Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Aditya Chakrabortty sums up George Osborne's legacy - and give or take a Brexit vote, it looks awfully familiar for corporatist governments in general:

The multi-million-pound spending spree wasn’t justifiable, admitted Osborne, according to Laws’ recent memoir, Coalition. “It will only really be of help to stupid, affluent and lazy people, who can’t be bothered to put their savings away into tax-efficient vehicles!” said Osborne. “But it will still be very popular – we have polled it.”

Disabled people could kill themselves to put an end to the government’s reign of terror, and the chancellor would shrug. Working-class kids could live on foodbank lunches and ministers would claim they had no alternative. But shovelling cash at the people seen as undeserving by their very own benefactor? That, Mr Austerity would happily do. Anything to buy votes.
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Osborne’s fiscal rules have been either broken or discarded, and where their replacement should be is instead a complete vacuum. The man praised for his “strategic grip” by his former permanent secretary admitted last month that he hadn’t bothered coming up with a post-Brexit strategy. Britain is adrift in what could be the choppiest waters in decades without a fiscal policy, a paddle – or even a map.

None of this is accidental. All of it could have been foreseen – indeed, was foreseen by some of us. But it is the direct result of a sniggering callousness that punished the poor while rewarding the rich, that promised greater power for the provinces while shunting ever more money to central London, that bilked the young of their futures while bribing their grandparents all the way to the ballot box.

- Jeffrey Sachs, Brooke Güven and Lisa Sachs point to TransCanada's claim against the U.S. for rejecting Keystone XL as a prime example of how trade agreements give the corporate sector unacceptable power over governments acting in the public interest.

- Peter Hannam reports on Australia's problem with abandoned gas wells, showing that the resource industry's expectation of being able to take profits while leaving messes for someone else to clean up is far from unique to Canada. And Natasha Geiling finds industry spokesflacks again trying to claim that oil spills are an economic plus due to the work involved in cleaning them up.

- Mia Rabson discusses how criticism of people living in poverty is generally based on nothing but ignorance and misinformation.

- Finally Doug Cuthand writes that it's long past time to start reversing the damage done by the Cons' dumb-on-crime agenda. But it's worth noting that as in so many other areas, that means more than just resetting laws to where they stood before while allowing their consequences to remain in place.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Aditya Chakrabortty contrasts the myth of the free market against the reality that massive amounts of public money and other privileges are shoveled toward the corporate sector:

Few conceits are more cherished by our political classes than the notion that this is a free-market economy. To the right it is what makes Britain great. For the left it is what they are up against. And for the rich it is what justifies their huge pay packets: after all, they have earned it.

When asked for his view of western civilisation, Gandhi said he thought it would be a very good idea. I feel much the same way about the free market: I’m genuinely curious to see what such a mythical beast looks like. But that term, however widely accepted and advertised, has little to do with today’s Britain. The economy most of us experience – everything from who collects our bins, to how we commute to work, to that new school attended by the kids – is often not a free market at all. Instead, it’s a bog of privately run monopolies; of public projects and services outsourced to businesses for years, even decades, at a time; and massive taxpayer subsidies handed to the corporate sector with fewer questions asked than of disabled people wondering where their living allowance has gone.

Grasp that, and the question of how to tame corporate power becomes easier to answer. If corporations rely on the public for a sizeable chunk of their revenues and power, then we should start asking what they are doing for us in return. Do businesses deserve the privileges given them by society?
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In Britain businesses take £85bn a year from the public in grants, subsidies, insurance schemes, preferential credit and government services. That’s the corporate welfare bill as totted up by Kevin Farnsworth, senior lecturer in social policy at the University of York, and he admits it’s on the conservative side. Add on the various subsidies for too-big-to-fail banks and you’re well in excess of a hundred billion. Nor does he include the most fundamental privilege society affords the investors in a business such as Tesco: that of limited liability, which means they only stand to lose the value of their shares, and no more. We could argue for limited liability, but let’s not pretend it’s anything less than a substantial underwriting of shareholder enterprises.
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The fashionable thing to say is that in a globalised economy states can’t keep up with businesses. That is to get the relationship the wrong way round. The reality is that states often give businesses their revenues and so their power. More than that: markets are created by states, who provide the infrastructure, the transports and the rule of law.

