of bulk data, paying special attention to challenges involving the movement of people through airports. It outlines results of experiments undertaken at a medium-sized city airport, which could possibly mean Calgary or Halifax, and which includes observations at “other domestic airports,” “hotels in many cities” and “mobile gateways in many cities.” Observations are made with detailed graphs of specific patterns of communications, noting differences as to how individuals communicate upon arrival and during departure, how long they spend in transit lounges, wi-fi cafes, hotel visits and even places of work. The objectives, the presentation says, are to separate the “needle from the haystack” – the haystack being, of course, all of us.

The presentation specifies that at least some of the bulk data from these locations was obtained through the cooperation of what’s only described as a “Canadian Special Source,” which is likely a Canadian telecommunications provider. If so, such revelations would make a mockery of Canadian carriers advertising their services as a “safe haven” from the snooping U.S. National Security Agency. From an accountability and oversight point of view, moving data hosting from the United States to Canada is like moving from a dimly lit cave to a pitch-black tunnel at the back of the cave.

What’s this mean for Canadians? When you go to the airport and flip open your phone to get your flight status, the government could have a record. When you check into your hotel and log on to the Internet, there’s another data point that could be collected. When you surf the Web at the local cafe hotspot, the spies could be watching. Even if you’re just going about your usual routine at your place of work, they may be following your communications trail.

Ingenious? Yes. Audacious? Yes. Unlawful? Time for the courts to decide...
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The revelations require an immediate response. They throw into sharp relief the obvious inadequacy of the existing “oversight” mechanism, which operates entirely within the security tent. They cast into doubt all government statements made about the limits of such programs. They raise the alarming prospect that Canada’s intelligence agencies may be routinely obtaining data on Canadian citizens from private companies – which includes revealing personal data – on the basis of a unilateral and highly dubious definition of “metadata” (the information sent by cellphones and mobile devices describing their location, numbers called and so on) as somehow not being “communications.” Such operations go well beyond invasions of privacy; the potential for the abuse of unchecked power contained here is practically limitless.

- Tabatha Southey suggests that the solution to Julian Fantino's contempt for Canadian veterans should be a fairly simple one if the Cons were willing to listen to reality. But then, the Cons and their provincial counterparts don't tend to fit that bill - as Murray Mandryk points out in discussing the Sask Party's vehement refusal to conduct a fair evaluation of P3s compared to public alternatives.

- Finally, Paul McLeod reports that the Cons have effectively eliminated federal anti-smoking programs in Canada - replacing the public health priority of reducing smoking with an industry-favoured push against contraband cigarettes alone.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- The Star's editorial board sees Canada's woeful job numbers as a signal that it's time for some economic management in the interests of people (rather than artificial manipulation of numbers):

Economists used words like “dismal” and “ugly” for these results, and no wonder. Last year turned out to be the worst year for job growth in Canada since the recession of 2008-2009. And this was just the latest evidence that Canada’s recovery has stalled. The experts are even starting to speculate about a possible cut in interest rates – not the eventual increase that has been predicted for many months based on a gradual strengthening in the economy.

So what’s the Harper government’s response? Nothing. In fact, worse than nothing. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and his officials spent most of last week putting out the message that Canadians should expect a stand-pat federal budget with no significant initiatives, no surprises, no new spending and no meaningful tax breaks. In fact, sources were hinting to selected journalists that it might even be delivered the week of Feb. 10 – all the better to bury it amid the distraction of the Sochi Winter Olympics that will be in full swing then.

Flaherty’s sole obsession appears to be making sure that the government erases its deficit by its own self-imposed target of 2015-16.
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For the Harper Conservatives, it’s also nakedly political. They want to go into the 2015 election year with a big budget bang – with the deficit slain and goodies on offer for their chosen electoral constituencies. In the meantime, the unemployment lines in Ontario and elsewhere can just grow longer.

This is a dangerously complacent attitude that will leave more and more people without hope that things can get better – or even a sense that Ottawa takes their plight seriously. Ontarians, in particular, should remember that when it comes time to pass judgment on the Harper government next year.

