Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Oliver Bullough writes that the combination of increased wealth concentration and the free flow of money across borders to attacks currencies and governments represents an urgent threat to democratic governance. And Owen Jones argues that now is the ideal time to push for a transformation of the UK's economy:

What is striking about [the IPPR's] demands isn’t just how much more radical they are than only four years ago: it’s who has endorsed them – from the archbishop of Canterbury to business leaders. The IPPR’s polling shows that, from a radical clampdown on tax avoidance to publicly owned investment banks, to borrowing to invest, there is overwhelming support for the junking of the old neoliberal order.

Against this backdrop, the left needs to demand more radicalism from Labour. The very few sympathetic commentators have felt reluctant to do so because of the unrelenting attacks on a besieged Labour leadership. Some fear that any criticisms of the party from its left flank will offer succour to its increasingly hysterical opponents. But public appetite for radical reform – with even business figures endorsing it – means there is space to go further. Labour’s commitments on income and wealth taxes are insufficient to fully reverse Tory austerity and benefit cuts. The case for free movement of people in Europe has, sadly, largely been abandoned. By demanding more boldness from Labour, the political debate can be shifted further left still.

The report calls for a paradigm shift as radical as those achieved by Attlee and Thatcher. Both built a new consensus, forcing their opponents to surrender to their underlying philosophies. To avoid its flagship policies being unpicked by another Tory administration, a future Labour government must seek to do the same.

- Andrew MacLeod writes that we can't expect to deal with the opioid addictions without recognizing and addressing the underlying social causes. And David Crow reports that one of the major manufacturers of the opioid crisis has now claimed patent rights over a new treatment.

- Kelly Crowe comments on the hundreds of shortages of medications faced in Canada just this year, with most resulting from weaknesses in the corporate pharmaceutical supply chain. And MacLeod discusses the difficult choices around "orphan disease" drugs which are available only for exorbitant prices through private sources.

- Laura Paddison takes note of a new report which highlights the implausibility of addressing the problem of climate change with the same capitalist principles which created it. And James McClintock discusses how greenhouse gases are acidifying our oceans in addition to heating up the planet.

- Finally, Jennifer Zwicker and Stephanie Dunn question why decisions about disability supports are being made by the CRA rather than departments better positioned to address them.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Steven Hoffman and Julia Belluz write that the current ebola outbreak - like many health catastrophes in the developing world - is traceable largely to the warped incentives facing medical researchers:

(W)e've learned a lot about Ebola: that it's spread through contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, that we can stop it by using simple precautionary measures and basic hygiene practices. But every once in a while, these nightmarish outbreaks pop up and capture the international imagination. Worries about global spread are worsened by the fact that Ebola has no vaccine and no cure.

Here's what's surprising and interesting about this state of affairs: it is not caused by a lack of human ingenuity or scientific capacity to come up with Ebola remedies. It's because this is an African disease, and our global innovation system largely ignores the health problems of the poor.
...
Ebola will continue to move through Africa — this time, and again in the future — not only because of the viral reservoirs and broken health systems specific to the continent. There are much larger issues at play here. Namely, the global institutions we designed to promote health innovation, trade, and investment perpetuate its spread and prevent its resolution.

This shouldn't be news. Most all of the money for research and development in health comes from the private sector. They naturally have a singular focus — making money — and they do that by selling patent-protected products to many people who can and are willing to pay very high monopoly prices. Not by developing medicines and vaccines for the world's poorest people, like those suffering with Ebola.

Right now, more money goes into fighting baldness and erectile dysfunction than hemorrhagic fevers like dengue or Ebola. In the graph below, you can see global pharmaceutical spending in 2013. Neglected diseases (ie., Ebola) got hardly any of the share of funding. 

- Meanwhile, Justin Ling writes that Canada's own intellectual property system stands to become even more biased in favour of big pharma if the CETA comes into effect. And Aaron Carroll writes about the dangers of pay for performance within the medical system.

