Good to go

A few images which may or may not become highly relevant in just a few minutes.

New column day

Here, on how the Senate's failure to provide any second thought on C-51 may serve as the ultimate signal that it has nothing useful to offer Canadians.

For further reading...
- PressProgress' look at the Senate's sad history is well worth a read. The CBC reports on the Auditor General's findings about the widespread abuse of public money. And Ian Austen offers a U.S. perspective on what comes next for the Senate.
- Meanwhile, Karl Nerenberg explains why abolition is well within reach if anybody is willing to take a leadership role in pursuing it without reopening other constitutional issues. And Warren Kinsella argues that Tom Mulcair's determination to reach that goal is both the right and the smart course of action.
- In contrast, Brad Wall refuses to lift a finger toward the cause, even as he highlights why abolition makes a world of sense.
- Finally, Stuart Trew examines what happens now that the Cons' terror bill has been passed, while Joanne Cave suggests we can do better than settling for a false sense of security. Wes Regan comments on the Cons' and Libs' choice to set fire to Canadians' civil rights. And PressProgress reminds us of the Cons' dishonesty in pushing C-51.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Thomas Walkom notes that the Harper Cons' latest EI cuts look to amplify the pain of unemployment in Ontario while serving the broader purpose of forcing workers to conclude their federal government doesn't care if they go hungry:

The great irony is that these days hardly any jobless qualify for EI to begin with.

Latest figures from Statistics Canada show that only 37.6 per cent of unemployed Canadians qualified for employment insurance in August.

In part, that’s because the nature of work is changing. More people have the kind of jobs (such as self-employment) that EI was never designed to address.

But as a 1998 federal study found, about half of the gap is the result of earlier employment insurance reforms put in place by Jean Chretien’s Liberal government.

Now the Harper Tories are making their own effort to eliminate what is left of EI.

The strategy is quite simple: Destroy whatever political support exists for employment insurance by making the benefit almost impossible to collect.

The aim is equally straightforward: Crush any social program that interferes with the downward pressure on wages.

- And Paul Krugman discusses the Republicans' war on the poor south of the border:

I still sometimes see pundits claiming that the Tea Party movement is basically driven by concerns about budget deficits. That’s delusional. Read the founding rant by Rick Santelli of CNBC: There’s nary a mention of deficits. Instead, it’s a tirade against the possibility that the government might help “losers” avoid foreclosure. Or read transcripts from Rush Limbaugh or other right-wing talk radio hosts. There’s not much about fiscal responsibility, but there’s a lot about how the government is rewarding the lazy and undeserving.

 Republicans in leadership positions try to modulate their language a bit, but it’s a matter more of tone than substance. They’re still clearly passionate about making sure that the poor and unlucky get as little help as possible, that — as Representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, put it — the safety net is becoming “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.” And Mr. Ryan’s budget proposals involve savage cuts in safety-net programs such as food stamps and Medicaid.

All of this hostility to the poor has culminated in the truly astonishing refusal of many states to participate in the Medicaid expansion. Bear in mind that the federal government would pay for this expansion, and that the money thus spent would benefit hospitals and the local economy as well as the direct recipients. But a majority of Republican-controlled state governments are, it turns out, willing to pay a large economic and fiscal price in order to ensure that aid doesn’t reach the poor.

- Andrew Coyne highlights the sheer lack of substance in Harper's convention speech, while Tabatha Southey imagines the difficulties facing a hotel trying to take Harper's room service order. And Stephen LaRose documents the connection between Brad Wall and Pamela Wallin - featuring a series of promises to lead the way toward Senate elections, coupled with an utter refusal to follow through when it meant ceding an inch of political advantage.

- The Toronto Star questions whether the green bonds being pushed by Ontario's Libs make sense as a transit strategy on their own. But Mike Moffatt raises more important questions as to whether they make sense at all - since they seem to do little other than impose extra costs on a government financing regime which is already the most efficient means of funding infrastructure.

- Finally, David Atkins points back to the positive, community-based message sent to the world (and indeed the universe) by the U.S.' leaders just a few decades ago - and asks what we've lost if it's out of place in our current political climate:

The tone and message of (Jimmy Carter's statement sent in the Voyager) should strike the modern reader as oddly optimistic and daringly progressive. It clearly assumes that the modern nation-state is a temporary and anachronistic step on the way to a global civilization. It assumes that "our problems" such as poverty, illness and the like can, should and will be solved. It assumes that, much as the nation-state will be subsumed into a global civilization, so too will the denizens of Earth hopefully take our place in a greater galactic community.

It's a profoundly hopeful and inspiring message. It's also one that would sadly likely never be written today by a sitting President.
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When the Left talks about how far the national conversation has shifted to the Right, this is what we mean. In spite of huge advances in civil rights, we live in a political society where sentiments such as those we placed on Voyager seem anachronistic and almost shockingly liberal.