So let’s start asking businesses what they’ve done for us recently.

- And Andre Picard discusses why our support for science shouldn't be limited to research with immediate commercial applications:

Government’s role should be to invest tax dollars for the collective good. In science, that means investing where businesses won’t, namely in basic research. A secondary purpose is to direct tax dollars where there are shortcomings and great public need, such as aboriginal health, mental health and repairing environmental damage (as opposed to just extracting more oil out of the ground). The strategy starves already neglected areas.

Whether it ultimately creates jobs or not, innovation is a complex process. It emerges in an environment where there is healthy pursuit of knowledge, an exchange of ideas and no small measure of serendipity.

The scientific environment the federal government has created is precisely the opposite: Scientists are muzzled, more time is spent on bureaucracy required to get funding than on research itself, and the only measure of success is return on investment.
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The problem with this approach is that it won’t result in better science or more innovation. On the contrary, it will make scientists shy away from taking risks or from pursuing “paradigm-shifting” ideas (speaking of buzzwords). Instead, they will opt for projects with sure-fire return on investment in the short term, and good political optics that ensure continued funding.

In short, the new science and technology strategy will result in the rich getting richer, and all of us being the poorer for it.

- But the pattern of freebies for the corporate sector is still playing out, as Erika Eichelberger notes in reporting on a giveaway to the financial sector snuck into the U.S.' budget legislation at the behest of Citigroup.

- Carrie Tait and Jeff Lewis report on Alberta's plans to allow tar sands operators to put off cleaning up the environmental devastation they've wrought, while Justin Ling catches the Cons pairing their tendency to criminalize dissent with new and draconian sentencing. And Seth Klein observes that contrary to the Cons' spin, a time of dropping prices is exactly the best time to reevaluate our reliance on resource extraction.

- Finally, Michael Harris reminds us of the Cons' focus on marketing rather than reality. And Mia Rabson offers an update on their continued efforts to keep accurate information from reaching the public.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Michael Harris tears into the Cons for their latest set of Senate abuses:

It is time once more to throw up on your shoes over the Senate. We all did that when Liberal Senator Andrew Thompson went missing in action for a decade at public expense — our man in Mexico.
This stable of political studs put out to pasture at public expense for party loyalties costs Canada $92.5 million annually in salaries, senator allowances and administrative costs...

Each lottery winner in the Senate receives a base annual salary of $135,200. The Speaker of the Senate, currently Conservative Noel Kinsella, pulls down $187,500.
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The Americans figured out that an unelected Senate had no part in a democracy in 1911.

But that didn’t stop this unelected body from killing by stealth Bill C-311 after the House of Commons had passed the climate change bill. And this under a prime minister who once promised that he would never allow an unelected Senate to go against the will of the majority of Members of Parliament.

- Marilyn Reid comments on the role of free trade agreements in facilitating corporate control over government policy. But Stuart Trew notes that the end result isn't inevitable, as several Latin American countries are discussing ways to make sure that trade agreements don't unduly interfere with democratic decision-making.

- The Guardian discusses how the UK Cons' privatization agenda is putting many essential social services at risk - including the availability of safe donated blood. And Jim Holmes nicely sums up the effect of corporatizing wastewater treatment in Regina.

- Vanessa Brown reports on the people's housing summit being held at 3 PM tomorrow to give mere renters some voice in Regina's development (in contrast to Michael Fougere's developer-heavy version which considers a $300K house to be an example of "affordable housing").