- Josiah Mortimer reports on the UK Cons' latest attack on the unemployed, this time deliberately requiring newly-unemployed workers to go up to six weeks without pay before receiving any employment benefits.

- Finally, Shannon Gormley discusses how mass surveillance may make it impossible for journalists, lawyers and other professionals who need to be able to assure confidentiality in defending important public interests to live up to their promises. And Conor Friedersdorf rightly questions how anybody could trust a system which allows state actors whose actions are under investigation to choose for themselves what information to release about their own wrongdoing.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Michael Harris observes that the Cons' vote suppression tactics match the worst abuses we'd expect from the Tea Party:

Stephen Harper would make a good governor of Arizona.

In addition to the lies and sleaziness his government has been serving up during its majority, its sickening reliance on marketing over truth, its dishonest use of technology in political matters, and its shameful abuse of language, the prime minister is blighting democracy in the name of political advantage.

When Stephen Harper gave Canada fixed elections dates, no one expected a whole lot more “fixing” was still to come. There was; Bill C-23. By potentially removing hundreds of thousands of voters from the next election, Canada could now have elections with fixed dates and fixed results.

- Joseph Heath writes about the need to shift from a political culture grounded entirely in talking points and instant responses to one which allows for substantial consideration of policy choices - while the recognizing the difficulty in trying to shift from one to the other. And Susan Delacourt points out that the assumption that voters won't or can't understand even moderate policy discussion lies at the root of the problem:

Everyone has heard about income inequality — the widening gap between haves and have-nots. It’s the big public-policy challenge of our time.

But there’s another form of inequality that should also be worrying us. Let’s call it information inequality: the widening gap between those in the know and those who know not. When did facts and evidence become the domain of an elite few?

I spent a lot of time the past few years researching a book about how marketing has taken over Canadian political culture and policy-making. Some of this all-marketing, all-the-time approach threatens to make wants more important than needs, the short term more important than the long term and advertising more powerful than journalism. It’s a culture that rewards people who can whip up emotions rather than those who can marshal facts and evidence to make their case; a culture where anecdotes trump statistics.
...
The mark of a healthy economy, we’re told, is one in which everyone has a chance to improve his or her lot in life. A healthy democracy should work the same way — a society in which everyone has a chance to know more, where we don’t write people off as permanently apathetic, any more than we’d write them off as permanently poor.

If we want to close that information gap, we need more “responsibility to inform” and less “people don’t care.”

- Meanwhile, Tim Harper notes that voters in Calgary Signal Hill and Kitimat both sent strong messages over the weekend that they won't mindlessly defer to those with money or power in making important political decisions.

- Which isn't to say the Cons will stop trying to hand over as much power to the corporate sector as they can get away with. On that front, Randall Affleck comments on the increased power being handed to big agribusiness to prevent farmers from using seeds; Tara Carman catches the Cons once again enabling employers to hire cheaper foreign workers rather than Canadians looking for jobs; and Michael Geist notes that what's being billed as privacy legislation is also being used to allow businesses to share Canadians' personal information for commercial purposes.

- And in case we needed a reminder as to whether we can expect business to give anything back in exchange for being handed the world on a silver platter, Steve Benen reports on Caterpillar's brazen tax avoidance.

- Finally, Robyn Benson discusses how strong public services serve as a much-needed antidote to inequality.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Henry Blodget recognizes that the systematic corporate squeeze on mere workers represents a deliberate choice rather than an inevitability:

One of the big reasons the U.S. economy is so lousy is the American companies are hoarding cash and “maximizing profits” instead of investing in their people and future projects.

This behavior is contributing to record income inequality in the country and starving the primary engine of U.S. economic growth–the vast American middle class–of purchasing power. (See charts below).

If average Americans don’t get paid living wages, they can’t spend much money buying products and services. And when average Americans can’t buy products and services, the companies that sell products and services to average Americans can’t grow. So the profit obsession of America’s big companies is, ironically, hurting their ability to accelerate revenue growth.

One obvious solution to this problem is to encourage companies to pay their people more — to share more of the vast wealth that they create with the people who create it.

