Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Richard Sandbrook makes the case for a Green New Deal as combining the ambition and the feasibility needed to halt climate change. And Stewart Elgie and Kathy Bardswick argue that we can still build a cleaner climate, rather than focusing solely on trying to hide from the effects of continued breakdown. 

- But then, Bill Hare rightly notes that Australia - like Canada and other fossil fuel exporters - is severely harming the cause of climate protection by subsidizing carbon pollution that's intended to be spewed without being counted as part of any global carbon budget.  

- James Faris discusses how a shortage of housing only figures to get worse as climate impacts make existing cities uninsurable and unliveable. Geoffrey Deihl observes that the harm we've already done our living environment is causing wildfires and other effects which cancel out our modest mitigation efforts. And Lou Robinson and Angela Dewan report on CarbonPlan's research showing that most of the world will be too hot to host an Olympic Games by 2050 if we don't change course. 

- Meanwhile, Troy Farah writes that the Olympics have become a painful reminder of collective denial around COVID-19, both through highly visible impacts on the athletic events themselves and on the mass infection which inevitably follows from large crowds doing nothing to mitigate spread. 

- Finally, A.R. Moxon points out the value of making a positive case for caring for other people as the only viable counter to the well-funded spread of fascism. David Moscrop discusses the absurdity of Pierre Poilievre's attempt to paint Justin Trudeau's neoliberalism as communism in order to bring conspicuous cruelty into the middle of Canada's Overton window. And Gerry McGovern notes that one of the main effects of artificial intelligence - and one of the ones which makes it particularly appealing to the techbro right - its role in outsourcing accumulated bigotry and prejudice to machines which can be treated as neutral. 

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Jillian Horton discusses the lack of any meaningful effort to make education safe at the point when provincial governments should be planning for the start of the school year., while Lynn Giesbrecht reports that the Moe government in particular is taking zero responsibility (and offering nothing more than bare-bones suggestions) toward the health of students. And Ian Sample and Heather Stewart report on the concern of some UK experts that their Con government is encouraging the spread of COVID now based on the misguided belief that it will somehow relieve pressure on the health care system later.

- Meanwhile, Macintosh Ross writes about the especially galling lack of interest in public health reflected in the decision to barge ahead with the Tokyo Olympics over the objections of Japan's residents.

- Christy Ferguson highlights how the UCP's inquiry supposedly aimed at messaging about the Alberta tar sands has instead tried to delegitimize any action to help the climate anywhere in the world. And Chuka Ejeckam laments the fact that we're far beneath any reasonable pace of action in trying to salvage our living environment.

- Max Fawcett writes about the end of any illusion that there's any value in rushing to develop natural gas as a "bridge" to renewable energy which is already more affordable while avoiding greenhouse gas emissions.

- Finally, Lois Ross is justifiably outraged that Health Canada is planning to increase the amount of glyphosate permitted in Canada's food supply.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Robert Reich offers some lessons we need to draw from the coronavirus pandemic - including the recognition that while billionaires won't save us from collective action problems, effective government can.

- Renju Jose reports on Melbourne's instant reaction to community spread of the particularly dangerous B.1.6172 variant. And Matt Elliott rightly praises young Ontarians for wasting no time in getting vaccinated. 

- But Bartley Kives calls out Brian Pallister for being more interested in casting shade than doing anything to ameliorate Manitoba's ugly third wave. Paige Parsons reports on a call from Alberta doctors to avoid reckless reopening, while Andre Picard makes a similar plea more generally. And Justin McCurry reports on the International Olympics Committee's appalling call for people to make public health sacrifices in order to ensure that a sports exhibition can proceed.

- Kenyon Wallace reports on the abuse and neglect of residents of Ontario's long-term care homes. And Tamara Daly, Ivy Lynn Bourgeault and Katie Aubrecht call for a shift toward a virtuous cycle of care - rather than the current vicious cycle squeezing any ethic of care out in order to maximize short-term profits.

- Finally, Jordan Barab and David Michaels note that we shouldn't take the CDC's vague phrasing about lifting masking requirements as an excuse to put workers in further danger. Hayes Brown points out that what corporate lobbyists are attempting to spin as a "labour shortage" amounts to nothing more than employers' refusal to offer acceptable wages and working conditions. And Alex Press writes about the increased exploitation of workers into taking intolerable hours for insufficient pay - and the need to reshape the balance of power to reverse course.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Jonathan Chait points out how the gap between the citizens hardest hit by a weak economy and a political class which faces virtually none of its effects explains the lack of urgency in dealing with mass unemployment:

The political scientist Larry Bartels has found (and measured) that members of Congress respond much more strongly to the preferences of their affluent constituents than their poor ones. And for affluent people, there is essentially no recession. Unemployment for workers with a bachelors degree is 4 percent — boom times. Unemployment is also unusually low in the Washington, D.C., area, owing to our economy’s reliance on federal spending, which has not had to impose the punishing austerity of so many state and local governments.

