New column day

Here, looking at a $396 million annual benefit in the form of lower wireless rates for Saskatchewan residents serves as a prime example of the value of public enterprise - and pointing out a few other public options which could help ensure that the interests of citizens are better reflected in the marketplace.

For further reading...
- CBC reported on the wireless rate increases which hit every province except the two with strong Crown competition. Aside from the $55 per month cost difference reported there, the other number leading to my estimate in the column is SaskTel's customer base estimate found here. And in a neat coincidence, the annual gain in wireless rate reductions alone roughly matches what SaskTel puts into capital spending each year.
- Again, story of the Cons' rejection of Canada Post's postal bank was broken by Blacklock's, while Ethan Cox was among several commentators to weigh in.
- Finally, Richard Mayhew discusses how co-operatives have stepped into the breach in the absence of a public option in the U.S. health insurance market.

Monday Evening Links

Assorted content to end your day.

- Yes, it's blasphemy to point out the obvious returns on public investments. But let's point out a couple more examples: Andrew Jackson wonders why we're not looking to lock in low interest rates, while Paul Krugman points out that infrastructure investments will offer even more bang for the buck than usual during an economic slump.

- But don't worry: at least our CEOs are doing just fine. So if the rest of us keep falling behind, well, what exactly is the problem again?

- Andrew Coyne gives away a few secrets to success in the field of punditry.

- Finally, Dr. Dawg shreds an Ezra Levant attack on Naheed Nenshi, and rightly questions whether there's any possible motive other than an excuse for ritual Muslim-bashing.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Chantal Hebert offers up the definitive response to the Cons, Libs and media outlets still going out of their way to attack the NDP for winning support in Quebec:

Given the context, to retroactively portray Layton’s party as a fallback vehicle for Quebec nationalism amounts to rewriting election history.

That rewriting excises the inconvenient fact that the voters who gave the NDP its sweeping Quebec victory on May 2nd already had a road-tested nationalist option on the ballot in the shape of the Bloc.
...
For the moribund Bloc, the best hope for revival lies with a successful demonstration that there is no room within Canada’s national parties for nationalist Quebecers — or at least not unless they are willing to atone for the way they exercised their voting franchise in the past.

It looks like sovereigntist strategists can count on outside help to achieve their purpose.

Alone of all members of Parliament, Quebec’s New Democrats are being asked to account for their past political leanings.

Some self-appointed high priests of federalism have gone as far as suggesting that a public recanting of anything that smacks of a sovereigntist belief is also in order.

Presumably, they rather than the voters who elected those MPs to the House of Commons would be the judges of what amounts to a high enough level of federalist rectitude.
...
Many of the Quebecers who supported the Bloc until last May did so out of a sense of rejection of their collective difference that stemmed from the 1990 demise of the Meech Lake Accord.

Now, as then, a Quebec oui to Canada is getting lost in translation.

- Jessica Bruno points out yet another set of supposed cost-cutting measures by the Cons which figure only to ensure a steady flow of public money into private hands:

Attrition won't help many of the 687 employees at Public Works who were told in June that their jobs will be cut over the next three years, says Claude Poirier, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees.

Mr. Poirier said that he is in "almost daily" contact with union representatives at Public Works, and judging by the information he's seen on the affected workers, most of their jobs will not be eliminated because public servants are leaving of their own will.

In total, 300 employees will be laid off this year across Public Works.
...
(C)onsulting services is a special operating agency that runs on contracts for work from other departments.

"It's not really to save money that they've been dismantled. I'd say it's more of a principle for this government. They see a better government as being a smaller government so less government is better government to them," said Mr. Poirier.

The work will now be contracted out to the private sector, though Mr. Poirier noted that there should be limitations to what sort of information is disclosed to outside contractors.

"If you were to provide advice on strategic decisions for the government, you don't want those decisions, and that advice being provided by outside people, it doesn't make sense," he said.

