Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Linda McQuaig discusses how a burgeoning wealth gap is particularly obvious when it comes to retirement security:

Quaint as it now seems, not long ago this was considered a good basic plan: Work hard all your life and then retire with a comfortable pension.

In recent times, a new plan has replaced it: Work hard all your life and then all bets are off.

The notion of retirement security in exchange for a lifetime of hard work — a central element in the implicit social contract between capital and labour in the postwar years — has been effectively tossed aside, as corporations have become more insatiable in their demands and governments have increasingly abandoned workers.
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In what amounts to a radical overhaul, [the Con government] announced last April that it intends to change long-standing legislation governing workplace pensions in ways that would allow employers (private sector and Crown corporations) to walk away from pension commitments they made to employees, even after those employees have paid into the plans throughout their working years.
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Workplace pensions were always expected to be a key part of that retirement security. Unlike many European countries, where public pensions were generous enough to serve as the centerpiece of a retiree’s income, the Canadian government kept public pension benefits low and encouraged workers to rely on workplace pensions.

That worked fine for those who were able to negotiate workplace pensions with an employer — generally those who had a union to represent them. In such cases, both the employer and the employees typically contributed to the plan, under terms that specified what benefits would be paid out to employees in their retirement.

Employers now want to be able to fundamentally rewrite the terms of those workplace pension deals so that, if the market plunges and the pension fund declines, the pay-outs will be less — in effect, shifting the risk from the company to the retiree.
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It’s striking, however, that a bold embrace of risk is only expected of those in the lower echelons of the corporate world. At the top, executives cling to old-world notions — like securing comfortable retirements.

- And Regina civic workers are taking action to make sure the city keeps its pension promises - rather than either demanding concessions now, or changing the rules so it can unilaterally slash benefits later.

- Brian Iler suggests that the Cons' charity crackdown could have been avoided if Canada adopted a definition of charity work which included promoting public debate on political issues. But while that change might have given current charities more confidence as to the result of the current round of government-directed audits, it wouldn't have done much to avoid the needless expense of going through the audit process in the first place.

- Meanwhile, Kaylie Tiessen is hopeful that Ontario is ready for a serious conversation about the need for more revenue to fund public services.

- Kayle Hatt studies the federal government's cuts to summer student programs. And CBC reports that Calgary's decision to outsource park maintenance work has led to temporary foreign workers taking the place of students who would otherwise be able to use a summer income to fund their education.

- Finally, the Ottawa Citizen identifies one of the surest signs of an ethically bankrupt government - while noting that the Harper Cons and Alberta's PCs are just two of the governing parties who seem to be treating that lack of ethics as a goal to be pursued:

There seems to be an epidemic in Canada of rogue staffers doing unethical things their political bosses would never, ever sanction.

The most famous is Nigel Wright, the former chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who wrote a large cheque to a sitting senator. Then there’s the OPP search-warrant document alleging that David Livingston, the chief of staff for former Premier Dalton McGuinty, hired someone to purge emails during the transition to Kathleen Wynne’s premiership. There is the ongoing mystery about the voter-suppression phone calls in several federal ridings in 2011 “by a person or persons currently unknown to this court,” in the words of Federal Court Judge Richard G. Mosley.

Now there is a leaked, draft auditor’s report about former Alberta Premier Alison Redford, suggesting her staff manipulated airplane bookings so that she could treat the planes as personal limos.
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An ethical organization does not build plausible deniability into its hierarchies and relationships; it does not have any reason to. The fact that it seems to be built in to Canadian political culture, in more than one party, in more than one province, is sickening.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Bryce Covert rightly challenges the claim that poverty bears any relationship to an unwillingness to work - along with other attempts to blame the poor for their condition:

In fact, the majority of able-bodied, adult, non-elderly poor people worked in 2012, according to a data analysis by economist Jared Bernstein. There were about 21 million non-disabled, poor adults that year, and about half of them, or 11 million, worked. Another 3 million didn’t work because they were in school. If those in school are taken out of the picture, 57 percent of the poor people we would expect to work did so. Five million didn’t work because they had an illness or disability.
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It’s not hard to see why someone might work and still end up poor. Working a minimum wage job full time brings in about $14,500 a year, which leaves a parent of two $3,000 below the poverty line. The minimum wage isn’t enough to afford rent in any state in the country. This wasn’t always the case. In the 1960s, the minimum wage kept that family of three out of poverty, and even in the 1970s it kept a family of two above the line. Raising the wage would lift millions out of poverty and reduce the poverty rate.