I live in a Washington neighborhood almost entirely filled with college-educated professionals, and it occurred to me not long ago that, when my children grow up, they’ll have no personal memory of having lived through the greatest economic crisis in eighty years. It is more akin to a famine in Africa. For millions and millions of Americans, the economic crisis is the worst event of their lives. They have lost jobs, homes, health insurance, opportunities for their children, seen their skills deteriorate, and lost their sense of self-worth. But from the perspective of those in a position to alleviate their suffering, the crisis is merely a sad and distant tragedy. 

- David Atkins follows up on digby's analysis as to how a push for additional handouts to the rich is aimed at insulated today's upper class from the vagaries of luck which helped it to win a privileged position in the first place. But as thwap points out, there are some wealthier citizens who are looking to improve matters for all rather than closing off the path behind them - and we should be happy to encourage that sentiment.

- Meanwhile, Sid Ryan discusses one of the obvious elements of that effort: a focus on "flexible" labour which ensures that ensures most workers have neither reasonable wages nor any job security. (And lest there be any doubt, there's plenty of desire for the latter.) But sadly, far too many anti-worker governments - including Dalton McGuinty's Libs - seem to prefer picking fights with workers to keep them as insecure as possible.

- Finally, Ken MacQueen neatly sums up the Cons' Olympic spirit.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Dave Coles writes that the Harper Cons are using their power to protect the privacy of international arms dealers, while at the same time demanding stringent reporting requirements for labour unions and their members:

Labour unions are among the few institutions that can and do provide a counterbalance to the power of corporations. Yet the Conservatives are not requiring companies that bargain with trade unions to file detailed reports to the Canada Revenue Agency on their salary, political or lobbying spending. Additionally, they are not requiring other professional associations that collect fees or dues from their members, such as the Canadian Medical Association for example, to follow the terms of Bill C-377.

They are only requiring the institutions created to represent the interests of millions of workers across the country to file these detailed records. There is no other way to interpret this than as an attempt to disarm a political opponent.

Much like what Habib Massoud was hinting at when talking about those involved in the arms trade, the detailed reporting required by Bill C-377 will be burdensome, costly and threaten the privacy rights of many individuals, companies and organizations that work with unions. Incredibly, under the proposed legislation, labour-associated pension and benefit plans will be required to publicly disclose “the name and address” and a “description” of benefits paid to individuals greater than $5,000. This could include personal medical information.

- Barrie McKenna notes that Jim Flaherty is once again using the power of the federal government to let banks do whatever they want without consequences. And unfortunately Canada's government is far from the only one which is utterly failing in its obligation to defend the public interest in dealing with banks.

- And indeed, the U.K. is standing out in its emphasis on corporate "property", going so far as to make the names of seasons off limits for anybody other than Olympic sponsors:

Wearing purple caps and tops, the experts in trading and advertising working for the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) are heading the biggest brand protection operation staged in the UK. Under legislation specially introduced for the London Games, they have the right to enter shops and offices and bring court action with fines of up to £20,000.

Olympics organisers have warned businesses that during London 2012 their advertising should not include a list of banned words, including "gold", "silver" and "bronze", "summer", "sponsors" and "London".

- Finally, Erin Weir contrasts the Wall government's willingness to put public money into a new stadium in Regina against its missed opportunity to invest in renewable power. And the Globe and Mail points out the coincidence that the federal Cons are funding attacks on wind power while refusing to acknowledge massive health, safety and environmental risks associated with non-renewable resource extraction.

Monday Afternoon Links

- Vaughn Palmer notes that while the HST may have been the issue that's permanently torpedoed Gordan Campbell, it's far from the only issue where the B.C. Libs are effectively thumbing their noses at the province:

(T)he rest of the costs laid out in Friday's 20-page report (on the Olympics") were not regarded as part of staging the Games, and thus were "outside the envelope."

The $48-million Olympic Secretariat, for instance. Who would think that was an Olympic cost? Not the B.C. Liberals. Outside the envelope.

Or the five giant rings in Coal Harbour, placed there at a cost of -- I'm not making this up -- half a million dollars per ring. Hansen left them outside the envelope as well. Ditto for such exercises as the Games-Time Celebrations ($14 million), the Look of the Games ($1 million), the Torch Relay Community Grant Program ($4 million), the Torch Relay Expansion ($4 million), Games Town and Games Kids and the Road to 2010 ($2 million), the B.C./ Canada pavilions at the you-knowwhats in Turin and Beijing ($17 million), the never-an-Olympic pavilion at the Vancouver Art Gallery ($6 million), the B.C. International Media Centre for an event to be named later ($3 million), the One-Year Countdown Celebration ($1 million) and the Robson Square Celebration Site ($15 million.)