- For those who haven't yet read Warren Buffett's op-ed on the need to stop coddling the super-rich, it's well worth a look:

Our leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

- Finally, the Star highlights the glaring need for some real child care support:

Regulated daycare shortages across the country are so severe that families pay to put their names on multiple waiting lists long before their children are even born. For low-income families, the situation is even worse. Not only do they need to find a daycare space in their neighbourhood, they need to be lucky enough to get to the top of the waiting list for a subsidy so they can afford it.

In Toronto alone some 20,000 families are waiting for a subsidy. That list could grow if city hall’s current cost-cutting efforts lead to the elimination of some of Toronto’s subsidized spaces.

Outside the cities, the situation is little better. More than 8,000 kids in rural and northern Ontario are in danger of losing their child care with hundreds of licensed centres on the verge of closing.

No wonder Canada tied for last among developed countries for providing affordable, quality daycare in a United Nations study.

Rather than deal with this crisis, which causes financial havoc for families and keeps women out of the workforce, the Harper government prefers to proudly blow out the candles on yet another year — we’re at five now — of handing out $2.6 billion in taxpayers’ money without producing any new daycare spaces or enabling parents to afford existing ones. That’s cause for shame, not celebration.

Sunday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your long weekend.

- I'll agree with pogge that Tabatha Southey's latest is well worth a read. But while it's worth recognizing the differences between the respective priorities involved in managing a country as opposed to a family, there's one point hinted at by Southey which should be seen more as a similarity than it actually is:

(W)hile living within one's means is a noble goal, few people, and very few businesses, balance their budgets on a year-to-year basis. They have mortgages, for example, or loans taken out to expand investment, or because of unforeseen strife.

But then they also have assets. So debt is also investment.

It's easy to alarm people over a deficit. It's a high number and people are forever being told that it's theirs and their children's debt and specifically how much of it is theirs, per capita.

But no one ever tells them how much highway they own, per capita, or what section of the Grand Canyon is theirs. It's a very one-sided, frequently opportunistic way of expressing the situation.

Of course, part of the problem is that parties on the right tend to be averse to public ownership in the first place. But for the rest of us, it's well worth keeping in mind the value of owning assets publicly - and ensuring that value isn't lost to corporate-focused P3 or privatization schemes in deciding what to do with public resources.

- Antonia Zerbisias points out that we can't take a safesupply of water for granted. Sadly, Regina offers a case in point.

- The Cons make up poor excuses for their decision to prevent NDP MP Ryan Cleary from visiting the 9 Wing Gander air base. CC calls BS.

- Finally, Origins of Politics points out how Sun Media is giving far more reach and exposure to bigotry on the Canadian political scene.

On limited space

There doesn't look to be much too controversial about the decision to build a glass-topped temporary home for the House of Commons. But one aspect of the plan seems rather odd given the problems with the current chamber:

The temporary Commons chamber will have exactly the same dimensions and layout as the existing one, complete with tiered seating for MPs and overhanging visitors’ galleries.

So what could be the problem with matching the current dimensions?

The House of Commons chamber can physically hold only 308 seats similar to the desk-and-chair combination now used. After the 1997 riding redistribution left the House with 301 MPs, it was renovated to hold 304 chairs for sitting members. That number jumped to 308 with the round of changes that took effect with the vote on June 28, 2004. Before that election, the Speaker's Office told CBC.ca that four more chairs and desks had been added in the room's northeast corner, to the Speaker's left, replacing a sitting area for the parliamentary pages. Now there's no more room for expansion.

However, riding redistribution must by law take place every 10 years, adjusting the federal electoral districts to reflect population changes. All provinces are guaranteed that their number of federal seats will not decrease, even if their proportion of the Canadian population shrinks dramatically. So the number of seats is bound to keep going up in the absence of dramatic changes to the way we elect a government (through bringing in some form of proportional representation, for example).

So is there some reason why the temporary chamber is being matched to the current, insufficient amount of space, rather than leaving more room for expected growth in the number of MPs?