That's a problem. It means that we as a society, as a culture and as a civilization, are making a headlong retreat from what makes us human, from what binds us to one another, and from what will ultimately drive us forward toward a successful future if we are to share one at all.

And for what? So that billionaires can steal more money while stoking jingoistic sentiments so that no one notices the optimism we have lost? That's shameful and inhuman.

New column day

Here, on the combination of institutional and personal flaws that's combined to create the Stephen Harper Senate scandal.

For further reading...
- CBC reproduces the documents tabled by Mike Duffy in the Senate here.
- The Senate debates featuring the defences of Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau can be found here.
- PressProgress reminds us what the Cons said about the residency of Duffy and Wallin just a few months ago, while Jordan Press and Kirsten Smith offer a partial timeline (if one which ignores the fact that the controversy dated back to 2008). And it was Press who reported on the Cons' "boot camp" in which appointees were encouraged to use Senate resources for political purposes.
- Jonathan Kay suggests that the main problem with the Senate is a complete lack of any moral or merit-based claim to the power associated with a chamber of Parliament.
- And Paul Adams concludes that whatever else happens as the scandal unfolds, Harper's reputation for strategic and tactical thought is in ruins.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Tom Bergin reports on a predictable corporate attack on the very idea of government sovereignty - as tax evaders are insisting that their own demand for "certainty" in the availability of tax havens should trump the ability of tax authorities to assess where revenue should be taxed:

The companies said the existing practice of recognizing inter-company transactions gave business greater certainty and encouraged trade by helping ensure the same profits were not taxed more than once.

Business groups were also cool on a proposal tabled in June by the Group of Eight (G8) leading developed economies, that companies should provide information to tax authorities on their earnings and tax payments on a country-by-country basis.

- And we can probably count on the Cons for one being highly sympathetic to the view that institutional cover-ups are more important than factual and fair policy - as the firing of EI whistleblower Sylvie Therrien confirms.

- Karl Nerenberg points out Thomas Mulcair's neat skewering of Stephen Harper when it comes to Harper's loud proclamation that he personally reviewed and approved Pamela Wallin's expenses. Andrew Coyne wonders why the Cons dedicated a shady, party-wide cover-up operation to something as mundane as Senate expenses, while Lawrence Martin documents Harper's relationship (or lack thereof) with the truth.And Tim Harper observes that the Senate has made an airtight case for its own abolition.

- Kathryn May reports on the latest anti-worker legislation slipped into the Cons' omnibus budget bill. And Thomas Walkom sees the union-bashing as a distraction from the Cons' Senate corruption.

- Finally, Fraser Harland and Mark Dance discuss how the Cons have harmed Canada's federal government for decades to come:

Could there be a more politically awkward and unpopular case for a future finance minister to try to make than that deficits are not always bad and that one’s own government need not be kept on such a short leash?

This is not the first time that the Harper Conservatives have set out to pin their successors to the wall.

The death of the long-form census undermines the ability of future governments to pursue smart and informed social policy, the equivalent to covering up the eyes and ears of the public service. Broken threads of data have guaranteed the illegibility of long-term trends, enfeebling the capacity of governments to make smart choices for future generations.

The same strategy is at play on the government’s fiscal flank. The cuts to the GST were roundly criticized by policy experts for blowing a hole in government coffers while doing little to alleviate the financial burden of individual Canadians. Once again, though, reversing this policy decision would require a serious expenditure of political capital by a future government from which it could be difficult to recover.
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Taken together though, these measures show themselves to be more than just short-term vote grabs. Rather, they are political and legislative ropes around the wrists of future governments as well as blindfolds over their eyes. To the extent that reversal of these measures is possible, it would in many cases involve complex and counterintuitive policy explanations to voters, likely to devastate their champions in the polls.

Calling Harper a visionless incrementalist is currently a popular trope for the opposition parties and liberal pundits. However, they should not lose sight of the fact that Harper’s goal could be to handcuff and constrain government far beyond his own tenure. In that respect, he may turn out to be a visionary after all.

On family ties

Laura Ryckewaert's report on the Cons' Senate strategy has already received plenty of attention. But I'm more interested in a senior Conservative's excuses for Stephen Harper's actual appointees than what looks like another delay strategy in substance:

The senior Conservative source said members of the Conservative Party are less uneasy than might be expected because Sen. Wallin, Sen. Duffy and Sen. Brazeau “are not longtime Conservatives.”

“These are folks who were appointed to the Senate for a number of different reasons. So in that sense, it’s not as if they’re seen as one of the family that’s suddenly done bad things,” said the source.