All those, Hansen stuffed into a separate $160-million envelope as costs of "marketing, hosting, celebration and community engagement activities."

Marketing what? Hosting what? Celebrating what? Not the Olympics apparently.
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Only the must gullible government supporters believed (previous statements that the Olympics would only cost $600 million). People recognized at the time that Campbell and Hansen were fudging the budget. Observers will likely dismiss the latest update as a less-than-complete cost accounting as well.
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Today, when the Games are widely regarded as a success (and I say that having opposed them), the day for quibbling over the cost of staging them is long past.

So I was thinking as I listened to the Hansen press conference Friday: If this is how the Liberals handle a triumph, no wonder they are having so much trouble managing a genuine fiasco like the harmonized sales tax.

- It's for the best that SaskPower's refrigerator recycling program has received loads of public interest. But the fact that the program has run out of funding is particularly galling in light of the goal involved: is it really the best environmental message to tell people to hold onto their old, inefficient appliances in hopes that the program will resurface in years to come?

- The latest Angus Reid leadership polling is interesting enough in its well-reported findings that Jack Layton is the only federal leader identified in positive terms. But it's even more noteworthy that Layton also has virtually no negative associations attached to him: of the nine negative terms included in the survey, Layton is at the head of the pack (i.e. carrying a lowest association) for seven of them, and finishes in actual or effective ties for second behind Harper on the other two. All of which is to say that if the Cons' idea of scaremongering is to suggest that Layton might someday hold power, then I'll strongly encourage them to keep on doing what they're doing.

- Finally, Douglas Bell rightly slams Macleans for its embarrassing G20 editorial:

That last line is as sweet a piece of editorial counter-programming as you’ll read this week or any other. That said it’s remarkable, at least to my eyes, that the national weekly news magazine (it is still a news magazine, right?), on this issue at least, resembles Pravda circa 1954. The editorial that accompanies the cover line reads as though it were written by some central committee in charge of the Politburo justifying the Lithuanian deportations of that era.

“The police should be commended for their vow to pursue any and all protesters associated with the vandalism. Merely detaining and releasing violent hoodlums is not a sufficient response to the threat they pose to civil society. The protection of free speech and assembly can only exist when there is proper respect for the rule of law. Legitimate protest acknowledges the existence of state authority while providing a different point of view. The same is true with civil disobedience. What we saw over the weekend, however, had nothing constructive to offer society. It was simply opportunistic chaos. It is thus imperative that we find and punish everyone responsible for this embarrassing period of disorder.”

Notice the nifty conflation of “vandals” and “embarrassing period of disorder”? And that bit about “legitimate protest acknowledging state authority?” Oy. Orwell would have a field day.

The only crime is getting caught

Yessiree, Ryan Sparrow looks to be in a heap of trouble today.

No, not for his political interference with the release of information about Olympic ad costs, as nobody took seriously the claim that the Cons planned to change their partisan meddling. But to do so by e-mail the same week that other staffers helpfully mentioned that they were no longer going to commit their orders to writing? Now that's going to draw the Cons' ire.

Deep thought

Frankly, I'm surprised the Cons haven't taken up wearing team Canada sweaters everywhere they go and using the visual effect to accuse anybody who criticizes them of hating Canada's Olympians.

Your money, his entertainment

Shorter Kelly McParland:

Alright, so some people might be rightly outraged at the amount of money and resources put into creating Stephen Harper's Olympic photo-ops. But would they feel better about the cost if it was in fact largely for Harper's personal amusement?

On unifying moments

For those keeping score at home, it took less than an hour after Canada's impressive gold medal win in men's hockey for the game and its aftermath to be turned into attacks on both Jack Layton and the CBC. Can you feel the patriotism?

Burning questions

Has the CTRC threatened to strip CTV's broadcasting license if it doesn't provide Stephen Harper with at least one appearance every 10 minutes at Olympic events he attends? And if not, why is he getting nearly as much face time as some of the athletes?

Edit: fixed title.

Buying the Podium

Dan Gardner points out the absurdity of claiming any national pride based on programs like Own the Podium which really only prove that it's possible for a country to buy its way to Olympic medals:

"(The) best predictor of success in winning medals is the absolute amount of funding allocated to higher performance sports," writes Peter Donnelly, director of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies at the University of Toronto.

Spend more money and, other things being equal, you will get more medals. It's that simple. Analysts and officials know this. They even make dollars-per-medal calculations.
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Canada's "Own the Podium" program is unique neither in its goals nor its ruthlessness. All that set it apart is its foolish name -- which promised the impossible and thus created the impression that anything aside from a first place finish in Vancouver amounted to failure...