A heritage moment

Shorter Michael Fortier, demonstrating the Cons' long-held principle of ministerial accountability at work:

Hey, I was just the minister in charge of the Parliament Hill renovation. How was I supposed to know anything about the project?

On selloffs

Greg Weston's piece on Michael Fortier's involvement in directing millions of dollars in consulting fees to his friends at Canada's big banks is well worth a read. But lest anybody be under the mistaken impression that the Libs would be any less likely to sell off Canada's public assets while well-connected corporations take a chunk of the value, he also offers up this reminder:

Fortier also had close political ties to two employees of the winning bidders — Rick Byers, then an expert in government privatizations for the Bank of Montreal, and Michael Norris, an equally qualified investment banker at the Royal Bank.

At the time, Byers had been a prominent Conservative fundraiser, organizer and provincial candidate with links to Fortier dating back to the 1998 Progressive Conservative leadership race.

All three investment bankers also worked on Scott Brison’s campaign for the PC leadership in 2003 — Byers and Fortier were his campaign chairmen; Norris was one of the chief fundraisers.

Brison lost the leadership, but defected to the Liberals in time for their 2004 federal election victory. He then became public works minister in Paul Martin’s government.

Almost immediately, Brison announced the new Liberal government wanted to get out of property management and would consider selling off billions of dollars of federal office buildings to private operators.

The first phase of the project was to have been a $3-million study of all federal real estate, followed by a possible sale of buildings.
...
The project was resurrected when the Conservatives came to power in 2006. Fortier was appointed to the Senate and named public works minister.

Six months later, Fortier’s department awarded a $250,000 contract to two winning bidders — RBC and BMO — to study which federal properties should be sold.

It also gave the two banks the right to broker the actual real estate sales for hefty additional commissions.

The final deal involved nine properties that sold for $1.35 billion and generated about $10 million in commissions: $3.75 million each to BMO and RBC, and another $2.5 million to Deutsche Bank Securities, which was brought in by Public Works to vet the final sales.

Sunday Morning Links

You should be outside enjoying the weekend. But if you're not, then here's some reading material to help pass the time.

- While it's dangerous to plan too much based on a single poll result, the news that health care is back as the top issue of importance for Canadians looks to make for some interesting calculations for the federal parties. In particular, the issue seems to have mostly surfaced on its own, as the only major development in the area (Quebec's implementation of user fees) has actually received less discussion than would be expected on the federal scene - meaning that there would seem to be room for the numbers to grow further if anybody decides to put on a full-court press on the issue.

- Toby Sanger points out the latest analysis of the impact of Ontario's HST (this from the NDP using Statistics Canada data), and puts it in context as to how it'll affect the tax system:

If we assume that businesses pass on their savings from the HST to consumers through lower prices, I think it is fair to say that reductions in corporate income taxes would flow through to the owners of the businesses. If only half of of these benefits flow through to households in Ontario, then the picture is quite different. (About 28% of Cdn profits go to Canadian controlled corporations and I assumed that 1/3 of the remaining Ontario profits also flow out to people in other provinces)

Once you take account of the distributional impacts of the corporate tax cuts flowing through, the impact of this tax package is mildly progressive on the bottom end, but regressive in the middle to top end. Families with incomes of less than $30,000 are better off by an average of $20 to $80 a year, those in the middle income range from $40,000 to $100,000 are worse off by about 0.5% of their income level (~-$200 to -$400 a year).

However, those with family incomes of over $100,000 would, on average, be better off by about $365 a year after accounting for the all elements of the tax package since this group receives a disproprotionately (sic) higher level of investment and capital income.

So Ontario’s HST tax reform is not an overall massive tax grab, but it is a major tax shift – and it certainly isn’t all progressive.

- If anybody would care to explain why there's any principled basis to tie the Canadian Wheat Board's streamlined payment for grain to the deliberate disenfranchisement of producers, I'd love to hear it. But it looks entirely likely that the Cons are simply looking to hold the former hostage by insisting on the latter - and it'll take another strong push back simply to avoid having the Cons permanently destroy the underpinnings of the CWB.