- Finally, Mia Rabson laments the Cons' choice to make Canada's census more expensive and less informative. And Daniel Wilson writes that First Nations will be hit particularly hard by the Cons' "don't want to know" attitude toward social realities.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- While far too many in the media seem to have glossed over what the Cons' attacks on votes in Parliament this fall actually meant, Mia Rabson nicely sums it up:

(F)or the government to simply reject every single suggestion the opposition makes as an abuse of the process proves the government isn't even pretending to listen to other ideas.

The idea that a majority government should be able to do away with votes simply because they know they can win is so contrary to the principles of how a government is supposed to work it would be funny if it weren't so sad. A majority government already has few, if any, checks on its power.

It speaks to a need for far more freedom in Parliament -- freedom for all MPs to give their input and not be forced to act as a giant party unit on most major pieces of legislation. It is nearly impossible to believe a 400-plus-page omnibus budget bill was so absolutely perfect from head to toe that not so much as a comma needed to be changed.

Considering a majority government in Canada is almost always won with less than a majority of votes, it seems somewhat of a fallacy to watch majority governments govern without even a moment's consideration of what other parties think, to the point where now the government suggests opposition parties shouldn't even get a say, since they're going to lose anyway.

- John Stapleton criticizes the Cons' decision-based evidence-making as a counterproductive substitute for actual social policy.

- Meanwhile, ratemygovernment.ca offers some prospect of gathering needed evidence as to public impressions of governments and their policies. And I'll be particularly curious to see whether it can develop strong conversations and reaching all the way down to the municipal level.

- Finally, Anne Jarvis weighs in on how the labour movement should respond to the regressive right-to-free-ride lobby:

Right to work – it’s quite the euphemism.

“What they’re really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money,” President Barack Obama told a Daimler AG plant near Detroit.

These bills are supposed to liberate workers from unions. Now they’re free to be subject to a bottom line that’s never enough. (Of course what’s good for workers isn’t good for those who push right to work – big corporations that award their executives multimillion-dollar bonuses and severances.)
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It’s time for a history lesson. It’s time to remind everyone that unions built the middle class by raising the standard of living not just for their members but for all workers.

But it’s also time for unions to take a hard look in the mirror and reassess their relevance. Many public sector unions – the teachers spring to mind – need to think about the image they’re portraying with their sense of entitlement. Unions need to focus instead on what they can do for those who need them most, the army of workers  trying to cobble together a living from part-time and contract employment after the dramatic rise of so-called “precarious work” that is poorly paid, insecure and unprotected.

Unions will have to fight like heck under right-to-work, and their biggest advantage will be relevance.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Alice interviews Allan Gregg about his sharp criticism of anti-evidence politics, and finds some optimism on Gregg's part that clear falsehoods will eventually be treated with due disdain:

Q. So, one of your early mentors, [US pollster] Richard Wirthlin, he’s arguing that values trumped issues in the work that he did for Ronald Reagan. He told George Lakoff that this was how Reagan managed to get elected: that people wanted to vote for him based on an appeal to values, in spite of most voters at the time disagreeing with his policies.
So, that being the case, that an appeal values will trump reason every time, how is it that you’re so sure we could use reason and knowledge to “fight back”, which was your closing call?
A. It’s the power, you know, it’s the power of 2 + 2 = 4. It’s irrefutable. It’s not very emotionally compelling; it’s not something that causes people to stand up and give you a standing ovation. But over time, it will prevail. Dick is right to the extent that people make their judgements using irrational criteria in a very rational way. I mean, choice – political choice, consumer choice, what have you – is a fairly rational intersection of self-interest and self-image. People ask themselves these two things: (i) is it like me – self-image, and (ii) is it for me – self-interest. And if the answer to both those things is “yes”, they’re likely to be chosen. But the way you transmit “I am like you” could be “you and I love children, or puppy-dogs” as opposed to “you and I both believe that we have to have a guaranteed annual income program”. So, yeah, there always is the element of the irrational in the rational, I just think it’s something we have to keep our guard up for.
Q. But is it also maybe that “you and I both dislike that other person” or “both fear this phenomenon”?
A. [laughs] Well, there’s always that as well, yes.
Q. Because that’s the basis of wedge politics.
A. Well it is, but I’ve always feared those who try to keep the population ignorant, or try to misdirect them, or fool them. I’ve got no problem with right-wingers. I’ve got no problem with left-wingers. I just want them to be honest, and to base their ideology, and put it out there and have it challenged by facts and reason.

