Thursday Afternoon Links

Some light reading material to pass the day...

- Gilles Duceppe's sniping at the NDP can only be explained by the expectation that the NDP's continued growth in Quebec stands to cut into his party's seat count. But I find the particular lines of attack even more interesting than the fact that they're being raised: if Duceppe really sees nothing to differentiate his party from the NDP on policy than shades of opinion on a single language bill in the Assemblee Nationale and strategic direction on the gun registry, then doesn't that only serve to support the view that Quebec progressives are better of linking up with their brethren across the country?

- There's rightly been much ado about Lib MP Keith Martin's unequivocal statement in favour of privately funded and delivered health care.

But Martin's opinion piece (and its apparent endorsement by John McCallum) aren't the only signals from the Libs that they're less than interested in preserving and improving public health care in Canada. After all, Michael Ignatieff's new choice as health critic is...the same Ujjah Dosanjh who preferred to let the Libs' government fall than to work with the NDP when it sought to improve the Canada Health Act.

- Meanwhile, Michael Rachlis points out that there's no evidence that privatization schemes like the one being implemented by the Wall government will do anything to reduce costs.

- It shouldn't come as much surprise, but it's worth a reminder that farmers aren't seeing much benefit from increased food prices.

- Finally, Erin points out exactly why Canada's interests are at risk if Canpotex is undermined by any possible PCS purchaser:

Typically, China has been Canpotex’s biggest customer. The exception was 2009, when China bought less than Malaysia! This dramatic cut was engineered by Sinochem, the state-owned chemicals corporation that controls almost all of China’s potash imports.

If China can leverage its position as a major potash consumer to bargain lower prices, surely Canada should be able to leverage its position as a major producer to negotiate higher prices. Even if one believes that the world would be better served by more competitive potash markets, a viable “second best” may be for Canada’s coordinated selling power to offset China’s coordinated buying power.

Burning questions

A couple of quick questions about Keith Martin's bizarre position on the HST.

Has there ever been any threat by the Cons to pull back their pay-off to provinces who go along with the plan to tax businesses less and individuals more? (Keep in mind that they had allocated $5 billion for HST pay-offs two years ago, long before anybody had taken them up on the offer.)

And even if Martin was right to wonder whether the Cons might get cold feet about harmonization, is it a meaningful critique of a bribe to express concern that it might get taken off the table?

Just wondering...

I've generally avoided wading into the Levant/Martin attempt to remove speech issues from the Canadian Human Rights Act. But let's test just how serious that position is.

Since I haven't yet seen anybody argue that the CHRA should be wiped out altogether, it seems there's some recognition that the Canadian Human Rights Commission is needed to ensure that federally-regulated businesses don't discriminate based on prohibited grounds. Or practically speaking, if a federally-regulated business puts up a notice on its website saying "we don't serve (insert group name here)", everybody seems to agree that's deserving of investigation and, if necessary, sanction.

Can anybody then explain why a similar notice on the same site which merely removes the "we" should be such a radically different issue as to be removed completely from the Human Rights Commission's jurisdiction?