The companies have record profit margins, so they can certainly afford to do this.

But, unfortunately, over the past three decades, what began as a healthy and necessary effort to make our companies more efficient after the malaise of the 1970s has evolved into a warped consensus that the only value that companies should create is financial value (cash) and that the only thing managers and owners should ever worry about it making more of it.

This view is an insult to anyone who has ever dreamed of having a job that is about more than money. And it is a short-sighted and destructive view of an economic system...

- And Kendra Coulter makes the case for a retail revolution to ensure that the employment of the future provides a reasonable standard of living for workers:

Most retail jobs epitomize the scourge of precarious work. Retail jobs usually mean poverty-level wages and income insecurity. Schedules are erratic, volatile and provided at the last minute. Retail workers are often disrespected and dismissed as lacking skill, education or value. In other words, retail does not simply reflect inequities. Retail contributes to increasing inequality. This needs to change.
...

More retail workers are joining a growing movement of low-wage service workers who recognize the need to transform lousy jobs into better jobs. Workers at Sirens in Brampton have just chosen unionization as a way to raise the standards at work, for example. These young workers believe retail jobs can and should be good jobs, regardless of who shops in the stores and which brands are sold. Notably, Holt Renfrew workers have repeatedly told me that high prices do not automatically translate into high quality jobs. 

Undoubtedly, the retail terrain will change, but retail jobs are here to stay. It is high time to look beyond the brands and the boardrooms, to how retailers of all kinds treat us. We are not numbers, nor are we disposable. We are workers, citizens, and people who matter.

- Sum Of Us is rightly challenging Eli Lilly's attempt to sue Canada for following an unbiased patent approval process rather than simply handing over half a billion dollars in public and patient money.

- Don Lenihan discusses the difference between the "political" and "policy" types of politicians - and I'll readily approve of his implied view that we should encourage more of the latter. But I do think it's worth noting that the few Cons who have ever ventured into that territory have faced more reprisals than just being denied cabinet positions, while having no apparent role in shaping legislation - meaning that there's only so much power to be taken back by individual MPs without some more concerted push.

- And finally, Glen McGregor's story on Stephen Harper's continued refusal to allow repairs at 24 Sussex Drive might serve to perfectly sum up the Cons' philosophy: Harper and company are perfectly happy with their current life of luxury, and aren't about to let trifles like the public interest interfere.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Aviva Shen looks at Monsanto's history of regulatory capture - with the recent "Monsanto Protection Act" serving as just a minor example in a long list of control over U.S. law:

Monsanto insists that its revolving door is in overdrive because Monsanto employees are simply the best qualified for positions in these agencies, who certainly don’t hold onto their loyalty to the company in their new roles.

Yet it’s hard to ignore how Monsanto has benefited from these connections. The USDA has never denied a single application for Monsanto’s genetically engineered crops. USDA chief Tom Vilsack briefly considered limiting Monsanto’s alfalfa planting to protect organic crops from contamination, but deregulated it entirely instead. In another win for the company, their controversial growth hormone for cows was approved under Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto lobbyist-turned-USDA-administrator-turned-FDA Deputy Commissioner, even though it was banned in the European Union, Japan, Australia, and Canada over health concerns. The hormone was approved in the US after Monsanto employee Margaret Miller oversaw a report on its safety, took a job at the FDA, and promptly approved her own report. Another Monsanto lobbyist, Islam Siddiqui, later wrote the USDA’s organic food standards, allowing irradiated and genetically modified foods to label themselves as organic...

The controversy behind the Monsanto Protection Act is a case study in Monsanto’s cozy relationship with regulators. In 2010, a federal judge chided the USDA for violating environmental law by rushing through approval of Monsanto’s genetically engineered Round Up Ready sugar beets. The judge ordered a halt on all planting of the beets until an environmental study was completed. Ignoring the court, the USDA deregulated the beets anyway, claiming that the delay would result in a sugar shortage.