- Michael Geist points out why the constant stream of anti-Canadian propaganda on copyright issues deserves to be mocked rather than taken seriously:

Late last month, the IFPI, which represents the global recording industry, released its annual Recording Industry in Numbers report that tracks global record sales. The report targeted two countries — Canada and Spain — for declining sales and linked those declines to copyright law. Not coincidentally, both countries are currently working on legal reforms.

The IFPI release succeeded in generating attention but a closer look reveals that it put the spotlight on the wrong country.

Canadian sales declined 7.4 per cent last year. That was bad news, but nearly identical to the global average of 7.2 per cent. Moreover, the declines were far larger in both the United States (10.7 per cent) and Japan (10.8 per cent), yet neither of those countries was described in similarly negative terms.

The same week the U.S. government chimed in with its annual Special 301 report. Often described as the global piracy list, the U.S. chose to lump Canada together with countries such as China and Russia as allegedly among the world’s worst intellectual property offenders.

Rather than embarrassing Canadians, the list itself is increasingly viewed as the embarrassment. This year’s report ignored a submission from the world’s largest technology and Internet companies (including Microsoft, Google, T-Mobile, Fujitsu, AMD, eBay, Intuit, Oracle and Yahoo), which argued that it is completely inappropriate to place Canada on the list.

Moreover, the data suggest Canada is a leader, not a laggard. According to the software industry’s own piracy numbers, Canada’s piracy rate is declining and is dramatically lower than any other country on the priority watch list. In fact, the Business Software Alliance has characterized Canada as a “low piracy country.”

The news is similar with respect to movie piracy, where the motion picture industry has acknowledged that incidents of illegal camcording have dropped in Canada as the country is one of few in the world with criminal convictions for such activities.

- Finally, for those who haven't yet seen the Citizen's article on the Harper government's steps to suppress information from last weekend, it's worth a read.

Reason to worry

Could one ask for a more ominous set of signs about the ultimate results of than what's surfaced over the past couple of days? First, there's Deficit Jim setting the stage for waste and mismanagement:

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty acknowledged that Ottawa will foul up as it rushes to dole out $40-billion of stimulus spending, but said the potential for gaffes is acceptable because aid must be expedited to counter the economic downturn.

"There will be some mistakes made. But it's worth that risk to help the majority of Canadians during what is a serious recession," he said yesterday following a weekly meeting of Conservative MPs...

Mr. Flaherty didn't specify what kinds of boondoggles might occur as Ottawa signs cheques for an extraordinarily large amount of money over 24 months, including close to $20-billion in construction and infrastructure spending.

He said Ottawa is sidestepping traditional approval routes to speed up stimulus dollars and will provide Canadians a timetable for implementation on March 11. "This is urgent. This is an emergency situation of getting this stimulus into the Canadian economy to benefit Canadians, to benefit people who are going to lose their jobs."

For instance, he said, Treasury Board - the government's cash manager - is modifying how it handles spending, and the Tories are taking some plans directly to cabinet instead of the normal route for vetting ideas.

But making matters worse, there's the latest from Information Commissioner Robert Marleau - whose grim repord card on access to information includes Public Works as one of the departments which received an "F", joining the PCO which has always been one of the worse offenders.

This comes just two years after Public Works received a "B" the last time Marleau used the report card system. And it's also a report on a year where Public Works was doing next to nothing in terms of approving actual projects - rather than one where its staff will be in a rush to push projects out the door.

So to sum up...

We have no way of knowing who will be making decisions about billions of dollars worth of spending. And indeed those responsible aren't saying anything more than that they're making it up on the fly.

But we do know that the likeliest suspects are two departments which the Cons have ensured won't respond to access to information requests. So it may take years to even figure out who was responsible for any decisions, let alone what factors were taken into consideration.

This will not end well.