There are other misconceptions about why the poor end up poor. Some think they bring hardship on themselves by being unwise with their money. But the poor spend a smaller percentage of their budgets on eating out and entertainment while spending more on the necessities than their better off peers. And while both rich and middle class Americans have increased their spending habits since the recession, the poorest have actually cut back.

- Meanwhile, Kayle Hatt reviews a Parliamentary study into youth unemployment and finds little to help young Canadians looking to start their careers:

A comprehensive made-in-Canada youth guarantee would be one good way to tackle our youth unemployment problem.

Other ideas to actually tackle youth unemployment that the committee heard in testimony: CCPA suggested, among other things, to expand federally funded summer youth employment programs, to set aside a portion of jobs in federally funded infrastructure programs for youth and hiring subsidies in certain areas. Several commentators, including CCPA’s Armine Yalnizyan and the Canadian Labour Congress, suggested mobility funding for youth who were moving to look for work.

It seems that the Finance committee, however, wasn’t looking for big ideas and possible solutions to address youth unemployment if it meant labour market interventions or actually spending money on the issue.

That’s a shame because the status quo isn’t working.

- But then, as Megan Leslie points out, the Cons have been going to ridiculous lengths to prevent Parliament from discussing other than Stephen Harper's talking points on any issue.

- Steve Rennie reports on Jason Kenney's latest move to make temporary foreign workers subject to an even more tenuous stay in Canada - while also exposing the complete lack of inspections which makes it clear the Cons have never taken employer abuse seriously. Paula Simons points out that additional churn doesn't help anybody - and least of all the workers being exploited. And Syed Hussan highlights the Cons' propensity for locking up immigrants without any fair review process.

- Finally, Roderick Benns wonders when recognition of the importance of the social determinants of health will spread past the medical profession.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- In the course of grading Canada's job market, Kayle Hatt traces the rise of precarious employment in both absolute and relative numbers - and notes that other countries haven't seen the same type of move toward temporary employment encouraged by the Cons. And in a similar vein, Duncan Cameron rightly brands the Cons as the "bad jobs party".

- Meanwhile, the lack of stability in any single job makes it all the more important to ensure that Canada's retirement system provides for security even among workers who have been pushed from employer to employer. And both the Globe and Mail and the Star Phoenix lend their support to the NDP's push to expand the CPP as the best way of reaching that goal - with the latter editorial nicely summing up the difference between public and private options:

There is another flaw in the pooled accounts plan. While the CPP has relatively low administration fees because of its size, the greater the number of pooled plans the more that is bled off in such fees. That puts less money in the hands of retirees and more money into the bonuses of wealthy bankers. The federal government's argument that increasing CPP premiums will cost jobs is predicated on the ideological belief that any tax discourages investment. In fact, keeping seniors out of poverty is more likely to create jobs than providing more tax breaks at a time when doing so is already threatening Canada's social union.

- And Amanda Lang surveys just a few examples of how the same markets which are praised as a means of mass wealth creation are in fact rigged to divert any gains toward the top.

- George Monbiot is the latest to discuss how excessive materialism leads to far less personal well-being:

There has long been a correlation observed between materialism, a lack of empathy and engagement with others, and unhappiness. But research conducted over the past few years seems to show causation. For example, a series of studies published in the journal Motivation and Emotion in July showed that as people become more materialistic, their wellbeing (good relationships, autonomy, sense of purpose and the rest) diminishes. As they become less materialistic, it rises.
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I should emphasise that this is not about differences between rich and poor: the poor can be as susceptible to materialism as the rich. It is a general social affliction, visited upon us by government policy, corporate strategy, the collapse of communities and civic life, and our acquiescence in a system that is eating us from the inside out.

This is the dreadful mistake we are making: allowing ourselves to believe that having more money and more stuff enhances our wellbeing, a belief possessed not only by those poor deluded people in the pictures, but by almost every member of almost every government. Worldly ambition, material aspiration, perpetual growth: these are a formula for mass unhappiness.