That’s because Monsanto controls 95 percent of the sugar beet market, making it virtually impossible for farmers to find alternatives. Industry consolidation among a handful of corporations has driven up seed prices and stifled innovation by smaller firms. It’s no wonder, then, that a massive beet shortage would have occurred if Monsanto’s beets had been delayed for a couple years of environmental review. With the help of complacent federal regulators, Monsanto is the only game in town.

- Matthew Yglesias writes that corporate excesses are making longstanding Marxist critiques of capitalism look entirely accurate. Dave Cournoyer compares the kid-glove treatment of billionaires illegally funnelling money into Alberta's political system to the reprisals against workers concerned for their own safety. And the Vancouver Sun writes about the choice of the Harper Cons and their provincial cousins to develop a P3 industry to systematically convert public infrastructure projects into private profits.

- All of which is to suggest that there's reason to be skeptical of John Geddes' view that corporate tax cheats will ultimately get what's coming to them as a result of greater public awareness of tax avoidance. And indeed, I fully expect to see a few isolated cases of obvious individual abuses touted as having fully resolved any problem as an excuse to avoid a real look at questionable transfer pricing and other means of corporate tax evasion.

- Meanwhile, Althia Raj reports on the effect of the Cons' wage suppression policies on actual temporary foreign workers - who figure to wind up stuck in "low-wage ghettos" due to their inability to pursue alternate employment or point out employer abuses.

- Finally, Tom Kott writes that Justin Trudeau falls comfortably within the elite corporate consensus, planning to win over Con voters primarily by parroting their right-wing policy prescriptions.

#mtlqc13 Priority Resolution - Human Rights

The final panel on policy resolutions at the NDP's Montreal convention will deal with human rights issues. And the Young New Democrats of Quebec have proposed a resolution which covers a number of issues worth including in that discussion:

6-26-13
Resolution on Rights in the Digital Age
Submitted by the Young New Democrats of Quebec
WHEREAS protecting digital rights is necessary to develop a sustainable economy in the 21st century;
BE IT RESOLVED that a new subsection (6.10) be added to the Policy Book:
6.10 Rights in the digital age
New Democrats believe in:
(a) Ensuring all Canadians have affordable high-speed Internet access.
(b) Updating the notion of copyright for the 21st century, while protecting creators.
(c) Preventing malicious prosecutions for copyright infringement.
(d) Putting an end to the legal protection for “digital locks,” to enable Canadians to transfer their digital content from one medium to another.
(e) Protecting the right to privacy and free expression on the Internet.
(f) Reforming the patent system with such measures as patent lifespan that varies by sector and measures to limit malicious prosecutions.
(g) Making government more transparent by adopting open government principles.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Subsection 6.7 g be struck from the Policy Book.

Of course, the open government theme is addressed in a number of other resolutions (including two I've mentioned before). But the NDP will be well served to also embrace the combination of intellectual property policy oriented toward creativity rather than rent-seeking, a commitment to Internet accessibility, and protections for both privacy and free expression online. And in each case, the party has the opportunity to stand alone in taking the side of Canadian citizens in dealing with rapacious (and deservedly unpopular) corporate interests.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Thomas Walkom discusses what the Cons' attack on unions through bill C-377 is ultimately designed to do:

Finance department figures show that the tax exemption for union and professional dues does indeed cost the federal treasury $795 million in lost revenue annually. How much is attributed to unionists and how much to others unaffected by this bill, such as doctors and lawyers, is not stated.

But the same figures show plenty of other revenue losses attributable to tax breaks. High rollers paid in stock options cost the treasury $725 million. Those claiming capital gains deductions cost $3.7 billion. So-called carrying-cost deductions reduce federal revenues by $1 billion.

Yet neither Hiebert nor any other Conservative is demanding a public accounting of how these taxpayer-subsidized moneys are spent.

Why focus on unions?...

The point of Hiebert’s bill is not just to strangle unions and their locals with red tape. Nor is it simply to limit their political activity. Beyond all of this, as REAL Women acknowledged, is compulsory check-off.