- Meanwhile, Mia Rabson writes that notwithstanding incidents like the shooting at the PQ's election-night party, we shouldn't let fear stand between our leaders and the general public:

Each year, it seems security around our politicians tightens.

The federal government is spending $9 million this year to add new barricades on Parliament Hill.
Last month, a man heading for a regular paddle on a Toronto-area river was stopped and frisked by local police because Prime Minister Stephen Harper was campaigning across the river.

In August, newly minted Manitoba Opposition Leader Brian Pallister asked Elections Manitoba for an exemption from publishing his home address in his nomination papers for security reasons. He is the first leader to request such an exemption.

But compared to the high level of security around American politicians, we are still open. Security is there but most often unobtrusive.

It's the way it should be.

The more security we are forced to bear, the more difficult it becomes for the average person to engage with elected officials, and the more difficult it is for those officials to engage with the public.

- But then, as Jim Stanford notes, it isn't only in politics that there's a push to insulate a privileged few from the masses - as even publicly-funded airport security systems are set up to filter out first-class travelers from mere ordinary people.

- And finally, Dr. Dawg points out why there's ample reason for concern that some voices (which are more and more seen as representing a standard right-wing take) are determined to stoke fear - with no regard for the likelihood of resulting violence.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- On the anniversary of Jack Layton's death, Tim Harper points out how far the NDP has come in just a year, while Brian Topp highlights where the party still needs to go:

(W)hat to do about the federal government’s crisis of relevance? Recent Liberal and Conservative governments have worked together on a common agenda to make Canada’s national government largely irrelevant to the daily lives of most Canadians. Today’s federal government is a Parliament, it is a public service, it is an army and police force, and it is a largely unconditional bank machine for provinces.

Small wonder that Canadians increasing tune federal politics out. Small wonder Parliament in recent times has been about embarrassing squabbles over trivia. What else was there to talk about? Here is the fundamental mission of the New Democrats: to demonstrate that the Liberal/Conservatives are wrong, and that there are indeed important projects and priorities that Canadians can and should work on together. Not symbolic issues, designed to get us angry and to divide us from each other. The real stuff: Equality. Jobs. Health care. Economic security. The environment. Reclaiming our good name in in the world.

New Democrats need to find a way to give Canadians hope that we are more than the sum of our parts, and that there is much we can do together to make a good country a much better one – carefully and prudently, one practical step at a time, without reigniting the old federal-provincial wars that separatists and conservatives build on, each in their own special way

Meanwhile, John Ibbitson has a rather smaller vision for the NDP, suggesting that it should do nothing but accept the top-down, consumerist political style that's turned off so many voters. Ryan Cleary offers his own tribute, and Cityslikr challenges anybody who claims to respectfully disagree with Layton's proposals for greater generosity and equality to suggest some alternate means of building a better society.

- Mia Rabson rightly questions Elections Canada's lack of interest in prosecuting attempts at foreign influence on Canadian elections. And Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report that even as Elections Canada directly intervenes to provide evidence useful to Ted Opitz's argument over Etobicoke Centre, it's withholding information which might be relevant to the Council of Canadians' challenges in seven other ridings.

- Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob are almost entirely right in criticizing the Cons' attitude toward criminal law. But it's worth adding a proviso to the headline: the Cons' view is more along the lines of "once a criminal, always a criminal unless a Conservative", as the party is quick to offer absolution to anybody who's seen as politically useful.