- Michael Harris discusses Elections Canada's investigation into Julian Fantino's campaign finances. And David Climenhaga follows up on Chuck Strahl's multiple conflicts of interest - while noting that what's kept barely legal through loopholes in the Cons' system of ethics has little to do with what's right.

- Jessica Barrett reports that Lisa Raitt considers lax rail safety (and the occasional town blown to smithereens) to be more than sexy enough to be worth defending. And Tim Harper discusses why Neil Young's words (and actions) to address the tar sands deserve our attention.

- Finally, Robert Frank writes about the vicious cycle of inequality:

Income concentration has changed spending patterns in other ways that widen the income gap. The wealthy have been spending more on gifts, clothing, housing, celebrations and other things simply because they have more money. Their extra spending has shifted the frames of reference that shape demand by others just below them, so these less wealthy people have been spending more, and so on, all the way down the income ladder. But because incomes below the top have been stagnant, the resulting expenditure cascades have made it harder for middle- and low-income families to make ends meet. Despite taking on huge amounts of debt, they’ve been unable to keep pace with community standards. Interest payments impoverish them while enriching their wealthy creditors.

But perhaps the most important new feedback loop shows up in higher education. Tighter budgets in middle-class families make it harder for them to afford the special tutors and other environmental advantages that help more affluent students win admission to elite universities. Financial aid helps alleviate these problems, but the children of affluent families graduate debt-free and move quickly into top-paying jobs, while the children of other families face lesser job prospects and heavy loads of student debt. All too often, the less affluent experience the miracle of compound interest in reverse.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Bill Curry reports on what looks like a thoroughly warped view of the role of the Minister of Justice and Parliament in assessing the constitutionality of legislation (h/t to bigcitylib):

Ottawa is crafting legislation that risks running afoul of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms without informing Parliament, a federal lawyer charges.

In a highly unusual case, Department of Justice lawyer Edgar Schmidt is challenging his own department in Federal Court and revealing details about the internal guidelines used by federal lawyers. The department accuses Mr. Schmidt of violating his duties as a lawyer and public servant and has suspended him without pay.
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Both sides agree that the Minister of Justice has a duty to report to the House of Commons if proposed legislation or regulations are inconsistent with the Charter. Where Mr. Schmidt and his superiors disagree is over how that requirement should be interpreted.

Mr. Schmidt argues that Parliament originally expected the test for this would be whether, on balance, a measure is likely not in compliance. However Mr. Schmidt says that since as far back as 1993, government lawyers have been directed to approve all measures as long as they can imagine an argument in favour of compliance that would have a 5 per cent chance of success. The government does not confirm this, arguing any internal instructions must be kept secret as solicitor client privilege and cabinet confidences. 

- Meanwhile, Jeremy Nuttall reports that the Cons are choosing to serve as puppets for HD Mining in arguing that nobody has any right to question the assertions of an applicant for a temporary foreign worker permit - including the department responsible to evaluate an application.
 
- Kady O'Malley and Sixth Estate both discuss Julian Fantino's gross misuse of public resources for partisan attacks - with the latter post also raising this rather noteworthy point about Fantino's general competence:

Here’s the first one, written to the NDP. Notice that in the final paragraph Julian Fantino singles out Canada’s aid program in Haiti as a particularly successful one, worthy of attention. A few days ago, Fantino announced that he was not satisfied with the Haiti program and that Canada should eliminate its aid to that country. How you want to square these remarks is up to you.

- Lest anybody think Canada's Senate is the only obvious example of a non-elected actor which can interfere in legislative processes, Robert Booth reports on the stunningly regular exercise of veto power by the Queen over bills passed in the UK.