Stand back and look at Olympic funding around the world and it's obvious that nations are locked in an arms race. Each seeks to beat the other by boosting funding but they find it is harder and harder to pull ahead by spending more. Worse, "it costs more and more money even to stay in the same place in the medal tables," notes Peter Donnelly.

Now, does any of this sound like a fair athletic contest? Not really. It's a funding competition. The "winners" are those countries most willing to take money from health care and jobs and other national priorities and spend it on the Olympics.

Canada could win this competition, if that's what Canadians want. We're a rich country. We could outspend the Chinese. For a while.

But would that be something to be proud of? No. It would be foolish. And shameful.

Connect the dots

The opening ceremonies at the Vancouver Olympics proceeded on the concept that francophones should be seen but not heard.

Stephen Harper lavished effusive praise on the opening ceremonies at the Vancouver Olympics.

Therefore, Stephen Harper has lavished effusive praise on the concept that francophones should be seen but not heard.

On last-place analysis

Shorter Don Martin:

As the idea of not allowing MPs to take priority position for Olympic tickets ahead of the public originated with the NDP and spread next to the Libs, I naturally give full credit to the Conservatives.

Deep thought

I for one feel better knowing that Canada's best and brightest have been drafted to the cause of studying Olympic sports rather than wasting their time on trifling issues such as health.

The wisdom of crowds

Much of Brian Topp's latest consists of simply pointing out the obvious downside associated with the expectations the Cons are building up for 2010. But one point of potential weakness is definitely worth keeping an eye on since it seems to depend entirely on matters out of Harper's hands:

(I)t is a truism in politics that it is usually a better idea to keep well clear of large athletic events, since they provide crowds with an opportunity to let their governments know what they think of them, in this case on worldwide television. Pierre Trudeau was routinely booed at Grey Cup games, for example.

So what kind of reception can the Prime Minister and his highly unpopular HST increase look forward to in British Columbia?

Here's my advice to Conservative ministers and MPs at the Olympics: sit right next to B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell. If you're going to do this, do it right.

Of course, the flip side of Topp's cheeky suggestion is that the Cons might well have incentive to sit as close as possible to Campbell and his ministers - if only so that each party can try to claim that any jeers are intended for the other.

In any event, it's certainly worth watching whether the Olympics wind up serving as the B.C. public's golden opportunity to take out its frustration on provincial and federal leaders alike. And it's not hard to see how a regular chorus of boos might make the games into a serious PR loss for both the Campbell Libs and the Harper Cons.

Update: And in case there wasn't enough to be outraged about from Campbell and company, the Olympics themselves may offer up some prime fodder for public anger.

Just wondering

One of the major problems with prorogation is the presumed inability to reconvene Parliament to deal with an emergency if one comes up. And with the Olympics set to take place on Canadian soil during the Harper Holiday, there's particular reason for concern if there's absolutely no way to pass emergency legislation if needed.

So I'll toss out a question which I'm not sure has yet been dealt with directly: is it actually impossible to reconvene Parliament during a period of prorogation, or merely unprecedented? (Put another way, if prorogation takes place purely on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, can the PM also reverse course and issue a new order to the GG?) Or are we completely out of luck if Harper's choice leaves no way for even all-party agreement to pass needed legislation while the world's eyes are on Canada?

On entitlements

Con MP Gary Schellenberger's excuse for prorogation is painful enough to listen to on its own:

The Olympics in Canada were another good reason to prorogue Parliament, he added. ”If we are sitting, how do MPs get to those events,” he said of the Olympic games. “It makes sense that we are not sitting.”

But it's even more so compared to an NDP move which is looking better by the day as the Cons try to use the Olympics as an excuse to put Canadian democracy on hold:


So the Cons have ordered a break which isn't available to the general public to make it easier for their MPs to use tickets which aren't available to the general public - and seem downright proud to have done so. And the contrast between that sense of entitlement and the NDP's contrasting choice to stay in the same position as Canadians at large on both counts should ensure that the NDP is ideally positioned to capitalize on the building outrage against the Harper government.

Update: Jack Mitchell provides the video equivalent of Schellenberger's quote in the Macleans comments.

No comment necessary

Conrad Black, patron saint of Canada's right-wing movement including the Harper government, provides an unusually stark example of just how much repression neocons will accept and embrace if it means attacking the preferred enemy du jour:

The Munich Games in 1972 were designed to do for the temporary country of West Germany what it had been initially hoped the 1936 Games would do for the temporary country of Weimar Germany. Once again, the legitimate German quest for acceptance was frustrated, this time by the murderous outrage of Black September against the Israeli team. Ironically, the Germans bungled the challenge and a number of Israelis and German special forces died. (At least Hitler’s security forces would have done a very professional job of disposing of any terrorist efforts at the Berlin Games.)