- Finally, Matt Miller neatly sums up the mentality of "drawbridge Republicans":

(W)e’ve never had two wealthy candidates on a national ticket whose top priority is to reduce already low taxes on the well-to-do while raising taxes on everyone else — even as they propose to slash programs that serve the poor, or that (like college aid) create chances for the lowly born to rise.

Call them the Drawbridge Republicans. As the moniker implies, these are wealthy Republicans who have no qualms about pulling up the drawbridge behind them.
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Most rich Republicans who champion regressive tax plans find it necessary to at least pretend they’re doing something to help average folks. John McCain, who’s lived large for decades thanks to his wife’s inheritance, famously had trouble keeping track of how many homes he owned — but McCain also tried bravely to create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. George W. Bush campaigned as a “compassionate conservative,” and touted education initiatives that made this claim plausible.

Today’s Drawbridge Republicans can’t be bothered. Yes, when their political back is to the wall — as Romney’s increasingly is — they’ll slap together a page of bullet points and dub it “a plan for the middle class.” But this is only under duress. The rest of the time they seem blissfully unaware of how off-key they sound.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Pamela Palmater discusses how the Cons' push to monetize First Nations reserves ultimately looks to be little more than another giveaway to the oil industry:

By now most of you have heard about the Harper government's intention to introduce legislation that will turn reserve lands into individual holdings called fee simple. The legislation has been referred to as the First Nation Property Ownership Act (FNPOA). Some media outlets have referred to it as "privatization" but what the legislation would really do is turn the collective ownership of reserve lands into small pieces of land owned by individuals who could then sell it to non-First Nations peoples, land-holding companies and corporations, like Enbridge for example.

The idea is not a new one. Hernando de Soto has been trying to sell the same idea to Indigenous populations all over the world. The evidence seems to show that the Indigenous peoples are far worse off for it. Prior to de Soto's destructive world tour, the Indigenous Nations in the United States suffered the sting of fee simple legislation in the Dawes Act. Once the lands were given to individuals, the lands were subject to state laws. The same would happen in Canada where the lands would be subject to provincial instead of federal law.

The primary purpose of the Dawes Act was to assimilate Indigenous peoples in the U.S. by breaking up their Indigenous governments. The legislation allowed the government to divide up communal lands into small parcels to be held by individuals. It has been described by historians as:"the culmination of American attempts to destroy tribes and their governments and to open Indian lands to settlement by non-Indians and to development by railroads" (Oklahoma Historical Society). In the Canadian context, similar legislation will open up "Indian lands" for big oil, gas and mineral extraction.

- Meanwhile, Les Whittington reports that the Cons retaliated against Attawapiskat for rightly challenging their own improper actions by then denying federal support for a desperately-needed housing plan.

- Dan Leger notes that the Cons have set themselves up to wear full political responsibility for pushing the Gateway and other pipelines, but recognizes that they have plenty to lose in having made it so.

- Finally, Mia Rabson comments on mandatory voting - including this from one former PM who sees some merit in the idea:

Former Prime Minister Joe Clark told the Free Press in June he was slowly changing his mind about the idea of mandatory voting.

"I used to dismiss it because it seemed to be ordering people to do something they wouldn't do by their will," Clark said, following a forum on youth voting hosted by Elections Canada. "But I think the analogy with speeding laws, with other rules holds. It is a national interest that the public have more participation in the political process and perhaps a requirement to vote would lead to that."

Clark said he hasn't studied the issue much himself, nor has he looked at the experience of mandatory voting in Australia, "but I think we're in a sufficiently serious situation now that we need to look at other alternatives. I don't think we should exclude anything."

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Mia Rabson writes that patronage and secrecy are thriving under the Harper Cons, even after they've lost any excuse about other parties' ability to stop their plans:

But when the federal appointments process has no transparency, any time someone with political ties as strong as Larkin's gets a pretty plum appointment (she could earn up to $17,000 a year in per diems for attending board meetings), it is always going to raise serious questions about the merits of the appointment.