- And finally, speaking of unaccountable interference by privileged political actors, David Climenhaga discusses the continued links between the Koch brothers and the Fraser Institute - which of course hasn't come under the same scrutiny as analogous charities who aren't such regular cheerleaders for the Cons or right-wing causes.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Martin Kirk discusses the role governments play in allowing and facilitating the extraction of a substantial portion of the world's wealth to tax havens (h/t to thwap):

Tax theft is endemic all over the world. It is organised through an intricate system of tax havens; the PR around it is astonishingly good, as evidenced by the fact that most people have no idea of its scale and can get distracted by the misdeeds of a few bad apples rather than seeing the barrel they came in; and one of the most vibrant and important hubs – the City of London - is sitting right under the noses of the British politicians who are today decrying the corporations who use it.

Tax havens exist solely to help the rich avoid national taxes. They give them a way to opt out of the social contract. Multinationals happily extract profits from countries and then team up with tax havens to avoid paying their share of taxes that make the countries profitable for them in the first place. Without things like the rule of law, and economic and political stability, the market for most products would flounder. All these things cost, and when people steal taxes they are essentially saying, everyone but us should pay.

The scale of the theft is staggering. Somewhere between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden behind the vast walls of tax haven secrecy. That’s the equivalent of one third of all global annual income. Somewhere between 60 and 70% of all international trade flows through them so that profits can be siphoned off untaxed.

The scale alone means tax havens have a material impact on levels of global inequality and poverty. But more insidious is what they actively facilitate. Tax havens are in the background of practically every instance of large-scale corruption and economic crime of the last thirty years. Every corrupt leader, every major arms dealer and drug cartel, as well as most multinational corporations rely on their ‘discretion’ to do business. It’s a morality-blind service industry for the ultra-rich. Forget the 1% - this industry exists largely for the pleasure and benefit of the 0.02%; the 10 million people who ‘own’ the bulk of the $21trillion hidden.

- Michael Harris talks to Allan Cutler about secrecy and corruption in the federal government - and the one-time Con candidate has some sharp words for the party which recruited him:

Years after a nondescript public servant wouldn’t play ball with institutional sleaze (and became a national hero in the process), Allan Cutler still has Canada on his mind. He is as troubled now as ever he was when Jean Chretien had his name embossed on golf balls to keep Quebec in Canada.

“I had hoped after Gomery that things would change. If anything, it has gotten worse. We have an epidemic of corruption at the federal level. Whistleblowers are even more unwelcome now than they were then.”
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“In the end, it didn’t matter. Even if I had won the election, I would have been an independent in a few months. And I would have lost the next election.”

After his defeat, Cutler eventually was offered a “six figure” salary to work for John Baird as a policy advisor. There was, however, a condition: Allan Cutler, a man of the people behind the scenes, had to agree not to advocate for anyone in public. He turned the job down.
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“I think things are actually worse now than they were back then. I have seen evidence of decisions on billion dollar contracts that were decided at meetings where no minutes were kept. I have seen evidence of helicopter maintenance contracts that were moved all around North America to increase the costs.

“In any organization there will always be corrupt people. But the system still protects them and that is wrong. Deputy ministers have a legal obligation to report to the Privy Council when a minister interferes in their departments. They never do. And even if they did, there is no penalty for such interference.”

- Meanwhile, the Cons are doing their best to prove Cutler right in considering them the most corrupt and ineffective government yet. The latest hits include their cover-up of internal communications as to how to respond to concerns about muzzling scientists, the revelation that the Cons are pushing a bill to sweep torture and its consequences under the rug, and the news that Canada's minister responsible for foreign aid has absolutely no clue what foreign aid is supposed to accomplish.

- Finally, Bill Tieleman makes the case as to why we shouldn't lump the NDP, Libs and Greens together under a single anti-Conservative banner. And Jamey Heath's counterargument for a pre-electoral pact doesn't go far beyond "we must do something, this is something, ergo we must do this!".

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Michael Harris continues to highlight some of the fundamental problems with the Cons' view of politics, this time identifying Stephen Harper as being afflicted with "master of the universe syndrome":

When you control all the levers of power, when you have no scruples, when you are surrounded by nutters who will do anything you say without thinking, when you conceive of language as disconnected from objective reality, when you believe biz bull and Beatle songs are enough to bamboozle the Great Unwashed, it’s understandable in certain personality types that the conviction begins to take hold that you are a master of the universe.