Of course, it's worth wondering whether the "not one of the family" dodge - questionable enough as applied to, say, the individual chosen to serve as the face of Conservative budget infomercials and party fund-raisers alike - can possibly be withheld from the range of people already caught up in the Clusterduff net. But Nigel Wright, Carolyn Stewart Olsen, David Tkachuk and others may want to watch carefully for declarations that they've been officially expelled from the Cons' cult.

That said, the more important lesson may arise for anybody asked to step into Duffy and Wallin's shoes as a celebrity endorser for Harper and his apparently-exclusive clique: anybody falling short of the title "longtime Conservative" will be readily used up and thrown out. Which might offer all the more reason not to put one's own reputation on the line to serve the Cons.

On patterns of behaviour

Sure, it's tempting to treat Pamela Wallin's role as a director of a failed oil sands firm as a personal commentary on the Cons and their Senate appointees. But the story is far more closely connected to another theme that's popping up in news stories on a daily basis.

There's ample question as to how honest Oilsands Quest was with the public (and the settlement of the class action suit against it effectively ensures that nobody will be pushing for further answers). And the complete disconnect between corporate self-interest and the public good is turning up all over the resource sector in far more significant ways.

Oil and gas sector employers have decided they'd rather jeopardize workers' lives than implement safety standards. Even new pipelines (including the U.S. portion of Keystone XL) are being installed with shoddy work. And Alberta's oil and gas sector has made a choice to thumb its nose at tailings pond regulations - with no apparent consequences.

Which would seem to signal the desperate need for some counterbalance against the whims of the oil industry. But instead, the Western Canadian economy is relying almost entirely on a philosophy of taking corporate spin at face value - even when the public bears the downside risk if it proves wrong.

Instead of insisting that our desperate lack of capacity to monitor and clean up after the corporate sector be remedied before we ratchet up the level of risk in extraction and transportation operations, we're simply assuming that the industry will get its way - and hoping (in the absence of evidence) that we won't be stuck with bills far exceeding whatever minor spillover gains we might see in the short term.

And that mitigation strategy may be understandable at the municipal level given the combination of provincial and federal governments determined to rubber-stamp and subsidize any oil-related project, no matter how dirty or dangerous. But it doesn't figure to be long before the bill comes due - and we'd best start verifying the corporate and political spin we're stuck with now before it far exceeds our ability to pay.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

New column day

Here, on how the two Con appointees at the centre of Stephen Harper's Senate are exactly the two who should have known better than to abuse the public trust.

For further reading...
- Brian Bergman and Dale Eisler offer the background on the Saskatchewan PCs' scheme here, while CBC updated the amounts still owing to the public here.
- Those interested in the judiciary's take on the PC MLAs involved will want to see Lorne McLaren's sentencing, as well as these three decisions on Eric Berntson.
- Finally, the revelation of the Cons' "boot camp" instructing new Senate appointees in the use of public money for partisan ends is from Jordan Press' report.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Not surprisingly, this week's revelations about Pamela Wallin have set off plenty more discussion about what's wrong with the Senate and its current beneficiaries. Andrew Coyne recognizes that the problem lies in the design of an institution based on patronage and unaccountability rather than being merely an issue of who's getting appointed, while Andrea Hill discusses how the Senate breeds a sense of entitlement. Rosie DiManno sees Wallin as a prime example of that phenomenon in action, while Tim Harper writes about Stephen Harper's role in establishing his appointees' expectation that they'd be above any rules so long as they served his partisan interests. And Michael Bliss joins the chorus calling for abolition as the best way to end the abuse.

- Jenny Uechl points out Robyn Allan's observation that just as the public is likely to pay most of the bill for MMA's destruction of Lac-Mégantic, we're all likely to be on the hook for the costs of pipeline failures based on how the corporate sector prefers to do business:

"Lac Mégantic  shows that companies are making money doing things that cause huge risks, and when they cause an accident, they don't have the money to pay for the damages, so the public is left on the hook," said Allan, commenting on liability regimes. 

"That's a reprehensible situation, and it's the standard --  it certainly has been with pipeline companies." 

Allan drew public attention to Enbridge's "limited liability partnership" structure during the Northern Gateway joint review panel hearings earlier this year. Among the many points covered in her study, she noted that Enbridge set up Northern Gateway so that revenues from the pipeline would go to Enbridge shareholders, but the liability responsibility stopped with Northern Gateway, leaving the parent company protected.

 - Which makes it all the more important that we have fair assessment processes which reflect the public interest rather than mere rubber-stamps - as the Star's editorial board notes. 

- The Washington Post reports on how the NSA's surveillance has led to thousands of breaches of U.S. law over the past few years, while Amy Minsky writes that the RCMP has simply taken to ignoring its legal obligations to provide access to information. And the trend of outlaw law enforcement regimes offers all the more reason to doubt that spending billions of dollars on dangerous drones represents an even faintly defensible use of public money.