It is interesting that with some other major promises Harper couldn't fulfil in a minority government -- such as eliminating the long-gun registry and the monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board -- he simply held off until he got his majority and then pushed the changes through.

But when it came to an appointments commission to turn off the taps to the patronage gravy train, Harper earned his monopoly and then eliminated the whole idea entirely in a little more than a year.

If the prime minister still believes in openness and transparency in appointments and that people should be chosen based on merit, not party ties, there is no sign of it.

- Martin Regg Cohn discusses Tim Hudak's attack on Ontario workers:

Ontario’s PC party is coming to Caterpillar’s defence — by branding the victims as the villains. Yes, blame the union — because big labour can’t see the Caterpillars marching.

That’s the forward-looking vision you’ll be hearing from Opposition Leader Tim Hudak, who has unveiled a radical anti-union agenda to help rebrand his putatively Progressive Conservative party: the end of unionism, replaced by a more “flexible” future.

Hudak eschews the loaded phrase, “right-to-work,” which evokes an aggressive, Wisconsin-style anti-union movement. But make no mistake, this is a declaration of war against organized labour by a politician firing the starter’s pistol in a race to the bottom.

Under his new Tory roadmap, Ontario will become a province where Caterpillars crush unions. A place where workers who still benefit from collective bargaining need not pay union dues — so that membership atrophies, money dries up, and the labour movement is disemboweled.

- Meanwhile, David Climenhaga duly mocks the National Post's horror at discovering that unions aren't leaving youth outreach solely to the corporate sector.

- Finally, Bea Vongdouangchanh cites Michael Geist in reporting that the copyright bill forced through Parliament by the Cons has needlessly imposed a strict digital lock scheme which will punish Canadian consumers for the sole benefit of corporate content distributors.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Dan Gardner draws some parallels between the Cons' attacks on Europe and the well-worn (and entirely false) Reagan-era "welfare queen" line of spin. But I wonder whether the Cons are making matters somewhat more difficult for themselves by trying to negotiate a free trade agreement with exactly the enemy they're otherwise trying to vilify.

- Mia Rabson and Tim Harper both wonder how efforts to unite against the Harper Cons might play into the Libs' leadership race. But I wonder whether the question of how a "natural governing party" reacts to falling to third place may in fact demand more than a single candidate seeking to cooperate.

Instead, I'd figure that the Libs' contenders will need to supplement the usual leadership questions of "who are you?" and "what is your vision for Canada?" with another core form of definition: "why do you think a Liberal party is needed to achieve your vision?". And if nobody offers a sufficiently compelling answer to the third question, then it won't much matter who runs for or against cooperation.

- Adam Radwanski expands on my theory that Tim Hudak has been let off far too easy for his complete lack of principle.

- Finally, Nathan Vanderklippe and Carrie Tait report on the latest pipeline spill - this one from Enbridge as it seeks carte blanche to decide what protections are needed for a Gateway pipeline. But as David Suzuki notes, the news of a spill really just means it's a day ending in "y".

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Yes, the individual examples are worrisome enough. But the real takeaway from Sarah Schmidt's report on the CFIA's testing of food products for sale in Canada is that more often than not, consumers can't trust what's on the label:

CFIA allows for a variance of up 20 percentage points on nutrition information found on food packages to account for natural variances in ingredients or deviations in testing equipment. Anything beyond that is considered unsatisfactory.
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CFIA's overall statistics from 2006 and 2010 involving key product categories (breads and baked goods, confectionary items, and snacks) certainly paint a picture of inconsistency. Of 621 products tested, 360 items (58 per cent) did not live up to all the nutrition information on their packaging.

So naturally, the Cons' response is...to stop the testing that's proven Canadians aren't getting what they pay for. And Statistics Canada is also on the receiving end of the Cons' gleeful axe-wielding, particularly when it comes to social data needed to serve the public interest.

- Meanwhile, Mia Rabson takes aim at the Cons for their refusal to allow Environment Canada scientists to discuss even such basic information as research on snow in winter. And Stephen Hume criticizes the Cons' plan to eliminate any meaningful review of the Gateway pipeline as an attack on British Columbia's provincial sovereignty.