- And finally, Michael Harris documents what he describes as Stephen Harper's annus horribilis. But while it would be a plus for less of the damage to be inflicted on Canada as a whole, we should ensure there are worse political times ahead for Harper and his party.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Dr. Dawg tears into the National Post's gratuitous union-bashing:

(W)hen it comes to unions, a careless disregard for facts seems to affect journos like a disease. They fall back on their prejudices, cutting and pasting their ready-made anti-union copy in their sleep.
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Unions have one of the only remaining institutionally democratic structures in Canada. Union leadership is far more accountable than the Harper government, held to much stricter standards, and able to move forward only with membership agreement—the latter, of course, being the union.

Members are just ordinary working people cooperating with other ordinary working people. The necessary political and structural changes needed to confront our sworn enemies effectively will take place only with their consent. But it’s precisely that democratic potential that scares the hell out of secretive governments, rigidly hierarchical and undemocratic corporations, and their media mouthpieces. Nothing new here at the National Post—let’s move along, brothers and sisters, and give them something to really make them squeal.

- Thomas Walkom weighs in on the Kitchener-Waterloo byelection that elected NDP MPP Catherine Fife. And while I don't think his mooted move to the right is inevitable, it's certainly worth pointing out the virtuous cycle that comes from higher-profile candidates stepping up to join the NDP's team (and being rewarded with electoral success).

- Dean Bennett reports that the National Energy Board has refused to allow questioning about insurance and cleanup plans involving any oil spill resulting from the Northern Gateway pipeline. And Brian Morton notes that lives are apparently no object when it comes to the Cons' desire to get out of the job of safeguarding our coasts.

- Finally, Kayle Hatt analyzes the NDP's 2011 Quebec support and concludes that the party's gains in fact came mostly from federalist or soft sovereigntist voters.

On openings

Following up on this morning's post (as well as discussions from Kayle Hatt and Chantal Hebert), I'll offer my theory as to why a Quebec NDP might be a perfect fit for what's otherwise a relatively crowded provincial scene.

At the outset, Quebec voters have shown an inclination to give a chance to parties who decline to get caught up in the traditional federalist/sovereigntist polarity in favour of a more policy-based approach fronted by a well-regarded leader. In the past few years, the ADQ provincially, NDP federally and now the CAQ provincially have all fit the bill. And all have managed to earn the support of a substantial proportion of Quebec's electorate without the strength on the ground of the province's better-established political machines.

But there's an important distinction within that list of parties.

The right-leaning ADQ and CAQ have run out of steam around 30% of the popular vote in trying to pair a "change" message with their ideological bent, while the NDP's support has at times reached up into 40s and even 50s even through a change in leadership. And I suspect that's the result of the NDP offering a set of political values which represents a better match both for the province at large, and in particular the set of voters who are open to new allegiances.

At the moment, the Quebec scene features three sovereigntist parties fighting for left-of-centre votes, along with multiple centre-to-right parties trying to claim the federalist mantle. And the new parties for this election cycle merely added to those pairings.


But there's a reason why those well-worn combinations are producing diminishing returns across the board. And there's surely nobody in a better position to offer an alternative that can draw from dissatisfied voters in both broad camps than the party which has already managed the feat federally.

Of course, a provincial NDP wouldn't yet have one of the common ingredients for a Quebec breakthrough. But I'd have to figure it would have a strong chance to find a leader who can fill in that gap - whether from the ranks of other parties as has been the trend, or from among the NDP's current base.

And with Quebec's current parties fighting to see who can eke out enough seats to cling to power with support from between a quarter and a third of the province's voters, the prospect of a party with a real opportunity to approach true majority status could make for an even more dramatic orange wave than the one which swept 59 NDP MPs into office.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Michael Harris rightly tears into the Cons for turning our federal government into Versailles on the Ottawa:

The Harper government has more than a touch of Queen Nancy. It has already morphed into Versailles on the Ottawa. The facts, and the rules, are being made up as this crowd goes along – the usual decline into middle age of a government headed for the exit.
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A professional public service is what gives bone and muscle to the idea that we are ruled by institutions and not men – a notion now in abeyance in Canada. In places where democracy is not at bay, that is what keeps public policy from becoming the means by which a government rewards its cronies and punishes its opponents – blandishments and enticements for on-siders, lumps of coal and worse for the less auspiciously aligned.
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What happened to the man who, when confronted with the autocratic machinations of a doomed Liberal minority, said on a spring night in 2005, “When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent is frankly when it’s rapidly losing its moral authority to govern.”