- Finally, Erin Weir points out Chrystia Freeland's platitude-laden economic message. And Matt Fodor and Michael Laxer suggest that it's long past time to instead have an adult conversation about taxes and public services:

As Hugh Mackenzie notes: "Nations that have the most highly developed systems of public services pay for them with all kinds of taxes, including sales taxes and payroll taxes that everyone contributes to because everyone knows there is no such thing as a free lunch."

The Nordic countries of Sweden, Denmark and Norway all have a Value Added Tax (VAT) of around 25%, far higher than the GST/HST, which finances the welfare state.  The Nordic model is notable for its reliance on transfers, which do the heavy lifting in terms of countering inequality.  While personal income taxes are higher than in Canada, they also pay much higher levels of consumption and payroll taxes.  Yet the net impact of the tax-and-transfer system is progressive. Rather massively so. In part, this is for the obvious reason that because the affluent spend more, the net impact of consumption taxes are progressive if they are spent on human need.

Indeed, the redistributive power of public spending – on healthcare, education, pensions and an array of other public services – should not be ignored.  A CCPA report, Canada’s Quiet Bargain, found that more than two thirds of Canadian households receive more than 50 percent of their income in public services, a far better deal than the market and far more than they pay in taxes. This was even more true before the tax-cutting mania of the past two decades.

The taxation of private consumption can fund the provision of public goods (such as parks, public transit, public housing, etc.) that are more ecological than private goods. Furthermore, public goods provision has the effect of decommodification which is as important as progressive taxation in terms of moving toward socialist relations in capitalist societies.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Joseph Stiglitz comments on the wider lessons we should take from Detroit's bankruptcy:

Detroit’s travails arise in part from a distinctive aspect of America’s divided economy and society. As the sociologists Sean F. Reardon and Kendra Bischoff have pointed out, our country is becoming vastly more economically segregated, which can be even more pernicious than being racially segregated. Detroit is the example par excellence of the seclusion of affluent (and mostly white) elites in suburban enclaves. There is a rationale for battening down the hatches: the rich thus ensure that they don’t have to pay any share of the local public goods and services of their less well-off neighbors, and that their children don’t have to mix with those of lower socioeconomic status.

The trend toward self-reinforcing inequality is especially apparent in education, an ever shrinking ladder for upward mobility. Schools in poorer districts get worse, parents with means move out to richer districts, and the divisions between the haves and the have-nots — not only in this generation, but also in the next — grow ever larger.
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Adding to the problems that would inevitably arise from such poorly designed urban agglomerations is the fact that the Detroit metropolitan area is divided into separate political jurisdictions. The poor are thus not only geographically isolated, but politically ghettoized as well. The result is a separate, poorer inner city with a dearth of resources, made even worse because the industrial plants that had provided the core of the tax base are shut down.
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The same skewed priorities that have gutted Detroit at the local level are echoed in a void at the level of national policy. Every country, every society, has regions and industries whose stars are rising, and others that are in decline. Silicon Valley has, for some time, been America’s rising star — just as the upper Midwest was a hundred years ago. With technological change and globalization, though, the Midwest’s comparative advantage as a global manufacturing hub has ebbed, for reasons too well known to list here. Markets, however, often don’t do a good job of self-rejuvenation.

Rather than deal purposefully with this changing economic landscape with useful policies encouraging the growth of other industries, our government spent decades papering over the growing weaknesses by allowing the financial sector to run amok, creating “growth” based on bubbles. We didn’t just let the market run its course. We made an active choice to embrace short-term profits and large-scale inefficiency.

There may be something inevitable about the structural changes that have made American manufacturing less central to our economy, but there is nothing inevitable about the waste, pain and human despair in cities that have accompanied that change.

- And Robert Reich points out how the same trends of increasing inequality and economic segregation feed into a wider sense of anger:

(F)or the last three and a half decades, the middle class has been losing ground. The median wage of male workers is now lower than it was in 1980, adjusted for inflation.

In addition, all the mechanisms we’ve used over the last three decades to minimize the effects of this descent — young mothers streaming into paid work in the late 1970s and 1980s, everyone working longer hours in the 1990s, and then borrowing against the rising values of our homes — are now exhausted. And wages are still dropping — the median is now 4 percent below what it was at the start of the so-called recovery.

Meanwhile, income, wealth, and power have become more concentrated at the top than they’ve been in ninety years.
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The last time America was this bitterly divided was in the 1920s, which was the last time income, wealth, and power were this concentrated.

When average people feel the game is rigged, they get angry. And that anger can easily find its way into deep resentments — of the poor, of blacks, of immigrants, of unions, of the well-educated, of government.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Demagogues throughout history have used anger to target scapegoats — thereby dividing and conquering, and distracting people from the real sources of their frustrations. 