On available options

The Star presents an interesting point/counterpoint on the use of P3s as a means of deferring government expenses (at a high future cost). But while it's tough to disagree with the outcome of Thomas Walkom's piece against the use of P3s as a means of buying now and paying more later, it's Christopher Hume's column which actually raises the more interesting issues - both as to why P3s may be seen as needed by some, and what the public sector can do to minimize costs while potentially generating public returns.

Here's Hume on the background to why he sees P3s as inevitable for now:

In a perfect world, there would be no need for public-private partnerships. Government would have all the money it needs to pay for all we need, and everyone would be living happily ever after.

In the real world, however, government is chronically short of funds and we, the voters, aided and abetted by the media, would rather not pay the taxes we should. And so we elect leaders who tell us what we want to hear even when we know it's a lie.

And in these conservative times, not only are tax rates under fire; so is the very idea of government. Is it any wonder that the decline of the public infrastructure has reached the point where in Ontario alone it would cost $143 billion to bring it up to an acceptable standard?

Faced with such overwhelming need and a reactionary culture, government has little choice but to look to the private sector.

There's of course plenty of room for argument as to whether either commentators like Hume or governments themselves should be giving in to the assumption that voters prefer being lied to about the costs of providing needed services. And I'd strongly take the side that the most needed change is to counter the initial deception - not merely to look for some way of paying off the private sector to win its endorsement of government spending.

But whatever the proper response, the underlying premise is that any supposed need for P3s is itself based on incorrect assumptions. And that's surely a recipe for bad public policy.

Meanwhile, Hume does point out one means of bringing some benefit back to the public sector:

(I)n certain European countries, some government agencies and departments have themselves started to act as private companies, selling their expertise and services to the highest bidder, including government.

City planning services in Britain are an example, as are incineration plants in Sweden. They bid on public-sector contracts like any business, and when they make a profit, plough it into general revenues.

In Canada, public entrepreneurialism would be viewed as contrary to the ideals of public service.

Once again, it's not clear why we should take as a given that Canadians would disapprove of an effort to build public-sector capacity. And that's doubly so in the case of a development which would not only present the possibility of improving public services, but could also help bring in a return on investment which would help to bridge any gap between what voters want in services and what they're prepared to pay in taxes.

Ultimately, Hume is right to point out some of the options which have been wrongly excluded from Canada's public debate. But the fact that those possibilities are largely ignored offers a reason to bring them back to light and start making the case for more effective public investment, not a basis for accepting that governments have to pay more to get less for lack of any easy alternatives. And once the underlying assumptions are challenged, any case to funnel money into the private sector through P3s falls away in a hurry.

Blocking access

CBC's Political Bytes blog doesn't seem to have received much fanfare from what I've seen. But it looks to include plenty of material, including this post on what appears to be a bizarre attempt on the part of Public Works to gum up the Access to Information process:

Recently, in response to three separate requests, the Department of Public Works replied, “the document does not exist."

Interestingly, with each of these there was an attachment that stated:

“REFUSAL TO CONFIRM OR DENY RECORD EXISTS
10.(1) Where the head of a government institution refuses to give access to a record requested under this Act or a part thereof, the head of the institution shall state in the notice given under paragraph 7(a) that the record does not exist”

It looked like a red flag, one that our reporters who specialize in access had never seen before. That prompted follow-up phone calls to the people who administer the Access to Information Act. It took a week to get the response that the records really do not exist, and that Public Works was just citing the actual wording in the act to convey that informaton.

Public Works appears to be the only department issuing these confusing notices, which are something of a Catch-22. If a document does not exist, the bureaucrats tell you that. But then they tell you exactly the same thing if they feel it is a piece of information they have they right to withold access to.

Not surprisingly, my initial reaction was that there's no way the Access to Information Act would actually say what Public Works is claiming on its access-request responses. And sure enough, the default Public Works response both incorrectly quotes the section, and cuts it off to make it appear to say something that it doesn't. The italicized parts of the section are the ones omitted by Public Works:

10. (1) Where the head of a government institution refuses to give access to a record requested under this Act or a part thereof, the head of the institution shall state in the notice given under paragraph 7(a)

(a) that the record does not exist, or

(b) the specific provision of this Act on which the refusal was based or, where the head of the institution does not indicate whether a record exists, the provision on which a refusal could reasonably be expected to be based if the record existed,

and shall state in the notice that the person who made the request has a right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner about the refusal.

