Saturday Afternoon Links

This and that to end your Saturday.

- Bill Curry breaks the news of the Cons' next round of public service slashing - with Canada Revenue Agency employees whose work far more than pays for itself once more looming as one of the main targets of a government determined to ease the way for tax evasion and avoidance.

- Jodie Sinnema reports on the Parkland Institute's ideas for a more progressive tax system in Alberta. And it's particularly worth noting that Albertans themselves recognize the value of fair taxes even as their government continues to insist on the need to cater to the wealthy:

A survey of 1,207 residents in 2012 found 60 per cent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed higher-income earners should pay a greater share in taxes.

“They’re quite open, certainly much more open than the pervasive mythology that you see perpetuated by the government and some other pundits around this issue,” Stunden Bower said. “People who have the capacity to pay more should pay more.”

- Stephen Maher rightly questions why the Cons are so eager to harass EI recipients while simply taking Senate appointees at their word that we should keep shovelling public largesse their way:

I would like the government to treat those two sins — filing a fake EI claim and filing a false declaration of primary residence — in exactly the same way.

There should not be one rule for senators and another for fish plant workers, who smell worse but are more honest than a lot of politicians.

If it’s OK for Duffy to just pay back the money he received as result of an incorrectly filled out form, then it should also be OK for people who fill out those EI forms incorrectly to just pay the money back.

And neither Duffy nor jobless fish-plant workers should have inspectors popping by their frigging houses unannounced.

- Finally, Bruce Owen's story about an unprovoked physical attack on Manitoba NDP MLA Kevin Chief is well worth a read - both in highlighting Chief's personal response, and as a reminder that there are other (and more constructive) responses to crime beyond the obsession with vengeance that serves as the Cons' inevitable reaction.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Nanos confirms that even as cities are starting to crack down on the Occupy movement, the general public is highly sympathetic to the message about reining in inequality and corporate control:

The Nanos Research poll conducted for The Globe and Mail and La Presse found that 58 per cent of Canadians who are aware of the protests have a favourable or somewhat favourable impression of them.
...
The most significant demographic that views the Occupy movement favourably is people who are between 18 and 29 years of age, the poll found, which may be reflective of a tough job market for new workers. Nearly 73 per cent of people under 30 said they have a favourable or somewhat favourable impression of the protests.

Although respondents in their 40s view the protests less favourably than other demographics, about 50 per cent of them still expressed a favourable or somewhat favourable impression of the protests. People in their 60s had the most polarized reactions to the protests, with 34 per cent saying their impression is favourable and 32 per cent saying it is unfavourable.

- Carly Weeks points out that we may be facing shortages of needed medications simply because big pharma wants to phase out cheaping drugs for more expensive ones. Which should offer yet another reason as to why a public-sector manufacturer could do a world of good.

- The two stories are stunning enough on their own. But it's particularly galling to juxtapose the fact that employment insurance is becoming less and less accessible with the Cons' edict that the Office of Client Satisfaction that's supposed to address concerns is to be kept secret.

- Erin notes that Saskatchewan's election results don't change the fact that getting a reasonable return on our resources is a matter of competent management rather than politics alone.

- Finally, those of us interested in turning potential political involvement into the actual votes needed to bring about change may want to take a close look at Kevin Chief's example.

The aftermath

Alice has the definitive rundown from last night's by-elections - which from the standpoint of wanting to see the most progressive candidate win turned into about as gory a train wreck as possible. So let's take a look at what went wrong, and how to improve matters in future trips to the polls.

Obviously the biggest disappointment came in Winnipeg North, where Lib Kevin Lamoureux narrowly beat out the NDP's Kevin Chief in the seat that Judy Wasylycia-Leis had previously held for a decade.

Most of the talk in the wake of last night's results has surrounded Lamoureux as a candidate, and I don't think there's much room for doubt that his personal profile enabled him to win a seat that otherwise might not have been in play. But it's worth noting as well that the NDP spent much of the campaign on unfriendly policy ground which may have helped to push votes out of its column.

Nearly all of the coverage I saw of Winnipeg North was framed around the concept that crime was issue #1 for the riding's residents, and that all three parties were presenting similar messages in dealing with it. But that means that the main focus was placed on a policy area where the Cons have spent years building up their brand (even if it didn't seem to help them in the by-election result), while Lamoureux was able to run against Manitoba's provincial NDP in creating a bit of space for voters to lean his way.

Of course, it may be that Lamoureux was well enough positioned to take on whatever campaign the NDP could develop. But I have to wonder if some more time spent changing the topic of conversation to health care, poverty and other more NDP-friendly issues might have made all the difference.

As for the other seats, there wasn't much news for the NDP. While the party's vote share in Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette improved somewhat, I'm not sure it can be seen as much more than the expected gain from running as the alternative in a riding that received more attention than usual. And the much-ballyhooed Con/Lib contest in Vaughan looks to have completely silenced the other parties, including the NDP.