- But of course, it is worth pointing out when systems of privilege are in fact abused at the public's expense. On that front, CBC points out the surprises within the now-released audit of Pamela Wallin's Senate expenses. Tim Harper fills in a few details of his own, while Rosie DiManno traces Wallin's descent into ignominy. And the Star thoroughly misses the point in framing the issue as one of Stephen Harper's judgment of character in appointing Wallin and Mike Duffy to the Senate - rather than the culture of corruption and naked self-interest that he's used to define his party.

- Josh Eidelson writes about the expanding scope of fast food strikes as workers fight for fair wages and recognition. And Steven Greenhouse discusses the efforts of the Workers Defense Project to organize and assist those without union representation.

- Finally, Erin Weir calculates what corporate tax reductions have cost the Canadian public - with the final number for the Cons' tax slashing alone reaching upwards of ten billion dollars each year.

Accountability for thee, not for we

Marjory Lebreton makes clear that as far as she's concerned, accountability begins where partisan Con affiliation ends:

Senator Wallin is no longer a member of the Caucus and must be held accountable for her actions.

And needless to say the converse is also true as far as Lebreton and the rest of Stephen Harper's inner circle are concerned: for those within the Con caucus, accountability doesn't apply.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- A new Ipsos-Reid poll shows that nearly 90% of Canadians support higher taxes on the rich generally, and million-dollar incomes in particular. And there's an obvious need for change based on how distorted tax systems already are - as Reuters reports on a Congressional Budget Office study showing that U.S. tax deductions, credits and exclusions primarily benefit the wealthy.

- Of course, tax policy is far from the only area of corporatist decision-making designed primarily to benefit those who already have the most. Jeremy Nuttall discusses how the federal government's cover-ups succeeded in protecting HD Mining from a challenge to its abuse of temporary foreign workers; CBC reports on contract manipulation at AECL; and the Leader-Post writes about the Sask Party's decision to turn hospital linen services into a corporate cash cow.

- But it's easier to take offence when insider abuses can be tied to individual wrongdoers. On that front, Michael Harris writes that Mike Duffy doesn't seem to have done much other than what he was told to do by the Cons, while Tim Harper suspects that Pamela Wallin is the next in line under the Cons' bus. Colin Horgan sets out some of the questions that still need to be answered about the Cons' Senate scandals. But the Star recognizes that the Cons' answers have been nothing but evasive so far, while Michael den Tandt reminds us why we shouldn't trust a word Stephen Harper and his entourage have to say.

- At the same time, Paul Saurette is right to observe that right-wing scandals may only serve the cause of anti-government forces in the long run. And so in pursuing the facts, we should be careful to point out how public administration can be carried out more cleanly and effectively - not merely pile on the current set of Con offenders.

- Finally, Ian Welsh draws a distinction between broad-based ethics and narrowly-focused morals - and while I'm not sure I'd use those exact terms, his conclusion is well worth sharing:

To put the needs of the few before the needs of the many, in public life, is to be a monster.  But even in private life if we all act selfishly, as our reigning ideology indicates we should, we destroy ourselves. If we all put only ourselves and those we love first, and damn the cost to everyone else, our societies cannot and will not be prosperous, safe, or kind.

The war of all against all is just as nasty when it is waged by small kin groups as when it is waged by individuals.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Murray Dobbin contrasts the B.C. NDP's recent election loss against the type of popular focus which helped Saskatchewan's CCF to earn a twenty-year stay in office in the face of far more hysterical opposition:

You can design a campaign that projects a positive vision of the future but two things about the NDP's approach doomed it to failure. First, you can't run a positive campaign in a month. It takes time to engage people in a vision of the future, even one they agree with.  Secondly, the NDP tied one hand behind its back by failing to hold the Liberals to account for the horrible, destructive policies they implemented over twelve long years.
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Tommy Douglas and the CCF (the precursor of the NDP) won power in 1944 in a province totally dominated by a Liberal, pro-business party machine for decades. It won a landslide victory in a media atmosphere of absolute hysteria (headline: "CCF will seize farms"), fearmongering and blatant lies. The CCF held power for twenty uninterrupted years. How? It started out as a movement and retained that character for many years afterward. It was deeply rooted in community. People felt ownership of it and its policies and out (of) that came government programs that met the expressed needs of the people. And that, in turn, brought enormous trust in government. 

People's distrust of government now runs so deep that it will take years of trust-building to regain some democratic equilibrium. That means a totally different kind of politics and a totally different kind of political party. Progressive parties run by brain trusts, engaging in politics as a game, will ultimately lose. For them progressive policies are simply pieces on a chess board, not part of a larger vision. And the longer this style of politics goes on, the more institutionalized and inward looking such parties, including the NDP, become.

