On know-nothings

Shorter Lisa Raitt:

Now that I think about it, somebody should probably be responsible for regulating vehicle safety. (aide whispers in ear) Wait, that's me? Why is this the first I've heard of it?

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Natasha Luckhardt examines what we can expect from Burger King's takeover of Tim Hortons - and the news isn't good for Canadian workers and citizens alike. But Jim Stanford reminds us that we're not without some public policy options by following up on the employment effects of an increased minimum wage.

- Of course, that would require a government committed to ensuring that the benefits of public policy go where they're needed. And we plainly can't count on that as long as the Cons are in power - as Kathleen Lahey, Jennifer Robson, and Scott Clark and Peter DeVries all note in discussing the distortions created by income splitting. Per Clark and DeVries:

According to the Harper government, income-splitting will cost Ottawa $2.4 billion 2014-15 and $1.9 billion in 2015-16. That’s an awful lot of revenue to give up just to make a small group of well-heeled taxpayers happy. Why do these households deserve a deep tax break more than the vast majority of Canadian taxpayer? How can the government justify a re-distribution of income that benefits the wealthy?
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There is no justification whatsoever for introducing income-splitting on social or economic grounds — certainly not in the current economic environment. The argument that the government makes — that it did it for seniors and therefore it should be applied to other families — doesn’t make a particle of sense. The fact is that the Harper government gave income-splitting to seniors to make amends for its decision to tax income trusts.

Income-splitting is being done to placate a small part of the Conservative base at the expense of virtually everyone else.

- Meanwhile, Canada Without Poverty highlights the Cons' targeted attacks at those who most need help, this time through a budget which attacks benefits to refugees.

- But in case anybody thought that meant the general public is safe from the Cons' action, Scott Anderson and Vanmala Subramaniam report on the latest example of gross regulatory neglect - as Transport Canada let GM vehicles with a deadly flaw stay on the road after failing to follow up on an investigation. (And as an added bonus, Lisa Raitt lied to the public about her department's knowledge - though that seems to be the trend among Harper and his provincial puppet governments.)

- Finally, the CP reports on the NDP's work to pass an environmental bill of rights.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Donovan Vincent reports on the Institute for Social Research's study showing Canadians are highly concerned about income inequality:

“People think the income gap has gotten worse. What was surprising to me was the universality of this belief. Younger people, older, higher levels of education, lower, men and women. The fact is, a wide cross-section of Canadian society believes that the income gap has gotten bigger, or much bigger in the last five years,” survey author David Northrup said in an interview.

“Usually we see a lot more variation in opinion in social ideas like this,” added Northrup, director of survey research at York who co-authored the report with York professor Lesley Jacobs.

“One of the fundamental bedrocks of being a Canadian is thinking we have a fair society. This survey is going against that grain.”

When it came to explaining the income gap, 70 per cent of respondents said there just aren’t enough jobs that pay a decent wage, while 60 per cent said the flight of jobs to countries that pay low wages is a major reason for the expanding income gap. About two-thirds of Canadians, 65 per cent, blamed “increasing salaries to business leaders” as a major reason for the widening income gap.

- Meanwhile, the CCPA's alternative federal budget offers plenty of means to address Canada's burgeoning inequality and lack of social progress. And Bill Moyers points out that a substantial number of businesses stand to do better if they can appeal to a strong middle class.

- Claire McIlveen writes that the Cons' elections legislation falls far short of what was promised, while Chantal Hebert and Steven Chase both note that it fits the Cons' pattern of suppressing voter turnout and other public participation at every available opportunity. And in case there was any doubt about elections legislation receiving more scrutiny than anything else the Cons are pushing, they're are following their usual pattern of shutting down debate (and presumably amendments as well) to ensure the truth doesn't come out until after the legislation is forced through Parliament.

- Alex Boutilier writes that the PBO has called out the Cons' compulsive dishonesty about sick leave taken by federal public servants. And John Nicol and Dave Seglins report that in the lead up to the Lac-Mégantic disaster, Lisa Raitt was receiving - and granting - a steady stream of requests for exemptions from rail safety rules.

- Finally, Thomas Walkom recognizes an important distinction between the NDP and its federal competitors:

What would the New Democrats do if they won power? In an open letter to Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Toronto MP Peggy Nash, the party’s finance critic, provides a few hints.

Her letter marks a welcome respite from the usual political bromides about the horrors of fiscal deficits. Putting government spending and revenue into balance is a worthy abstract goal. But in the real world, it can cause more harm than good.

Nash gets this. She warns Flaherty that in his rush to balance the books, he risks prolonging a slump that has already lasted six years.

She notes — correctly — that unemployment remains stubbornly high and that the savants of the International Monetary Fund predict more trouble for the Canadian economy.

