Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Thomas Walkom discusses how Canadian workers are feeling the pain of decades of policy designed to suppress wages - and notes there's plenty more all parties should be doing to change that reality. And Doug Saunders points out what we should want our next federal government to pursue to bring about lasting growth:

Many economists came to realize not only that government intervention bailed many countries out of the post-2008 recession and restored growth and employment, but that the crisis itself may have been caused, in good part, by the disappearance of active government support in the economy – the sort of direct investment and partnership that had existed in earlier decades.
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Economists began noticing that the great economic boom of the 1990s and 2000s had been a direct product of targeted state investments in specific companies and sectors. The Italian economist Mariana Mazzucato, in her influential book The Entrepreneurial State, chronicled the emergence of the iPhone as a direct product of Washington’s large-scale investments in Silicon Valley – not just through state spending on technology products and tax incentives to high-tech industry, but through the specific choice of Apple, in the 1970s and 1980s, as a company Washington would invest in (though small-business investments that put $2 into Apple for every dollar of private investment). Intel and Compaq were also targets of this active state investment, much as Elon Musk’s Tesla electric-car company is today.

Dr. Mazzucato, in an interview from her University of Sussex office, describes the heavily funded state banks that have allowed Germany, China and the United States to build globally competitive companies – and notes that Canada, despite having earned a fortune in petroleum revenues in the past 15 years that could have created a similar major institution, has nothing substantial of the sort, nor any proposal to create one.

“Canada is interesting,” she said. “It is one of the most skewed countries, not only in terms of sectors – lots of emphasis on the extractive stuff – but also in terms of instruments: It’s very, very indirect. It does most of its government investment through tax incentives. Compare that to the United States or China or Germany, where it’s all direct: If they want to do something, they do it. They directly finance a sector or the most innovative companies, and they create grants or guaranteed loans to do it, not an indirect tax credit. And on top of that, these Canadian investments are not so mission-oriented: At best, there’s a list of sectors to be supported indirectly, but no targeting of specific companies or industries. And then they get surprised when they’re not on the top any more in any of the big innovations.”

- Andrew Coyne rightly argues that we shouldn't spend so much of an election campaign attacking past personal statements from candidates, while noting that part of the problem lies in the vetting authority that's been taken over by the parties' leaders.

- Meanwhile, Kevin Grandia highlights Cheryl Gallant's climate change denialism as a symptom of the Cons' real unfitness for office. And Donald Gutstein comments on Doug Black's role as an oil lobbyist within the Senate.

- Tabatha Southey writes that the Cons are offering nothing but fear, uncertainty and doubt for voters, while Sandy Garossino weighs on that message as it applies to refugees in particular. And Terry Glavin zeroes in on how that strategy involves ignoring the plain facts even of high-profile events such as the tragic deaths in the Kurdi family.

- Finally, Parker Donham sets out why Canada can't afford any more of Stephen Harper. And Fram Dimshaw reports that the veterans who once served as Harper's political cover are joining the cause in demanding more responsible government.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your pre-election reading.

- Torontoist endorses the NDP, nicely summing up the positive message which has propelled the NDP to its surge in popular support:

Much of the NDP's platform is not only tolerable; it is excellent. Only the NDP have any sense of ambition for what government can do to improve our environment, both in terms of a climate change strategy and in possessing an interest for a 21st-century renewable power grid. The NDP's crime policy proposals are realistic, defined, and compassionate. Their immigration policy intelligently addresses many of the issues with our current system, including the opportunity for immigrant families to sponsor a single non-close relative, while still accepting that crackdowns on immigration consultation and updating our professional certification programs for immigrants must remain priorities. Their cultural policies promote homegrown content and recognize the massive return on investment that smart cultural funding can generate. Of the three major national parties, theirs is the only one with internet and technology policies relevant to the needs of modern Canada. The NDP's take on national defence is very well reasoned: Layton's announcement that his government would focus on the shipbuilding program that the Tories have been dragging their heels on, including a renewed focus on the oft-delayed Joint Support Ship program, is commendable indeed. And the NDP have committed to ending our deployment in Afghanistan—a mission our military has undertaken with skill and dignity, but one which increasingly appears to be a lost cause and which Canada can no longer afford.