- But if we're looking at comparing which types of politics deserve some measure of trust, we can rule out a few fairly easily. For example, Martin Regg Cohn writes about the false promise of privatized liquor sales, while Kathy Tomlinson reports on yet more examples of the temporary foreign worker program being used (with the Cons' approval) to replace qualified Canadians with easily-exploited temporary imports.

- In the latest in the Cons' Senate expense scandal, CTV reports that the paperwork for the hush payment from Nigel Wright to Mike Duffy was drawn up by special counsel in the Prime Minister's Office. Michael Harris writes that Stephen Harper's PMO is falling apart, while Lawrence Martin sees the Cons' abuses of power as reaching a critical mass. Sid Green and various Reform alumni all make the case for Senate abolition if the Cons can't be trusted to police their own. Andrew Coyne sets out the laws which the Cons had to know were violated. And while John Ivison may be the last person left to pretend accountability has anything to do with the Cons' value structure, he does nicely contrast the Cons' one-time promises against their actions once in office.

- Meanwhile, the Cons' commitment to accountability also includes blatant patronage and support for criminal bid-rigging. Try to act surprised.

- Finally, Paul Adams rightly notes that the great challenge for media participants in our time is how to manage the vast amount of available information - and that we should see that development as a massive improvement from the restricted supply which once existed. But we should be more than wary of attempts to push information back behind closed doors, whether through laws or through litigation.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Yes, there's plenty more on the Cons' Senate scandal, with Tim Harper headlining the latest discussion:

Mike Duffy is radioactive.

The one-time Conservative cheerleader is now the poster boy for the filth which envelops the party brand.

The man holed up on Friendly Lane in Cavendish, P.E.I., has brought down one of the most powerful men in Canada, shaken the Stephen Harper government to its core and blown a hole in the confidence the increasingly skeptical Conservative base has in the party.
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Wright says he acted on his own, but could he possibly have acted on this without the Prime Minister’s knowledge?

Was he acting on the Prime Minister’s orders?

Did two of the shrewdest political operatives to ever land in Ottawa really believe that a handy chequebook would make a Senate spending scandal go away?

Did the government Senate leader, Marjory LeBreton, know an improper payoff was at the root of Duffy’s note from the teacher when his expenses were being audited?

We have to ask, because no one in the government is giving proper answers.

- Meanwhile, Brian Webb offers his own set of scenarios as to why Nigel Wright may have offered Mike Duffy a get out of jail free card, while Chris Plecash notes that both Duffy and Pamela Wallin may have been singled out for special treatment. Lawrence Martin poses a few more questions about Stephen Harper's involvement. And David Climenhaga notes that if the Cons believed in ministerial responsibility as anything but an excuse to keep underlings from answering questions in public, Harper would be offering his resignation for the actions of his chief of staff.

- Theresa Riley interviews Andrew Rosenberg about the corporate sector's efforts to prevent an accurate assessment of environmental damage and other externalities from intruding on their profits, while Elliot Negin writes about the Koch brothers' attack on climate science in particular. And Miranda Holmes notes that Peter Kent has been spinning on behalf of the oil sector since before he became Canada's most Orwellian Minister of the Environment yet

- All of which is to say that there's yet more reason to want to ensure that our democratic representatives and public servants work on meaningfully regulating business activity, rather than naively trusting in corporate benevolence. But on the bright side, at least one Federal Reserve governor is starting to recognize the damage that inequality does to overall economic growth - signalling that some policy-makers are beginning to come around to the concept of doing their jobs.

New column day

Here, on how the current controversy over residency requirements only helps to show how Canada's Senate is beyond fixing.

For further reading...
- Again, Andrew Coyne similarly points out how abolition is a more viable option than trying to rewrite rules to preserve the existing Senate.
- Kelly McParland's take on Mike Duffy is probably still the best commentary linking the circumstances of the Cons' Senate scandals to the institution as a whole, while the Charlottetown Guardian rightly notes that the primary issue facing Duffy is ineligibility rather than expense claims.
- And amazingly, Stephen Harper is doubling down yet again in declaring that his talking points override the terms Canada's Constitution of as well as the Senate's own investigation.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Andrew Nikiforuk discusses how Alberta and other petro-states have ended up destroying their treasuries and their democratic systems alike by relying excessively on volatile resource prices:

Thanks to the volatile nature of the world's most lucrative commodity, various petro states find themselves short of cash. And that's because most petro states don't know how to budget let alone govern.

Like any plantation economy, petro states operate pretty much like irrational monocultures: they know how pump oil, sell oil, talk oil and spend oil. But they don't know how to save or diversify its slippery wealth.
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In addition to honesty gaps the size of tar sands mining pits, Alberta, like many petro states, has a dismal tax problem. The province's one party state draws, on average, 30 percent of its revenue from oil and gas projects. For more than 40 years Alberta's Tories have ruinously used these same petro dollars to distort, undermine and degrade a proper taxation system as well as enrich its cronies.