- Jim Stanford schools Kevin O'Leary on how auto-sector trade actually works:



- Finally, Anne Jarvis points out that if Ontario ends up in an election campaign, it'll be because the PCs refused to make reasonable requests and the Libs refused to accept the ones already offered by Andrea Horwath and the NDP.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The outrage against the Cons' total online surveillance scheme continues, with Dan Leger, Mia Rabson and Michael Geist adding noteworthy comments to the mix.

- Meanwhile, the Star rightly criticizes the latest legislation to hand Con cabinet ministers the power to make major policy decisions by fiat with no accountability. But lest there be any doubt, that's been happening since long before the Star apparently noticed the issue surrounding refugees.

- And the minister responsible at that time is doing her own share of damage to vulnerable groups, in this case the workers whose retirement benefits stand to be slashed. So let's offer a reminder of what the Cons hope the public forgets: if we're facing a declining tax base and need to build up reserves, the sane thing for any government to do would be to make sure we're taking in enough revenue now to bridge the gap, rather than slashing taxes with no regard for (or outright hostility toward) our ability to fund social needs.

- Susan Delacourt rightly notes that the only surprising part of Vic Toews' ravings this week is the fact that anybody in the media bothered to challenge the Cons on their standard-issue demonization of all opposition.

- Finally, Jessica Bruno reports on the desperate need for better parliamentary oversight over federal government spending. But it's also worth being careful not to accept the Cons' distorted definition of what our representatives should be doing: surely it's equally important to identify and support what actually needs funding, rather than spending a disproportionate amount of time declaring what shouldn't be.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Mia Rabson comments on the dangers of eliminating any public debate over Canada's future direction - as the Cons are trying to do:

This is one of the most important committees in Parliament. It looks at all government operations and examines spending estimates reports in detail.

To push all the discussions except witness testimony out of the public eye is to allow MPs a free ride and reduce the kind of scrutiny good government requires.

Wallace's motion was postponed on a technicality but it will resurface.

And it's not the only one of its kind.

Also on Tuesday, Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett wanted a debate on her motion before the aboriginal affairs committee to hold two emergency meetings to discuss the housing crisis on reserves. The Conservatives on the committee forced the debate on the motion behind closed doors.

That same day, a motion to go in camera was also introduced at the official languages committee.

Apparently, open and accountable government means Canadians don't get to see or hear what their elected officials think about whether it is worthwhile to debate the housing crisis on reserves. There likely are legitimate arguments on both sides of the debate. We wouldn't know because the debate took place in camera.

The trend to have more and more committee business conducted out of earshot of anyone but members of the committee is something that should concern all Canadians.

When government doesn't operate out in the open, there is no accountability.

When there is no accountability, democracy is harder to achieve.

- Meanwhile, Chantal Hebert is more concerned that the media didn't pry more into Jack Layton's health during this spring's election campaign. But it's at least worth noting in hindsight that the media was indeed far too slow to give the NDP coverage as anything more than a curiosity.

- Meanwhile, Bruce Anderson is horrified to discover that the NDP's leadership candidates are actually running to lead the NDP rather than the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation.

- Finally, Stephen Hume pinpoints the source of the state of deprivation facing Attawapiskat and other remote First Nations:

Let's be clear about what reserves are. They are a government invention. Reserves were created by government to concentrate, for administrative purposes, peoples who roamed those landscapes and exploited their resources.

So perhaps the reasonable question is: Why is Attawapiskat not viable?

It's not viable because the community was separated from the economic resource base that would otherwise sustain it.

Could Prince George be viable if it were denied the vast forest hinterland that sustains it? Arguing that Prince George is viable because its economy is sustained by forest resources appropriated from around Fort Ware, while Fort Ware is by some magical thinking then declared economically unviable, begs some re-thinking.