Indeed, IMF economists have gently suggested to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government that it delay its budget balancing plans should the economy turn particularly sour.
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Still, (Tom Mulcair's) New Democrats are on the right track. They understand that Canada’s economic priority should be jobs and incomes. They understand government has a role to play in this. They are not quite as terrified of breaking away from the orthodoxy of balanced budgets as they used to be.

They may not be saying much. But unlike, say, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, they are saying something.

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.

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Trish Hennessy is on board for an Occupy Canada movement:

To my friends adopting a wait-and-see approach, I say: The least they can expect from progressives who have been criticizing the system (some since Woodstock) is a little help from their friends.

Occupy Wall Street, and the emerging movements flowing into Canada, is evidence that our democracy is alive and well; and that democracy happens in between trips to the ballot box, not just at election time.

The ground is heavily contested and powerful elites are counting on us to stay at home, turn on the TV, and passively judge whether the ‘reality TV' of real-life public demonstrations is worth pinning our hopes on or not.

The revolution is finally going to be televised but dude, do you seriously want to watch it from the comfort of your couch at home? Or do you want to be a part of it?

- The Star and the Globe and Mail both decry the Cons' regressive anti-labour positioning. Meanwhile, Rod Mickleburgh notes that Lisa Raitt may end up putting herself out of a job in the process of attacking unions and workers at every turn.

- Barrie McKenna notes that the tax-goodie model for corporate research and development has proven to be a miserable failure - which figures to be particularly problematic when our current federal government won't stand for the type of direct investment that actually produces results.

- Finally, a double dose of Dan Gardner. First, he criticizes the Cons' war on knowledge. And in tweets assembled by pogge, he points out how the Cons' dumb-on-crime policies include direct discrimination against property renters.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- No, it's no huge surprise that the Cons are planning to launch systematic attacks against labour as the next step after making it clear they'll treat any strike or lockout as both illegitimate and entirely the fault of uppity serfs.

But it is worth pointing out that by threatening legislation to make sure that a vote against ratification of an agreement never happens again, the Cons are taking a step beyond even what most anti-labour regimes have put forward in recent history: rather than pretending they have any interest in workplace democracy (which is the line normally peddled as an excuse for, say, making certification more difficult), they're making it abundantly clear that they don't think union members should have any say whatsoever in the nature of the collective bargaining agreement that governs their work.

- Saskboy is right to worry that much Saskatchewan's media has been far too quick to narrow the options available to voters in this fall's election campaigns. But it's worth recognizing that its insistence on declaring a Sask Party victory to be a foregone conclusion before the campaign begins also forms part of that same myopia.

- Meanwhile, Steve points out the absurd lengths adopted by the Hudak PCs to prevent an entirely typical bit of misfortune from becoming part of the narrative of Ontario's election campaign.

- Finally, Newfoundland and Labrador go to the polls today. And there's plenty of reason for excitement that we'll see the province's first-ever NDP opposition as a result. [Update: And of course, the Yukon's territorial election is also happening today.]

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Alex Himelfarb offers a warning about Canada's current inequality trap:

In a society with just a few winners and many losers, a case can be made that everybody truly loses. When he argued for higher taxes on the rich, Buffett also said that the rich people he knows are generous and giving and want what’s best for the country and their kids. They too then pay a price when they live in gated communities, when they live in fear, when the distance between us turns us into caricatures or turns us against each other.

And of course we are all losers when too much inequality hurts our economic competitiveness. We know that extreme inequality throttles demand for goods and services, constrains the supply of skills and talent, and drives up household debt. Working families increasingly struggle from paycheck to paycheck and turn to borrowing and credit to maintain their quality of life. The super rich don’t pour their abundant and increasing levels of cash into the mainstream economy but rather drive up costs in niche luxury markets and invest in increasingly speculative ventures often far from home. And the human costs of inequality – poor physical and mental health and a host of pathologies – are expensive. They inevitably divert capital that could be better used for investment in our betterment and savings to strengthen our resiliency. And pretty much everybody loses.

And as inequality grows, unchecked, we become a meaner place.
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When governments say, as they often do, that they will focus on the economy, they will surely fail if that does not include a focus on inequality.

We have to be as demanding of our politicians to justify tax cuts and tax breaks as we are for spending. We need to ask of all government proposals – how will they help reduce growing inequality – or will they make things worse?

- Meanwhile, Ellen Russell points out how the "blame-the-debtors" theory in dealing with the global economic downturn only figures to make matters worse for everybody involved:

Neoliberal elites have been demanding reduced tax loads, which drains the public coffers of money. At the same time, governments had a hard time cutting expenses. A comparatively strong European working class limits the government’s ability to manage the budget squeeze by trashing social programs. Plus government spending helps lubricate other political difficulties: government contracts often reward business friends while buying support as they provide good jobs to potentially disaffected middle class workers.