This explains why Alberta Treasury can still advertise Alberta as a fantasy honey pot with "low personal and corporate income taxes, the lowest fuel taxes among provinces, no capital tax, no payroll tax, no health premiums, and no sales tax" while the province chocks up one deficit after another and Redford cries bitumen bubble tears.

U.S. political scientist Michael Ross attributes such behavior to the pernicious "taxation effect" of oil: "When government derive sufficient revenues from the sale of oil, they are likely to tax their populations less heavily or not at all, and the public in turn will be less likely to demand accountability from -- and representation in -- their government." 

- Sarah Jordison suggests a simple strategy to deal with dumbed-down politics and politicians - which I'd supplement only by suggesting that it's equally important to highlight the exceptions to the current rule:

Responding to political spin with our own savvily crafted sound bite isn’t enough.  In fact it encourages the perception that if problems don’t have a simple solution they can’t be solved so it’s best to just not think about it.

If we’re going to succeed in building a better world with a government that is actually responsive to the needs of our people, a critical piece of our work must be to create a public appetite for deeper public policy discussions based in fact and not ideology.

This may seem like an insurmountable task, but really it starts by including a simple question when talking to the press or a gathering or even your friends and neighbours:

Does their simplistic spin really ring true with you?

- Dean Beeby neatly contrasts the Cons' bluster about openness against the entirely justified conclusion that they're getting more secretive and less responsive by the year:

The Harper government is dismissing a report that ranks it 55th in the world for upholding freedom of information, saying it has a sterling record for openness.

But a four-page document outlining the federal rebuttal took five months to release after a request under the Access to Information Act — underscoring the very delay problem that contributed to Canada's dismal ranking.

A human-rights group based in Halifax has issued three report cards since 2011 on Canada's anemic standing in the world with regard to so-called right-to-know legislation.

The Centre for Law and Democracy used a 61-point tool to measure Canada's legislation against that of other countries, in co-operation with Madrid-based Access Info Europe.

Canada's standing in September 2011 was 40th of 89 countries, fell to 51st in June last year, then to 55th of 93 countries last September, behind Mongolia and Colombia.

 - Finally, Bruce Campion-Smith finds that Pamela Wallin is included on the list of Con senators who have declared their residence to be in Ontario despite having been appointed as a representative of another province. And the more the Cons make clear that they don't see the Constitution Act, 1867 as being worth the paper it's written on when it comes to defining the required qualifications for senators, the more skeptical we should be of any claim that we're stuck with every other aspect of an elitist anachronism.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Michael Harris concludes that we're currently stuck in a golden age for political falsehood and deceit:

(T)here are problems with blotting out inconvenient truths with self-serving Newspeak. It’s catchier than a flu-bug in a pup tent. Quite a few pairs of pants are on fire in Ottawa these days because cabinet ministers and senators have learned from the PM that the truth is what you need it to be. It can mutate, transform, even shed its skin. The trick is to say what you need to be true at a given moment.
...
Perhaps the wider truth here is that we live in an age of deception.

In the banking industry, the global price of money affecting $300 trillion worth of contracts was rigged for years by the collusion of traders and brokers. Crappy mortgages were sold as blue-ribbon investments. Giant hedge funds traded on insider information and even the drug cartels found banks eager to do their monetary laundry.

In big business, accounting firms lied for important customers, companies like SNC Lavalin paid huge bribes to unsavoury but influential characters to win contracts, suppliers sent fake parts to their military customers to boost profits — and mining companies abused workers’ rights in foreign countries in a way they would never try back home.
...
Parties of all political stripes have had their share of liars and cheaters, just as they have had a goodly number of visionaries and public benefactors. But when lying and cheating morph into a model of governance where citizens not only don’t know, but can’t know what’s going on, democracy becomes what H.L. Mencken called a fancy abstraction for the collective fear and prejudice of an ignorant mob.

It is an old chestnut, this matter of the limits of raw power. Can you really say two and two is five, that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia, that war is peace?

- But of course, a deliberate effort to suppress inconvenient truth makes for an essential part of allowing lies to stand unchallenged. Which brings us to the Cons' orders that Arctic research is to be permitted by DFO scientists only if the government has the ability to hide the results.

- Meanwhile, Hannah McKinnon thoroughly critiques the Cons' dishonesty when it comes to climate change.