The unstated aim of this bill is to provide ammunition to politicians, like Ontario Tory Leader Tim Hudak, who would scrap the Rand formula and introduce U.S.-style right-to-work laws designed to sap unions.

- But Priya Sarin notes that the right's reactionary moves to attack labour rights through legislation can be answered at least in part by successful court challenges.

- Meanwhile, the latest in Con cartoon villainy saw the governing party vote down a bill to make drugs available to the developing world at no cost to the public - when even big pharma didn't have any concern with the bill. Which leads to Stephen Lewis' well-deserved response:

“It’s that they just don’t want to be seen to be supporting generics when they are spending so much time negotiating extended protection for pharmaceutical patents,” said Mr. Lewis. “So in the great choice in life, they have chosen patent protection over the lives of children. And that’s about as perfidious as you can get as a government.”

 - Which is particularly noteworthy since, as Andrew Coyne points out, drug patent giveaways look to be the biggest problem with the CETA in the form the Cons have chosen to develop it:

I said earlier the concessions we are asked to make at the negotiating table are “almost always” not concessions at all. But there is one exception that comes to mind: Europe’s demand that Canada accept longer patent protection for the pharmaceutical sector. That would make drugs more expensive in this country, at much cost to provincial drug plans. It might be worth standing firm on this one, then, or at least using it to extract concessions from the Europeans.

So it’s fascinating to learn the government’s actual strategy. “The leaked EU memo says Ottawa [is] preparing to at least partially concede on drug patents,” CP reports, “in order to protect supply management.”

- Finally, the CCPA has released an Environics poll showing broad-based support for upper-income and corporate tax increases, as well as significant public willingness to pay more personally in order to support a wide range of social priorities.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Michael Geist notes that even as the Harper Cons have done nothing but hand more free money to big pharma through ever more generous patent giveaways, the Supreme Court of Canada has offered a reminder of the bargain underlying our patent system:

The Supreme Court was seemingly in no mood for such games as it reminded the parties that the patent system was based on a bargain that Pfizer had failed to meet. In a paragraph that is likely to be quoted for many years, the court stated:

"The patent system is based on a 'bargain,' or quid pro quo: the inventor is granted exclusive rights in a new and useful invention for a limited period in exchange for disclosure of the invention so that society can benefit from this knowledge. This is the basic policy rationale underlying the Act. The patent bargain encourages innovation and advances science and technology."

Disclosure is therefore a crucial part of the patent bargain. The court clarified that this involves not only a description of the invention and how it works, but rather a much more practical level of disclosure "to enable a person skilled in the art or the field of the invention to produce it using only the instructions contained in the disclosure."

In this case, the court found that Pfizer failed to provide sufficient disclosure, since the pharmaceutical giant "obscured the true invention." Pfizer argued that this should not result in invalidating the patent, but a unanimous court found no other alternative. The immediate effect is that the Viagra patent is therefore voided in Canada, which will allow for generic substitutes.
...
Innovation is a laudable goal, yet the court has reminded Canadians that it is only part of the patent equation. Pharmaceutical companies will undoubtedly continue to lobby for more extensive rights before Parliamentary committees and in trade agreements, but the policy focus from governments and courts should be on ensuring that the "patent bargain" remains intact.

- But then, Jesse McLaren writes that the Cons' priorities have nothing to do with the public-interest side of any bargain.

- And Jeffrey Simpson highlights just a few more examples of the Cons' choice to hide their anti-social decisions behind a wall of secrecy. [Update: Though PLG is right to note that Simpson is far too willing to declare there's nothing the media can do in the face of the Cons' obfuscation.]

- Finally, Dr. Dawg discusses how smart people wind up voting for anti-intelligence politicians:

This, too, is telling, and a perfect summing-up:

…Watching him being cross-examined by Messrs. Shiller and Caplan - who once used the word “lacuna” in his closing submission, then, for the rest of us not so smart as he is, added helpfully, “that gap” — was a brilliant reminder of why once upon a time, I marked an X by Rob Ford’s name.