Here are the main symptoms of MOUS. You stop caring about what others think about you. They are merely the Plankton People – Vladimir Putin’s ringing coinage for the human flotsam and jetsam who throng to those soon-to-be terminated protests against his dark dominion in Russia. The kind of people, I might add, who now find themselves under arrest when a Harper cabinet minister is heckled...

When you have MOUS, it never crosses your mind that people would like more from their government than a cattle prod in their junk. That’s because being Boss is in your blood. You, and you alone, know what’s good for everybody. And what’s good for everybody? Well, it just happens to be what’s good for your friends. The pipeline people, the military, and of course, the Harper Party.

- NUPGE identifies several pieces of the Sask Party's labour and employment plans which violate well-established and internationally-recognized labour rights:

Implementing any of the following legislative changes would be seen as a violation of Canada's (and Saskatchewan's) commitment to adhere to ILO fundamental principles of freedom of association:

• excluding some employees from the right to collective bargaining;
• restricting unions from democratically deciding how they spend dues revenues;
• allowing individual members to opt out of paying dues;
• allowing individual members to make decisions on what their dues are used for that are contrary to the financial decisions made democratically by the majority of union members;
• eliminating 'dues check off', the process where an employer deducts union dues from employees' pay on behalf of the union; and
• denying essential employees the right to strike without access to impartial third party arbitration.

- Vass Bednar and Mark Stabile comment on the Cons' continued attacks on evidence-based policy in general and Statistics Canada in particular:

We would argue that there is a strong case to be made for a publicly funded and administered statistical agency that collects the kind of robust information required for government, business and individuals to make the best decisions they can.

For without being able to accurately describe the characteristics and trends of what that "problem" is, society will simply have to make policy in the dark.

Evidence-based policy-making requires just that - evidence - standard, reliable metrics whose quantification and legitimacy is widely agreed upon. In their absence, policy-making at all levels and in every sector will be as expensive as it is hopeful, while policy actors are forced to gingerly "guess and check" over time.

In the absence of good data, our ability to fully comprehend complex policy issues will grow anecdotal and inconsistent. As admirable as the quest for efficiency in the public sector is, it can't be worth the confusion that it will promise in the future. Truly realizing the kind of savings that Statistics Canada claims to strive for in this budgetary cycle means continuing to invest in the foundational information that has wisely informed our nation for decades.

- Stephen Maher reports on the latest in Helena Guergis' defamation claim. But the most noteworthy part of the story may be the one tossed in as an afterthought: all investigation and discussion of the criminal case against a past Conservative MP - who was married to a then-current MP and cabinet minister - was shot down by yet another future MP and cabinet minister in Julian Fantino.

 - Finally, the Star-Phoenix editorial board has some pointed questions about the plan for a new Regina stadium.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Mike de Souza's report on the Cons' attempts to hide both the oil industry's involvement and its own lack of credibility is well worth a read in full. But let's focus on a more basic revelation: Harper has set up a publicly-funded lobbying team to make sure that tar sands operators - who of course have billions in reserves sitting around to let them fund their own lobbying - get their way in any free trade negotiations.

- Meanwhile, the Cons continue to face difficulty defending their evidence-free policy in the courts - this time as Justice Anne Molly declared a mandatory minimum sentence to be unconstitutional.

- The National Post weighs in against the Cons' plans for warrantless online surveillance:

(T)he government will force Internet service providers to install costly monitoring equipment on their networks. Taxpayers will likely be forced to foot part of the bill, but the rest of the cost will be borne by private industry. Smaller providers could be driven out of what is already an uncompetitive market. The law would also make it much easier for police to force telecommunication companies to retain information on their customers and to enable tracking devices on mobile phones.

This type of legislation brings us one step closer to George Orwell's dystopian vision of a totalitarian state that keeps its citizens under constant surveillance. Yet there is no evidence the new law will achieve its public policy objectives.