- Finally, Karl Nerenberg reminds us that Stephen Harper had a wide range of choices in dealing with the Senate, and consciously chose to set a new standard for corruption and patronage. The CP reports on the likelihood that Pamela Wallin and other Con Senators used public money to serve as campaign shills for their prime ministerial puppet-master. And Tyler Sommers is the latest to suggest that abolishing the current upper-chamber monstrosity is a necessary first step to any more democratic system.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The Cons are apparently looking to take the fun out of #spotasenator by making it no challenge whatsoever - using the thoroughly embarrassing Pamela Wallin to raise money in Palliser. For those looking to put people over patronage appointments, Noah Evanchuk's next Regina canvassing blitz happens Sunday.

- Meanwhile, the Cons' cone of silence extends to Canada's northern reaches, as Western Arctic candidate Sandy Lee (while enjoying her own #spotasenator moment with Mike Duffy) has refused interviews unless she receives a copy of the questions in advance.

- Martin Patriquin and Phillipe Gohier's discussion of the state of Quebec politics is well worth a look - particularly in noting how the NDP is appealing to voters who have previously backed the Bloc as a populist option.

- Linda McQuaig is right to note that positive results from a coalition may be well within reach. But it's worth also recognizing that one of the main obstacles is the Libs' continued insistence on undermining any effort to build multi-partisan hope for change.

- Finally, pogge annihilates Adam Radwanski's willingness to accept the Cons' spin about their track record even faintly resembling "competent government".

Cause for abolition

In case there was any doubt, Harper Senate appointee Pamela Wallin confirms what we've known all along: as far as the Cons are concerned, democracy means passing only the bills they approve of regardless of how a majority of MPs have voted:

Sen. Wallin criticized the opposition MPs and Liberal Senators who were criticizing the Conservatives for defeating the bill. Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) had previously said in October 2008 that "We don't believe an unelected body should in anyway be blocking an elected body."

Critics reiterated that line back to the Conservatives when the bill was defeated, but Sen. Wallin said it's a "totally different" situation.
...
"It isn't a government bill. There was not one Conservative in the House of Commons that voted for it. It's a coalition bill, a private member's bill put forward by a New Democrat. This is not a government bill, this is not some piece of legislation that came to us from the House of Commons voted on as was the budget for example, by the two main parties. This was a private member's bill by a new democrat. This is a totally different thing."

This may get interesting

Well, that's one burning question answered, as Pamela Wallin is apparently claiming that appearing in Saskatchewan "monthly" is enough to qualify her as a resident entitled to be appointed to the Senate. But not surprisingly, that position seems to be coming under some serious fire. So let's take a look at the actual residency requirement, as well as how it figures to play out in Wallin's case.

The Constitution Act, 1867 includes the residency requirement for senators:

23. The Qualifications of a Senator shall be as follows:
...
(5) He shall be resident in the Province for which he is appointed:

As the article notes, there are numerous possible definitions of "resident". But whether one looks at spending the majority of one's time in a jurisdiction, spending the last 6 months there, or an "established habitation", it's awfully tough to see how Wallin can meet them regardless of how the Cons try to paper over a flawed appointment for the next month.

Which leads to the question: just who gets to decide whether or not the Con's senate appointments actually meet the constitutionally-required qualifications? There are two answers - and either figures to lead to some significant potential for dispute.

First, the initial appointment power is predicated on each senator being "qualified":

The Governor General shall from Time to Time, in the Queen's Name, by Instrument under the Great Seal of Canada, summon qualified Persons to the Senate; and, subject to the Provisions of this Act, every Person so summoned shall become and be a Member of the Senate and a Senator.

Presumably, Michaelle Jean will have at least some ability to question whether any particular appointment is "qualified". And if she decides otherwise, the Constitution doesn't apparently provide for any way for Harper to override her judgment.

Mind you, I'd once again tend toward the view that Jean is best off not confronting Harper over matters short of his entitlement to hold office in the absence of the confidence of the House of Commons. But that doesn't mean that Harper's appointees will be off the hook, as the Senate may decide for itself whether or not any of its members are qualified:

33 If any Question arises respecting the Qualification of a Senator or a Vacancy in the Senate the same shall be heard and determined by the Senate.

So presumably it'll be open to the Senate as a whole to look into just what residency requirements apply to Wallin (along with Duffy and perhaps more to come). And to the extent the issue gets dealt with in the near future, there simply won't have been time for either Wallin or Duffy to meet the residency requirement: indeed, the section quoted above is clear in requiring that a senator "be resident" and not merely be in the process of acquiring residence in the province represented.

Of course, it's far from certain how much appetite the existing Senate will have for such a confrontation. But then, there could surely be little better way for the Senate to project insularity, ineffectiveness and disregard for its governing rules than to refuse to deal with possibly-unconstitutional appointments - whether out of fear that the same standards might be applied to the current members in the future, or out of a desire to appease the person driving the unconstitutional appointments in the first place.

All of which suggests that the controversy generated by Harper's trip to the trough is far from over. And it remains to be seen just who will take the worst damage resulting from the fight that Harper has set in motion.