Note first that the section contains two "(a)"s in a row, but for obviously distinct purposes: the first serves to refer to the notice required by section 7(a), the second to actually divide up the responses available under section 10(1). By cutting out the second one, the Public Works notice makes it sound as if an institution is required to deny the existence of documents, rather than having that response available as one option.

Of course, that omission wouldn't cause a problem if Public Works hadn't also apparently cut out the rest of section 10(1) - including both 10(1)(b) which makes it absolutely clear that an institution may state that a document exists, and the requester's right to challenge any refusal to the Information Commissioner.

It's worth noting that the problem which would arise from Public Works' wrong interpretation can still be a factor under some circumstances since an institution may choose under s. 10(2) to refuse to confirm or deny whether a document exists. But that's a far cry from Public Works' implicit claim that it has no choice but to pretend that no relevant information exists. And it may not be a coincidence that it's the Cons' least accountable cabinet minister who holds ultimate responsibility for a misreading of the Access to Information Act which conveniently makes life more difficult for those seeking information.

Amplifying the problem

The Cons have received loads of criticism for pushing forward with an office-building sell-off without any meaningful public discussion or debate about the costs and (alleged) benefits involved. Which has naturally led the Cons to try to address those concerns about poor resource management and opaque decision-making...by spending millions of dollars on a report which won't be made public:

The federal government is hiring Deutsche Bank to provide independent advice on the financial wisdom of a controversial plan to sell nine big office buildings and lease them back from private owners.

Government sources have told The Globe and Mail the plan is a gamble that could cost taxpayers up to $600-million over 25 years if it fails, but might also produce savings of $250-million...

Deutsche Bank will be paid $1.9-million for the work, and then is precluded by conflict-of-interest rules from playing a financial role in any sale-leaseback deal if it goes ahead...

(I)f the analysis shows costs outweigh benefits, the property sales will not go through, Mr. McGrath said during a conference call. If cabinet decides the plan is solid, final sales could be concluded in three to six months.

The government does not plan to make the Deutsche Bank report public before officials send it to cabinet ministers with a recommendation, Mr. McGrath said.

Of course, it seems entirely likely that the Cons' current plan is to defer any discussion pending completion of the report, then claim that the report says something that it doesn't in order to try to support their own poor policy choices - as they've already been known to do. And as long as the report is suppressed, there will be no way for Canadians to know either how its outcome was shaped through biased terms of reference, and whether the Cons' public spin is anywhere close to accurate.

Regardless of what happens now that the report has been commissioned, though, there should be even less doubt now that the Cons remain willing and eager to sacrifice public money on the altar of privatization. And whatever the outcome of the selloff process, that's a fact which should be held against them at every available opportunity.

On contested titles

The race for the title of Most Embarrassing Con Cabinet Minister has been a hard-fought one from the beginning. Early favourites Rona Ambrose and Vic Toews were moved to lower-profile portfolios, leaving Gordon O'Connor as the current leader.

But there's a new dark horse in the race. Last week, Michael Fortier decided to make a government polling investigation as partisan and untrustworthy as possible by appointing Daniel Paille to the task. And today, word comes out that Fortier is alleged to have rigged a contracting process in order to award a $400 million deal to a former client:

An Ottawa IT contractor is calling for an inquiry into the preliminary award of a $400-million contract to Montreal-based CGI Group Inc., a former client of Public Works Minister Michael Fortier from his days as an investment banker.

TPG Technology Consulting Ltd. of Ottawa will file a request today with the federal Public Sector Integrity Office to investigate whether Mr. Fortier was in a conflict of interest.