Countries are caught in a budget squeeze between a militant working class, the necessity of appeasing the middle class, and a radicalized owning class bent on reducing state revenues. It’s not surprising that they manage the budget squeeze by borrowing.

Even in good times it is hard to handle the reduction of tax revenues while expenditures are politically tough to cut. But since the last financial crisis, it has not been the best of economic times for many.

In bad economic times, tax revenues are further reduced while the cost of social programs like unemployment insurance goes up and pressure mounts for the government to create jobs. Governments should increase their expenditures to soften economic downturns.

- Of course the Cons are planning to burn millions of dollars hiring private-sector consultants to try to slash the federal budget. Which, as has been amply documented, figures to lead to this future report...



- Finally, it likewise shouldn't be much surprise that the Cons are once again looking for any available excuse to attack labour rights. But the good news is that they won't be able to keep doing so without a fight.

Parliament In Review: June 16, 2011

While June 16 was a shortened day due to the NDP's weekend convention, it wasn't lacking for a few notes of interest.

Issue of the Day

While the Cons took the opportunity to serve notice of their intention to impose back-to-work legislation at Air Canada, the NDP's focus on pensions offered an ideal response - encapsulated in Jack Layton's question which of course received a typical non-response from Stephen Harper:

The government should not be getting involved so early on in the process and picking winners. The workers are currently fighting to protect their pensions. They do not have a choice, because the government did not do what was necessary to strengthen and protect the retirement pensions of workers here in Canada.

Why does the government want to impose a pension model that leaves people to fend for themselves?

Meanwhile, the Cons seem to have somewhat anticipated the issue, using one of their members' statements to criticize the NDP for having an interest in improving the Canada Pension Plan. No word yet on their progress in excising all references to Jim Flaherty proposing exactly the same thing.

Cooperation Runs Amok

The day saw several outbreaks of civility in various forms - including a round of mutual back-patting on the mega-trials bill which all parties agreed to pass, and Elizabeth May asking a question to enable Irwin Cotler to finish a speech which got cut off. But the spirit may have gone a bit too far in a round of "points of order" which were nothing of the sort in response to the news of an Air Canada settlement.

In Brief

Within the debate on the mega-trials bill, Joe Comartin took the opportunity to point out the Cons' habit of trotting out the same victims of crime on multiple occasions in support of legislation they themselves kept from passing. Peggy Nash introduced a private members' bill against animal cruelty. And the Cons offered some signal as to how they plan to deal with the NDP's ascent to Official Opposition status: by simply whiting out "Liberal" and replacing it with "NDP" in repeating their stale attacks.

On needless aggression

While I wrote today's column before word came out about the Harper Cons' meddling in the negotiations between Canada Post and CUPW, it looks like the Cons' desire to provoke a war with workers extended even further than I'd thought - including through their rejection of a deal which both the union and Canada Post were prepared to accept:

The NDP launched a filibuster in the House of Commons to delay the proposed law in hopes of giving more time for a negotiated settlement. Behind the scenes, Godin and fellow New Democrat MP Joe Comartin acted as go-betweens with Labour Minister Lisa Raitt and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers as well as the Canadian Labour Congress.

Interviews with officials familiar with the talks reveal they came close to breaking the stalemate.

Indeed, even before the filibuster got underway Thursday night, the NDP thought a deal had been reached with the Conservatives to amend the back-to-work legislation. The changes would have taken final offer selection off the table and provided for eight weeks mediation overseen by an arbitrator.

Emails predicted success. “Looks like this will work out,” read one email written by one person close to the talks and obtained by the Star.

But just over an hour later, the Conservatives had put the final offer back on the table and the message from Raitt’s office was “there is no deal.”
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By Friday evening, both Canada Post and the union had a tentative settlement that outlined agreement on some key issues such as wage rate, according to a source. Other outstanding issues would be sent to arbitration.

But after midnight came word that Raitt’s office had apparently turned down the deal, a source said.

It's not clear whether the motive was aimed more at ensuring that the NDP couldn't claim a win, or at taking the hardest possible line with CUPW instead as a signal to other unions. But either way, there seems to be little room for dispute that the Cons were far more aggressive and unreasonable than any of the parties actually directly involved in the Canada Post bargaining process - going so far as to choose to reject an agreement which would have been possible absent their interference. And that message should serve as a red flag for workers across Canada that their federal government will be working to damage their interests at every opportunity.