Law enforcement agencies have been unable to come up with a single investigation that has been hampered by the limits of the laws currently on the books. Even the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police could not find a "sufficient quantity of credible examples" to support the additional powers the lawful access legislation would grant them, according to a series of internal e-mails obtained by the Vancouver-based group Open Media. Postmedia News has also obtained government documents, in which officials from within Public Safety Canada object to some of the key arguments the Minister has used to justify the bill.

- But the Cons do believe some things should be kept secret - like public policy discussion. Fortunately, the NDP is fighting them every step of the way.

- Finally, Stewart Webb and Michael Byers tear into the Cons' faith-based defence procurement policy:

Thanks to the introduction of faith-based procurement, the Harper government can now ignore the complexities and inefficiencies of design specifications, equipment testing, contract tendering, specified industrial regional benefits, etc.

From now on, decisions on new equipment for the Canadian Forces will be divinely ordained, and channelled to Canadians through Mr. Fantino’s divine connections.
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Instead of engaging with our analysis, Mr. Fantino told the House of Commons that we are “critical of everything that is holy and decent” about the government’s defence procurement efforts.

As the quotation at the beginning of this article illustrates, this is the second time that Mr. Fantino has referred publicly and explicitly to the divine nature of his new portfolio.

God’s interest in fighter jets was, to say the least, an unexpected revelation for us.

Thursday Afternoon Links

Content goes here.

- Sure, it's nice to see some relatively principled Conservatives abandoning the party. But was there anything about the Harper Cons' vote-buying that shouldn't have been obvious long before the latest revelations in Vaughan?

- Meanwhile, some might see reason for concern that the Cons are working to keep people from voting in Guelph. But from the standpoint of living up to their campaign message, I suppose one can say they're walking their talk in considering elections to be an inconvenience that are best rendered as meaningless as possible.

- Adam Chapnick makes the case for keeping per-vote funding to political parties as a means of making sure that every vote counts. And I broadly agree - even if there are other reasons to vote one's conscience beyond the subsidy.

- Gloria Galloway thanks Rick Mercer for getting students to pay attention to politics.

- Finally, Simon Enoch points out that we can already see the results of Con-style austerity in the UK - and that a focus on the Cons' idea of economic management figures to do far more harm than good.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted reading material for your weekend.

- Alice has all the background you could need to the much-discussed bill on seat redistribution.

- Apparently it's time for a reminder which party to the contracts surrounding the G20 is actually in charge of running the country:

Anne White, Deerhurst communications director, says it is against company policy to make public how much the resort was paid by the federal government to run the central venue for the G8 meeting.

Which, last I checked, wouldn't seem to trump the law of the land. But I suppose we can never rule out the possibility that the Access to Information Act passed by Parliament setting out a right to information about how Canada's government works has quietly been made subordinate to corporate policy.

- Thomas Walkom follows up on Kevin Page's report showing that the Cons' stimulus didn't actually do anything much to create jobs:

u(U)employment remains persistently high. Even Friday’s announcement that the official jobless rate fell to 7.6 per cent must be seen in the context of a labour market where thousands have simply given up looking for work.

So perhaps the economists — and the government — should pay more attention to Page on this. Granted, those he interviewed may not have taken into account the spin-offs from stimulus spending (as, for instance, when a construction worker laying sewer-pipe buys a submarine sandwich).

Granted also that recipients of federal cash may not have considered the jobs that stimulus spending saved from being lost.

But if one-fifth of those at the sharp end found that the government money they spent reduced employment in their communities, alarm bells should ring.

- Finally, Scott Feschuk's compilation of Julian Fantino's childhood correspondence nicely skewers his post-election diatribe.

On minimal influence

There's plenty to agree with in the Ottawa Citizen's criticism of the Cons' crime policies. But I have serious doubts about the assertion that Julian Fantino will push the Cons even further toward the side of fearmongering on crime ahead of libertarian principles of justice.

After all, the expectation that Fantino's arrival will change anything would seem to imply that there was actually room for the Cons toward the "tough on crime" posturing end of the spectrum. But can anybody name a point when the Fantino-free Harper government hasn't chosen the most extreme possible posture on a crime issue (rather than an issue unrelated to actual criminal justice like the census)?