Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Jeffrey Simpson criticizes the Cons for killing off the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy as punishment for telling the truth about climate change at its own request:

In a letter to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE), Mr. Kent said it was in a “unique position” to offer advice on sustainable development. The government had asked the NRTEE in the past to “conduct research and provide advice on key and emerging issues.” Now, Mr. Kent was asking the NRTEE, with its “unique position,” to conduct a comprehensive review of provincial climate-change plans.

A year after the request and the nice comments about the NRTEE’s past work, however, the Harper government killed the agency in the 2012 budget.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird lashed out at the NRTEE, saying it had repeatedly called for a carbon tax that Canadians had rejected. That statement, typically partisan given the source, was completely false. No matter, the Harper government killed the agency, quite likely because it isn’t much interested in sustainable development.

The NRTEE goes out of business next March, but it did complete the assignment it was given by Mr. Kent. Its report, released last week – the most comprehensive study of where Canada is at in reducing greenhouse gas emissions – suggests why the Harper government wanted to close it.

 - But then, Michael Harris notes that the environment is just one of many casualties of the Cons' stay in power:

With the specter of the Parliamentary Budget Officer taking the Clerk of the Privy Council to court, a momentous question looms over our public affairs: will the Harper government answer a single legitimate question about its conduct of Canada’s public business?

Or is the government’s message that we can all go pleasure ourselves until 2015?
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As everybody knows, the vast majority of C-38 has nothing to do with the finances of the country. That makes it a legislative stealth attack, a fraud upon the democratic system. Yet those in the indentured press are already rhapsodizing about the PM’s political acuity. For passing C-38? That’s like praising a firing squad for getting the job done — after all, the target is blindfolded, tied down, and unarmed.

- And Andrew Coyne writes that some of the Cons' supposed core ideals are among the most obvious casualties of the Harper spin machine.

- Meanwhile, Michael Hurley points out that the Ontario Libs' own omnibus budget included loosening the rules on P3 disasters just like the ORNGE scandal that's already caused so much trouble for McGuinty and company. And Thomas Walkom observes that the "trojan horse" criticism applies just as much to Ontario's budget bill as the federal one.

- Finally, Canadians for Tax Fairness rightly highlights the widespread public support for the type of financial transaction tax that the Cons have deliberately blocked on the international stage.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Andrew Jackson raises an absolutely devastating point to refute anybody trying to use "it's all about growth!!!" as an excuse for slashing social supports and handing free money to the rich:

In this age of austerity, we are constantly told by governments that we have to tighten our belts. Tuition fees have to go up; public pensions, Unemployment Insurance and social assistance benefits have to be cut; universal public health care is no longer affordable, and so on ad nauseam.

But, as my friend Peter Puxley recently reminded me,  it is passing strange to argue that we can no longer afford what we could afford thirty years ago, when we were, as a society, much less affluent.
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(T)he growth rate of real per capita GDP has slowed considerably in the age of austerity – which deserves extended comment – but it has by no means ground to a halt.  This suggests austerity flows not so much from the lack of growth, as from the fact that more and more of that income growth has gone to the top 1% who just don’t want to share it with the rest of us.

 - Meanwhile, Trish Hennessy comments on Jim Flaherty's inclination to kick out-of-work Canadians while they're down (plenty of other Cons have the good sense to repudiate). Les Whittington reports on the CLC's recognition that the main theme of Con economic policy is to drive down wages for everybody. And Scott Stelmaschuk writes about the difference between jobs and careers in light of the Cons' apparent plan to eliminate any hope of the latter:

(C)areers and jobs have very different meanings. Jobs are the sort of thing we do to gain experience as a bridge to a career. Jobs are a stepping stone, and are meant to be a way of improving our skills and forging connections that allow us to transition into a permanent career. Careers are things that pay above minimum wage, offer benefits (health insurance/dental/optical, retirement plans) and allow a person to pay down their debts while allowing enough financial fluidity that a single major emergency won't break the bank.

Careers are disappearing in this economy, and now our finance minister is telling Canadians that they need to bend over, close their eyes, think of Canada, and take the nearest thing resembling employment they can find.

Implicitly, Flaherty has admitted some defeat in the turn about of Canada's economy. While he won't come out and say it, Flaherty is telling us that this is now the new normal for the average Canadian. Gone are the days where a person who has worked towards improving their lives through college and professional development can find a career with financial security. Instead, regardless of the steps taken, a person is now doomed to forever dwell in the lower rungs of the economy.

- In one of its final reports before being axed as unhelpful to Stephen Harper's political prospects, the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy confirms that the Cons' delays in doing anything about climate change will impose severe costs on business (based on the need to react in short order rather than having time to meet the 2020 targets the Cons still claim to want to reach) as well as on the rest of Canadian society.

- And finally, Pat Atkinson recognizes that Saskatchewan will need a far better plan for housing than we've seen to date in order actually attract and retain newcomers.

Sunday Evening Links

Miscellaneous material to end your weekend.

- Floyd Norris' column on the gap between stagnant wages and soaring corporate profits. But let's add Digby's take as to what we can expect if the corporate sector gets its way:

"I've never seen labor markets this weak in 35 years of research," says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. Wages and salaries accounted for just 1 percent of economic growth in the first 18 months after economists declared that the recession had ended in June 2009, according to Sum and other Northeastern researchers.In the same period after the 2001 recession, wages and salaries accounted for 15 percent. They were 50 percent after the 1991-92 recession and 25 percent after the 1981-82 recession.

Corporate profits, by contrast, accounted for an unprecedented 88 percent of economic growth during those first 18 months. That's compared with 53 percent after the 2001 recession, nothing after the 1991-92 recession and 28 percent after the 1981-82 recession.

(J)udging from the claptrap these CEOs are babbling every chance they get (read the article), they are planning to squeeze more than just their workers --- they want to use this situation to blackmail the government into cutting their taxes and deregulating them even more than they already are. It doesn't make sense, of course. They are sitting on a ton of capital, it's not like they don't have the money to invest. It's sheer opportunism and they'll probably get away with it.
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(I)t's not as if their profits are being being put to work at all. They just aren't being put to work in the US. And if the political establishment has its way, they'll be doing even more. Free trade deals are on the top of both parties' "jobs agenda." If all goes well, they'll end up with a few high profile loopholes temporarily closed in exchange for lower tax rates forever and some sweetheart trade deals. With any luck they won't even have to give up the loopholes.

- Erin is among many to point out how Standard & Poor's was determined to downgrade the U.S.' credit rating even when its entire factual basis for doing so was proven wrong.

- Sixth Estate adds a few more names and numbers to the Harper Cons' patronage list.

- The National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy concludes that the Cons' already sad excuse for a climate-change program is double-counting any expected emission reductions.

- Finally, Alison's latest comic - on the Cons' loyalty testing - is well worth a look.