Mr. Fortier was an investment banker with Credit Suisse First Boston from 1999 to 2004, during which time he headed the firm's Montreal office.

In March 2004, Credit Suisse was one of the underwriters for a share offering by CGI that raised more than $330 million, and Mr. Fortier was listed in regulatory filings as the primary contact for Credit Suisse...

TPG has been providing IT services to a variety of federal departments and agencies through an eight-year contract with Public Works worth roughly $200 million, said Mr. Powell.

In May, the department issued a request for proposals for similar "engineering and technical services."

But when TPG attempted to bid, the company was told by government officials that it would need references for work the size of the new contract, estimated to be worth more than $400 million over seven years.

"We could not respond to it, even though we're doing the work today. That looked a little strange. We wrote to the minister on that," said Mr. Powell.

Government bureaucrats also told the company that the technical evaluation of the bids was "very close," and TPG's bid was easily the cheapest, said Mr. Powell. But the company alleges that Public Works changed the process by asking that the scores be re-evaluated.

While the claim isn't yet proven, the conflict of interest at least appears to be fairly obvious. And the prospect that the minister generally responsible for government services might be inflating costs paid out of the Canadian public purse should be ready fodder for both discontent among any principled Cons who haven't yet jumped ship, and attacks from the opposition parties.

Toss in Fortier's consistent incompetence on his department's planned selloff of government buildings, and there's no lack of readily-visible problems with Fortier's tenure. And that's without his having faced the scrutiny of the House of Commons - which means both that the may be plenty already waiting to surface, and that Fortier hasn't yet had a full opportunity to make a fool of himself through words as well as actions.

Of course, the overriding embarrassment has to lie with the Prime Minister responsible for handing over the power which these ministers have handled so poorly. But it never hurts to point out that Harper's most-trusted few have in fact shown themselves entirely undeserving of Canadian confidence - and hopefully a bit more focus on that group will help to make sure their race to the bottom comes to a merciful end.

Structurally unsound

Greg Weston discusses both the severe potential downsides of the Cons' fire sale of federal buildings, and the lack of any reason to believe the Cons have done anything to try to avoid the dangers:

Stephen Harper's government is offering to sell the Hays Building and eight other federal office towers in prime urban locations across the country -- and promptly lease them back for 25 more years of glorious public service.

The scheme could turn out to be a sweetheart deal for taxpayers, putting a wad of cash in the public purse, and a bunch of decaying buildings in the hands of more efficient private-sector property management.

Or it could be one of the most imprudent money-sucking shell-games ever attempted by a federal administration, providing the treasury with short-term capital gain for 25 years of punishing fiscal pain.

The deal, of course, is in the details, and the Harper government of openness and accountability is once again diligently offering Canadians none of the above...

Government insiders say noses have been turning up every time Fortier's planned fire-sale of federal assets is raised.

As one source told us: "Public works was asked if taxpayers were going to make money or get soaked, and all they could say was, 'We could either make a bundle or lose a bundle.' There is no apparent business plan for something that could involve billions of dollars."

Weston notes as well that some of the Auditor General's concerns surrounding Public Works already involve damaging choices to lease rather than purchase property. Which means that the problems with such a scheme are not only readily foreseeable, but already observed in previous leases. Which would surely offer a rather strong reason to thoroughly analyze exactly the kind of business plan which the Cons may not have even bothered to put together, and certainly wouldn't bother subjecting to scrutiny if they had.

Meanwhile, the alleged benefit of putting responsibility in the hands of third parties is almost certain to be illusory. Not only does that step involve adding in a profit margin for a private operator, but it also ensures that the federal government will need to maintain at least a significant portion of its current expertise in building management simply to make sure that any building operator meets the terms of the lease agreement. Which means that the end result is likely to be nothing more than even more cost and duplication of effort.

For the Cons, none of these concerns are apparently seen as even worth answering - though of course given their track record of fabrications, there's little reason to think that any answer would be honest in any event. Which should offer another reason for the opposition parties to take a wrecking ball to Harper's government before it's too late.