Big city lawyers with their fancy words. They think we’re stupid. Yeah? By God, we’ll give them stupid.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Carol Goar comments on the CEP/CAW plan to merge and work toward a far more active type of unionism:

Both the CAW and the CEP — of which I am a member — gobbled up smaller unions to reach their current size. But neither achieved the critical mass to keep growing or to revitalize the labour movement.

This time they’ve come up with a more ambitious — but much riskier — formula. They aim to create a new union unlike anything labour activists or the public have seen in the past.
 • It would be “a fighting force for all workers,” not just its own members.
 • Its reach would extend beyond traditional workplaces. It would organize temp workers, contract employees, immigrants in precarious jobs, the self-employed and the unemployed.
 • It would be open to all “who share the vision of a stronger, larger Canadian social union,” including artists, entrepreneurs, homemakers, community activists and seniors.
 • It would offer support and services to non-members engaged in disputes with their employers.
 • It would inspire — embarrass if necessary — umbrella bodies such as the Canadian Labour Congress and the Ontario Federation of Labour to be bolder, more active and more forceful.

For those curious, I tend to agree with Goar that a more ambitious, higher-stakes push is a necessary step in ensuring the relevance and effectiveness of the labour movement. With the basic social contract which allowed unions to focus more narrowly on securing their positions within large unionized workplaces now under vigorous attacks from the Cons, their cronies and the corporate sector, it looks to me to be a losing strategy to cling to shrinking fiefdoms rather than engaging a greater range of workers to again shape a broader social agenda. And it's by showing the benefit of collective action for its members that unions can help make the case to apply similar principles in society at large.

- Meanwhile, George Lakoff sounds a warning against using frustration with "low-information voters" as an excuse for failing to effectively frame and promote progressive values.

- Janyce McGregor discusses the conflicting pressures on the Cons in deciding whether or not to force through the Gateway pipeline. Meanwhile, Calvin Sandborn asks whether the Cons plan to learn anything from Enbridge's track records of major spills and pathetic responses, while Iain Hunter highlights the steps they've taken to avoid doing anything of the sort.

- Finally, Peter Wilby comments on how strict intellectual property laws (which of course the Cons only want to make worse) are creating perverse incentives for businesses to innovate only in the field of contrived rent-seeking schemes rather than actual product improvement:

The US drugs industry, say Light and Lexchin, spends only 1.3% of revenues (excluding taxpayer subsidies) on basic research to discover molecules that could lead to genuinely new medicines. It spends far more on maintaining profits – among the highest of any industry, after tax – and on PR, marketing and lobbying. There is an innovation crisis, but largely of the companies' own making.

For years nearly all original drugs brought to market have been based on research either at taxpayer-funded institutions, mainly universities, or in small biotechnology companies. Big companies, such as Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (recently fined $3bn by US regulators for aggressive and misleading marketing), are essentially rent-seekers. They do not create wealth and add social benefit, but enrich themselves through control of resources, as landowners have done for generations. And what has happened in "big pharma" – long marked down by the left, and some on the right, as an unacceptable face of capitalism – mirrors what has happened across the British and US economies. The innovation crisis is not confined to the drugs industry.
...
Technologists tweak vegetables and fruits to make them last longer, look better and travel more easily, without regard to flavour. Bankers develop new trading "products" that, however you cut it, are still about borrowing and lending. We have digital radio and high-definition TV, though not everybody thinks either improves on what existed before. For many companies, skilful marketing of products that aren't significantly different from what preceded them has replaced innovation. It's cheaper and less risky to convince customers that something is ground-breaking, even when it isn't, than develop something truly innovatory.

In short, rent-seeking is now far more lucrative than innovation that delivers social benefits. The big rewards go to directors and executives of large companies – and financial traders, the ultimate rent-seekers who impose an unproductive tax on invention, investment and hard work across the world.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your weekend.

- Yes, the usual caveats about trying to predict future commodity prices apply. But Stephen Maher's warning about the effect of rising fuel and food prices is still worth keeping in mind:

That shift doesn't mean that North Americans are about to take meaningful steps to reduce the amount of carbon we put in the atmosphere, because politicians know that anything they might do to reduce carbon emission will hit consumers in the pocketbook.