When a government loses that, all it has left is Versailles until a din is raised around the Bastille.

- Sixth Estate nicely sets out how the Cons want to exercise Big Brother-style surveillance and control over EI applicants, while Kayle Hatt points out that the actual regional division in federal politics is the Cons' determination to force workers from elsewhere into the Western resource sector. And Thomas Walkom sums up what's behind the Cons' attacks on the unemployed:

Behind this week’s changes to Canada’s Employment Insurance system lie bone-headed ideology and contempt.

The bone-headed ideology stems from the Conservative government’s primitive, Economics 101 view of the world.

The contempt is that of comfortable, well-heeled politicians who, deep down, assume that those unfortunate enough to have lost their jobs lack moral fibre.
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The government’s new rules deal with none of the program’s real problems. As the University of Toronto’s Mowat Centre suggested last year, aid to fishermen (which represents less than two per cent of benefits paid out) might be better handled through the kind of support programs available to farmers than EI.

But this government’s solution is to force 60-year-old Atlantic fishermen to pick fruit.

If there is a theme to the changes announced this week by Human Resources Minister Diane Finley, it is wage reduction. To this Conservative government, anything that might interfere with the mythical free market — and particularly with the market’s downward pressure on wages — is anathema.

Are cash-strapped farmers forced to bring in desperately poor workers from South America to harvest crops? Then the answer is not to reform the food system so that farmers — and farm labourers — can make a living wage. It is to make more Canadians so desperate that they will take be forced to take these Grapes of Wrath jobs.

- Cindy Harnett reports on just one more of the Cons' attacks on the environment - this time the shuttering of any monitoring of ocean pollution by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

- Finally, Tabatha Southey duly compares Con MP David Wilks to those who actually show some leadership and vision:

Before we mock Mr. Wilks, let's take a look at the big picture. Let us consider those who have led and inspired humanity, and then let us sit back a moment and picture just how much more stable the world would have remained had it only contained a few more men like the affable Mr. Wilks.

I imagine, for example, there would have been far fewer people burned at the stake had Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg's Castle Church and the sixth one had been, “Look, I don't think we should dismiss the selling of indulgences by the Catholic Church out of hand. Nay, I am firmly convinced that these initiatives will bring jobs and growth measures to the Canadians of Kootenay-Columbia.”

Who would have forgotten Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Abject Apology and Endorsement of the Economic Action Plan?

And there's a certain understated charm to the immortal words, “We will serve them daiquiris on the beaches. That way they will stay longer and maybe later we can get a game of Frisbee going.” Much, I imagine, as there would have been to the unassuming, “I have a dream, but I won't bore you all with it, because I know other people's dreams are never very interesting.”

Tuesday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your day.

- Kayle Hatt's blog looks to be a must-read from here on in. And his post on what to draw from the latest polls is particularly worth a read:

Every poll that has been released since Thomas Mulcair was elected leader of the NDP has showed the NDP on an upward path but there was some debate about if that was just a ‘Honeymoon Blip’ or a new reality. While time will always be the final judge on political predictions, I’d suggest this poll (which has a large enough sample size to break down in depth) suggests a big shift is underway in the Canadian Political landscape.

The poll reports not just minor ‘across-the-board’ increases for Thomas Mulcair’s NDP but sizable shifts in key demographics than have historically trended more Conservative. If this was just a honeymoon, we would expect to see slight increases everywhere but not large swings. Large polling swings are hardly ever ‘blips’.

- John Ibbitson points out that the Cons' lack of an industrial strategy - and worse yet, their claim that catering to the whims of the oil sands is all the economic strategy Canada needs - has led to inevitable clashes between regions of the country. And PLG is duly incredulous that a province which has spent decades talking about building a wall around itself seems shocked that the rest of the country hasn't meekly agreed to abandon any hope of economic development for its sole benefit.

- Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail editorial board is the latest to recognize how worrisome it is that the Cons are determined to suppress the speech of anybody who doesn't share their cheerleading proclivities.

- Andre Picard chimes in on how the Cons' move to deprive refugee claimants of health care is as counterproductive as it is mean-spirited.

-  Finally, we can only hope John Ibbitson is right in speculating that the Cons' latest attempt at online surveillance legislation is indeed dead for now.