More important than any of that, though, is the NDP's commitment to political and electoral reform. Both Jack Layton and the party as a whole are determined to do their best to reform Canada's electoral system away from our outmoded, obsolete first-past-the-post structure into something modern which better reflects the true intentions of Canadians through more proportional representation, be that through party list voting, single-transferable vote, or mixed-member proportional representative voting. This reform is something our country desperately needs. Similarly, the NDP's proposals for preventing the abusive use of the proroguing power and Layton's suggestions for governmental bodies to audit proposed legislation are good ones. The NDP's proposed abolition of the Senate is drastic but not without its appeal, especially in the wake of Conservative use of the Senate as an anti-democratic tool to prevent the passage of popular legislation.
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(I)t is idealism, at this time, that Canada needs. We have had almost a decade of cold, callous government from Stephen Harper's Tories and to a lesser extent from Paul Martin's Liberals before them. The Tories see government as an impediment; the Liberals all too often use it for inducement, to bribe voters into supporting the Grits rather than offering a coherent platform, as evidence by Michael Ignatieff's scattershot campaigning in recent months. The NDP looks upon us and tells us that we are Canadians: that we are a society that believes in helping one another, in helping the downtrodden and weak, not because it is economically expedient or eventually profitable, but because it is right, and that this is worth fighting for.

That is why Jack Layton and his party have skyrocketed in the polls. That is why they deserve your vote, and our endorsement.

- But the NDP surely won't complain if Haroon Siddiqui is right in describing the election as a referendum on Stephen Harper:

Who says elections are a nuisance? Stephen Harper and the media. The latter also parroted his pronouncement that this campaign was “unnecessary,” being the fifth since 2000. It’s a waste of money. It’s boring, to boot.

Canadians have proven them wrong, being fully engaged from the first week to the last, turning up in record numbers to the advance polls and dragging Harper onto a knife’s edge for Monday night.
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However, Canadians quickly caught on to Harper’s politics of division, his contempt of Parliament, his bully tactics (symbolized by students being thrown out of Tory rallies), abuse of power and misuse of the treasury in showering tens of millions of dollars on ridings and groups with the sole purpose of advancing the partisan Conservative cause.

Ordinary citizens have turned the election into a referendum on Harper — specifically, on a Harper majority. Their answer to his fanning the fears of “reckless coalition” post-election was to forge one at the grassroots level, now.

- And Parker Donham notes that public dissatisfaction with Harper should have been obvious for some time:

(S)upport for Layton may be new, but dislike of Harper and his autocratic manner is not. To re-phrase Harris’s question then, how did the cream of Canada’s national press corps miss the anti-Harper mood?

On issue after issue, press gallery reporters have, wiuth few exceptions, been quick to accept the Harper squad’s assertions that, “The public doesn’t care about parliamentary technicalities.” “No one wants this unnecessary election,” “Canadians don’t expect us to coddle Afghan terrorists,” “The public has no love for the long form census,” “Talk of contempt is just partisan bickering,” etc. Faced with these airy dismissals, the gallery has too often shut down coverage of important news stories that reflected badly on the Harper government.

Reporters have also accepted unprecedented and humiliating restrictions on their ability to put questions to the Prime Minister, his cabinet, and now the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada in an election campaign.

The gallery collectively underestimated Canada’s appetite for thoughtful coverage of the nuts and bolts of Harper’s burgeoning autocracy. That is the failure unmasked by the last two weeks of the 2011 election.

- All of which helps to explain the continued gains for the NDP - with the last EKOS poll of the campaign showing the party at 31.6% and within 3 points of the Cons. And that in turn has led to the point where the end of Stephen Harper's reign is in sight.