Meanwhile, for those asking questions about the NDP's strategy in filibustering on motions at second reading rather than challenging the Cons more in committee, the news of the Cons' interference looks to provide a compelling explanation. It looks to have been true that Canada Post and CUPW only needed some additional time to come to a compromise - but that ceased to matter when the Cons made it clear that any resolution acceptable every other party involved would be considered unacceptable to them.

On telling responses

It's definitely for the best that the misuse of federal resources to fund-raise for Con MP and Minister of Natural Resources Lisa Raitt is going to be investigated by the Ethics Commissioner. But it's worth noting what could be done in the meantime to ensure the Cons don't wrongly benefit from even what they acknowledge to have been improper - and what it might mean that they seem to be deflecting instead.

After all, it would seem to be a fairly easy step to determine exactly how many of the attendees at Raitt's fund-raiser appeared in response to Janet MacDonald's e-mail, and ensure that the Cons return or at least set aside the funds raised through the Port Authority. But if they're not willing to take even that type of basic action to avoid benefiting from wrongdoing, might it signal that the Cons aren't swimming in quite as much spare cash as they'd like to claim?

Deep thought

Somewhere, at this very moment, Lisa Raitt is lobbying to be appointed Fisheries Minister.

One day, this could all be ours

We'd sure hate to miss out on the chance to have stories like this coming from Saskatchewan's largest city:

AECL officials said Wednesday the Chalk River leak itself is a tremendously challenging engineering problem.

For one thing, it is at the bottom of the tank nine metres below the nearest access point and that access point is nothing but a small hole just 12 centimetres in diameter. AECL must design special tools that can squeeze through that access point and then navigate to the bottom of the reactor vessel — a vessel filled with a tangle of tubes, wires, and the reactor core itself — and then complete a tricky welding and repair job in a highly radioactive, dangerous environment.

The cone shaped vessel that houses the reactor's core is about 3.5 metres tall and 3.5 metres in diameter. The vessel itself is encased in a larger structure.

"I've heard it described as . . . trying to change the oil in your car from your living room," said David Cox, the director of the NRU repair project. "We're faced with conducting remote investigations in a radioactive environment with high radiation fields, conducting the examinations and inspections through small openings in the top of the reactor and accessing, over great distances. So it's technically challenging."

And all this with a minister responsible agitating to get the unit back in service as quickly as possible even though it's already had to be shut down twice in a year and a half.

In fairness, of course, that's not the only possible outcome: a new isotope reactor could just flat out be unfit for service to begin with after a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars thrown away. So what's not to like?

How times change

Stephen Harper today:

“This government has been working since November 2007 to address the delicate situation we have in isotope supply,” he said. “No one has been more prominent in those efforts than the Minister of Natural Resources and her officials who are working around the clock and around the world to address this problem.

The actual Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn, explaining why he and his office didn't take any action until December 2007:

On the following Monday, December 3, my office was briefed on the licensing and its potential implications for the health and safety of Canadians. It was at this point I was informed.

It's just a shame that the Cons have used their time-travelling ability for such mundane tasks as working on problems before they were informed of them, rather than actually using the added time to get anything done about the crisis which promises to endanger patients in Canada and elsewhere for plenty of time to come.

What CC said

I've been meaning to put together a detailed post about Greg Weston's brilliant column exposing how the Cons (including their new star minister) have mismanaged AECL then misled Canadians to cover their tracks. But since CC got there first, go read.

This has been another edition of what CC said.

Simple answers to simple questions

CC asks:

Refresh my memory ... when exactly did the way the Conservatives spend my tax dollars suddenly become "private" and none of my business?

It has always been thus. But don't worry: they'll be all for accountability just as soon as another party is in charge of spending those same dollars.

Incidentally, CC hints at one of the questions which strikes me as most significant about the Raitt revelations: how exactly were eight-figure expenditures on the Chalk River reactor kept away from public eyes to begin with?

Canada's Single-Issue Government

Apparently in addition to being unable to find its own ass with a map and a flashlight, the Harper government also lacks the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time:

Conservative politicians turned aside questions about other issues, stressing that the upcoming budget was their top priority. Raitt, for example, was asked about an ongoing strategic review of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. That review was initiated nearly a year ago by her predecessor, Gary Lunn, with a view toward examining whether all or part of that Crown corporation should be privatized.

Raitt would only say that review will be dealt with in due course. "Right now, it's all about the budget," she said, noting that she's had 12 briefings since Dec. 8 focused on the economy.

Of course, there's little doubt that the budget figures to be important - for the country no less than for the Cons' political survival. But that's no excuse for apparently abandoning every other responsibility of government, particularly when Harper has obviously been able to find enough time to send his political cronies to the Senate (if perhaps not to properly vet them first). And the fact that the Cons seemingly can't deal with more than one task at once even with the entire governing apparatus in support should offer another reason to reduce their responsibility to that of the official opposition.