The end result is that all of the parties have at least some success to point to - but both Winnipeg North and Vaughan saw turns for the worse in their party representation. And that figures to make it all the less likely that we'll see much accomplished in Parliament until the next general election.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted material for your weekend:

- Your latest Con copyright talking point: if someone from an opposing viewpoint hasn't presented draft legislation, they deserve to be ignored. Which makes for an interesting political strategy: presumably the goal is to provoke somebody to draft something that the Cons can attack, but isn't there some serious risk involved in dwelling on procedure while allowing the opposite side to argue on principle?

- From the standpoint of dealing with short-term deficits without damaging (and indeed perhaps even improving) the theoretical long-term incentive to boost economic development, Andrew Jackson's suggestion of a one-time capital levy makes a world of sense. Needless to say, I never expect to hear of it again.

- Michael Harris weighs in on the Libs' latest Afghanistan capitulation:

The chill Stephen Harper has put on parliament is still looking for a spine to run up in the Liberal Party. The only Liberals standing up for anything are men and women whose loyalty requires official silence outside of caucus. Dion’s questioning of the training mission is a thundering rebuke of the elitist appeasement that plagues the party at the top.

- Finally, the Free Press's coverage in Winnipeg North paints a rather stark distinction as to how two of the campaigns are doing in actually getting people interested in participating:

Chief, a political rookie, is facing Liberal Kevin Lamoureux, a strong constituency man and formidable campaigner who has represented 75 per cent of the sprawling federal riding at one time or the other in his 18 years as an MLA. The NDP hopeful boasts a team of more than 300 volunteers.

The other main contender is Julie Javier, acting executive director of the Philippine Canadian Centre, who has run a low-profile campaign in which she has avoided two all-candidates meetings and ducked media interviews (she only consented to a brief telephone interview for this piece and refused to pose for a photograph, emailing one of herself instead) to concentrate on door-knocking. She said this week she has 10 volunteers working on her campaign.

And the distinction looks to be more a matter of bad news for the Cons than anything: doesn't it seem downright stunning that a governing party would be unable to summon up more than 10 volunteers from one of Canada's ten biggest cities for a by-election campaign?

On fakery

With the Libs' mock outrage machine running at full capacity, I don't expect them to pay much attention to the facts about Lloyd Axworthy's now-public views about NDP candidate Kevin Chief. But for those actually interested in whether Axworthy's praise actually reflects his personal opinion...

A Chief campaign spokesman said he had been given permission by Axworthy to report Axworthy had made a "significant" donation of more than $100 to the Chief campaign.

Axworthy noted Chief had approached him for permission to use a photo of the two of them from their time working together on the U of W's Innovative Learning Centre.

Axworthy said it was a public event and a media photo and he could not stop him.

But the photo that appeared was not that photo so Axworthy asked Chief to stop using the brochure and he complied.

However, Axworthy said it is unfair of anyone to suggest he has no connection to Chief or that he does not in fact admire him.

"He's got a very nice touch with people," he said.

So by all indications, Axworthy:
- made a publicly-disclosable donation to Chief's campaign;
- had no objection to one photograph of him with Chief being used in campaign literature, and had his concerns addressed when a different photo was used instead; and
- as a matter of fact, does have a positive personal take on Chief. Which would seem to close the case as to whether or not the Libs have a leg to stand on in pretending there's something wrong with that being pointed out.

To be fair, Axworthy is complimentary toward Lib candidate Kevin Lamoureux as well. But that doesn't affect the accuracy of his explicit and implicit praise for Chief - and the more the Libs pretend that accurate words are somehow "fake", the more it shows their desperation going into Monday's by-elections.

Across party lines

As tends to be the case, anybody looking for the most thorough and informative coverage of the ongoing by-election races will find it at the Pundits' Guide. And as part of a remarkably thorough roundup, Alice points out one noteworthy bit of cross-party support in the Winnipeg North campaign:

Also recently seen campaigning with (NDP candidate Kevin) Chief is former Liberal candidate and well-known Métis musician Ray St. Germain. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in some quarters that aboriginal people don't participate in canadian electoral politics, Chief's campaign is said to have signed up some 600 new members in that riding.

Now, I'm not sure how deep St. Germain's roots were within the Libs. But it certainly has to help Chief's cause that a prominent former candidate who was willing to challenge Pat Martin in what was then a reasonably promising target for the Libs (thanks in part to the efforts of Kevin Lamoureux himself two elections before) has joined the NDP's efforts to hold Winnipeg North. And based on the NDP's strong starting position in the riding, it's worth wondering whether the obstacles facing Lamoureux will prove insurmountable even if the race figures to be somewhat closer than the margins posted by Judy Wasylycia-Leis in recent elections.

Races may be closer than they appear

Eric Grenier's by-election projections certainly make for an interesting read, and it's a plus to see at least some commentary based on voting patterns rather than conjecture. But with two of the three seats projected to be won by 40+ points, I have to wonder whether the nature of a by-election will cause problems for a model developed for general elections.

Without having crunched any numbers myself, it seems that by-elections generally tend to produce closer races - which makes sense as the parties throw everything they have into one riding, eliminating the gap in expenditures and narrowing the difference in manpower necessary for a candidate to run away from the pack. And that would lead me to expect both Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette and Winnipeg North to produce far closer races than projected, even if the projected winners sound about right absent some major change over the course of the campaign.