Over the long run, though, if the scientists are right, we will have more extreme weather, food prices will go up and, in a reaction to the changing public mood, politicians will act to cut carbon emissions, which will increase fuel prices that are already being driven up by growing demand in China and the rest of the developing world.
...
According to Agriculture Canada, food prices have fallen steadily in recent decades - to nine per cent of income in 2005 from 19 per cent in 1961.

The era of inexpensive fuel and food — which drove a glorious, decades-long boom in North America — may be coming to a painful end. Our way of life may not be sustainable without radical changes, particularly to agricultural systems that have been sustaining high yields with ever-increasing inputs of oil, a big contributor to climate change.

There is no guarantee that things will continue as they have been, and every reason to pray for rain.

 - And if nothing else, it seems glaringly clear that our current resource distribution system isn't based on pricing in the costs of effective safety measures - with Enbridge's move to throw half a billion dollars at trying to push through its Gateway pipeline only serving as additional evidence.

- Meanwhile, Peter Whoriskey notes that thanks to the big pharma's efforts to push patent-protected drugs, we're also paying scads of money for prescription drugs which may be of little or no use.

- Finally, Ted Brader answers some myths about campaign advertising, with the following distinction looking particularly important as the NDP and Cons trade critical ads with the next election looming three years in the future:

An ad’s timing matters as much as its content. Spots criticizing an opponent tend to work differently early and late in campaigns. Before people have settled on a candidate, attack ads help them make up their minds. But these same ads depress turnout when seen later by voters who have already chosen which candidate to support.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Since the Cons don't seem to have much else in their quiver at the moment, I'm sure they'll keep trying to pretend that it's monstrous of Thomas Mulcair to suggest that all industries (including those in Alberta) pay the cost of their real environmental impact. But the sales pitch isn't getting any easier when the people who meet Mulcair without a partisan agenda react like this:

(L)ocal leaders and businesses have been more measured in replying to Mr. Mulcair than rival politicians, and avoided any inflammatory language after Thursday's visit.

“In my opinion, it was a productive discussion. We outlined some of the challenges we face and discussed Suncor’s approach to responsibly develop this resource in a manner that also respects communities and stakeholders,” Suncor said in an e-mail statement attributed to Mark Little, its executive vice-president of oil sands.

Melissa Blake, mayor of the local Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, spent half an hour with Mr. Mulcair at her Fort McMurray office Thursday morning.

They agreed on the need for environmental oversight in the region. “Nobody in the province is disagreeing with that,” Ms. Blake told The Globe and Mail afterward.

- Meanwhile, if there is common recognition of the need for oil-sands development to be environmentally responsible, the news of mercury contamination in the area surely signals that the Cons are failing utterly in that goal.

- And the Cons' efforts to build an enemies list elsewhere are receiving due criticism as well - with Randy Hoback's McCarthyism rightly getting highlighted as an example.

- Having hinted at the idea myself I'm glad to see the Canadian Medical Association calling for policies to be assessed for their effects on health.

- And finally, it shouldn't come as much shock that more onerous IP legislation is all about boosting corporate profits rather than actually generating innovation. But in case we needed confirmation, Eduardo Porter provides it.

Thursday Evening Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Andrew Jackson notes that the IMF is telling countries in Canada's position to hold off on gratuitous austerity. And Trish Hennessy wonders why so many Canadians seem to have forgotten what happened last time budget-slashing was in vogue.

- Meanwhile, Erin documents how Ontario's corporate tax giveaways have produced zero return in terms of investment. And Martin Regg Cohn wonders whether a government eager to take on bullying in schools and communities has any interest in applying the same principles when it's being pushed around by shameless corporate bullies.

- Kev notes that the Cons are giving away far more than they have to in order to complete a free trade deal with the European Union by comparing a similar deal being negotiated by India. But is there much evidence that the Cons aren't actively looking for excuses to, say, hand over another pile of free money to big pharma?