The forest, mineral and energy resource base surrounding Attawapiskat was appropriated by the Crown, which receives the rents from its exploitation by corporations. A minuscule proportion of those rents is returned to the original occupants.
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Perhaps the question that Canadians should be asking of their federal government is why, after a century of responsibility for aboriginal communities that are entirely creatures of Ottawa, is the system such a disgraceful, chaotic, festering mess of bungling, red tape, bureaucratic incompetence and political prevarication? Why are we still blaming the victims of our policies?

Wednesday Evening Links

Assorted content for your evening reading.

- Alex Himelfarb finds a few positives in the Cons' ramming their dumb-on-crime bill through the House of Commons:

Thankfully many are not willing to “get over it”. How heartening, for example, to hear Leadnow.ca announce that they were simply regrouping for the next stage of their campaign for better justice policy. So, here are some reasons not to turn the page, instead to continue the fight.

1) Those who spoke to Parliamentary Committees, wrote letters and op eds, called their MPs or took to the streets have made a difference.

All the opposition parties opposed this bill, rejected the smears that they were “soft on crime”, and focused on public safety rather than easy politics. It has not always been so. And that means that the options are finally being put before Canadians, options for a Canada that is safer, not meaner.

Premiers, whatever their views on the bill, are demanding a more respectful federalism where they – who must administer the legislation once passed – should be engaged at the outset so that they can bring their views and experience to bear. And several are arguing that they should not have to reallocate money – say from health and education – to pay for the costs of more incarceration and more prisons.

And through the efforts of dozens of organizations, many more Canadians are now paying attention. And that can only be a good thing.
...
4) In fighting this kind of legislation we are also fighting for a different kind of politics. Who of us isn’t sometimes afraid, especially for our kids, often angry and horrified at some of the terrible crimes we see on the news, and moved by the suffering of victims and their families. And we know our own frailties, that we can confuse justice and revenge, that our anger can blot out the evidence, that we sometimes lash out and act against our own best interests.

Fighting against this punitive bill is fighting against a politics that exploits our frailties rather than appealing to what is best in us.

5) And fighting against bad policy is good for the soul.

- Meanwhile, Dan Gardner reminds us that the Cons' determination to push hard-right legislation doesn't mean that the public actually agrees with any of the policies.

- Mia Rabson notes that the Cons are looking to outlaw on First Nations exactly the type of negative and deceptive politics they practice for themselves. But in noting that the practice is similarly outlawed in federal election campaigns, Rabson points to an even bigger issue: the Cons are apparently looking to what's banned during election campaigns as their playbook for the next four years.

- Finally, both Frances Russell and Chris Selley point out that any moral compass the Cons may once have possessed is long gone.

Monday Evening Links

Assorted content to end your day.

- Toby Sanger posts about the OECD's findings on inequality in Canada, with this particularly jumping out as to how much less progressive our tax system is now than it was two decades ago:

Taxes and benefits play a smaller role in reducing inequality in Canada than in most OECD countries: prior to the mid-1990s, they offset more than 70% of the rise in market income inequality, now it’s less than 40%(.)

- Leftwords points out that UK hospitals which were built as P3s as a matter of government decree are now demanding - and receiving - a higher cost for services as a result of that ill-advised choice. And Tim Harford highlights the absurdity of the free-marketeers' argument that public-sector pay should be seen as nothing but a cost to society while private-sector pay is seen as the be-all and end-all of policy development.

- Erika Shaker takes Margaret Wente more seriously than Wente deserves, but makes up for it with a thorough skewering of her condescension toward the Occupy movement.

- Finally, Mia Rabson points out that the Cons can't be taken seriously in feigning concern with bullying in Canada at large when it forms the centrepiece of their political strategy.

On track records

Shorter Mia Rabson:

Shame on the NDP for actually exposing how little value Canadians get from the cost of the Senate. Why, how would they like it if anybody thought to track their own MPs' performance?

(Edit: fixed wording.)