- Laura Ryckewaert points out how the NDP's planning in buying its headquarters has helped to position the party for the longer term. But I do think it's a bit speculative to suggest that the building will make a big difference in election financing: is there any evidence to suggest that any party has had any trouble securing loans for national party financing, with or without real estate to pledge as collateral?

- Finally, Greg Marchildon rightly argues that we should be looking to complete the final phase of Tommy Douglas' vision for health care - rather than looking for excuses to trash it as so many want to do.

Patently ridiculous

David Akin's post on prescription drug research and development is definitely worth a read. But it's worth filling in a few pieces of background information to demonstrate the appalling demands being made by Big Pharma - and the unfortunate likelihood that the Cons would be receptive to them.

Here's Akin:

(T)he lobby group for the big pharmaceuticals had been pushing for an extension on their patent protections, promising, in return, to spend 10 per cent of Canadian sales on R&D in Canada. The Industry Canada policy officers note that: "... after peaking in 1997 at 12.9% [of sales], [Big Pharma spending on R&D] has declined to 8.5% in 2006. The dollar value of their R&D has been flat at about $1.2 billion while sales have continued to grow.

Now, the first point worth noting is that the Cons had already given Big Pharma a freebie on exclusive sales of brand-name prescription drugs which aren't covered by normal patent rules. For those drugs - estimated to cover roughly a quarter of the prescription drug market - the Cons increased the window for exclusive sales from five years to eight without apparently getting anything in return other than the industry's gratitude.

So what was the cost of that giveaway? Estimates at the time pegged the cost at approximately $120 million per year, based on three extra years of exclusive rights to a quarter of Canada's prescription drug market.

Let's use that number as a rough guide and set the cost of a year's exclusive right related to a set of drugs covering a quarter of the prescription drug market at $40 million. Since patented drugs involve the other three-quarters of the brand-name drug market, that would put the cost of a year's extra protection for them at $120 million.

But then, most of the mooted extensions of patent protection would involve adding five years to the current 20-year term. So the actual annual cost of meeting what figures to be Big Pharma's demand would be in the range of $600 million.

What would the federal government expect to receive in exchange for its agreement to hand that much money from patients and provinces to Big Pharma? Based on the percentages listed in Akin's article, the current sales included in the calculation are in the range of $14 billion. From there, the promised increase in research would amount to 1.5% of the current sales amount (since research would go from 8.5% to 10%) - resulting in an extra $210 million being spent annually on research.

In sum, then, the deal proposed by Big Pharma would involve it taking $600 million in free money, in exchange for its putting barely a third of that into Canadian research which would itself lead to future profits. Needless to say, it's not hard to see why the brand-name drug industry would love that outcome - but the result would be an obvious disaster for the Canadian public.

But wait, there's more!

After all, it's not as if the drug companies themselves are likely to want to stop doing research anytime soon. And Akin provides another piece of information from the report cited as to the relative costs of carrying out R & D in Canada and elsewhere:

Costs of research and Development R&D costs per drug in 2005 averaged US$605 million for chemical pharmaceuticals and US$559 million for bio-pharmaceuticals and took 12-13 years to reach market approval by health authorities (source: Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development).
...
There is variability between firms depending on the drug, number of failures and government R&D funding. In Canada, drug R&D costs are lower due to lower R&D and clinical trial costs (KPMG).

So Canada already enjoys a competitive advantage over other countries in terms of the actual cost of prescription drug R & D. Which means that Big Pharma is effectively asking for a massive subsidy to do what's already in its best interest - namely, carrying out research in the country where that can be done most efficiently for distribution around the world.

All of which is to say that there's no reason why the federal government should be doing anything other than laughing off the demands of the brand-name pharmaceutical industry. But unfortunately, the Cons' track record doesn't reflect any apparent interest in doing anything but taking the industry's orders. Which means that it's far too likely that Canada's health care system and patients will once again end up paying for the Cons' tendency to put Big Pharma first.