Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Justin Worland writes that the financial sector is belatedly and slowly waking up to the dangers of the climate crisis - with crucial implications for both the limited future of the fossil fuel sector, and the development of the energy sources which will replace it. Regan Boychuk discusses Alberta's glaring lack of a plan to deal with that reality. And Malte Humpert makes clear that natural gas isn't any more viable a solution in addressing shipping than for other purposes.

- John Lorinc highlights the need for rent control to address Toronto's lack of affordable housing. And Craig Evan Pollack, Amanda L. Blackford, Shawn Du, Stefanie Deluca, Rachel J.L. Thornton, and Bradley Herring study how money for housing can reduce medical costs and other social expenses.

- Roy Romanow and Greg Marchildon make the case for a national pharmacare program. Ariel Fournier reports on the problems with limited access to medication which is common in other countries but hasn't been approved in Canada. And Zak Vescera reports on the nursing homes desperately wanting for resources in Saskatchewan, while Owen Jones points out the lack of support for end-of-life care in the UK.

- Finally, Alex Hemingway comments on the dangers of British Columbia's fixation on balanced budgets over social investments. And Ryan Tumulty notes that the Libs are at least gesturing toward making well-being a priority in their budget development.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Andrew Jackson writes about the opportunities missed when governments restrict their economic policy to propping up the corporate sector, rather than seeking to innovate directly in the public interest:

The received wisdom among economists used to be that governments should just set broad “framework” policies such as low taxes, less regulation, and fewer barriers to trade. It was up to the private sector to decide what and where to invest. Anything smacking of hands-on “industrial policy” was to be avoided.

Rejecting this dogma, the influential UK economist Mariana Mazzucato argues that government leadership and public investments are critical to building innovative economies. She has shown that publicly funded research well in advance of immediate commercial opportunities as well as direct support for strategic corporate investments have been central to the growth of innovative capacity.

Here in Canada, traditional hands-off policies have signally failed to boost our weak record of innovation. In that context, an expert business panel appointed by the Harper government called for more public investment in venture capital, and a shift in emphasis from tax measures to direct government support for strategic private sector investments.
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The government may have listened to Mazzucato on the pivotal role of public investment in boosting innovation, but they have not heeded her advice to consider long term public equity stakes so as to reward taxpayers when these investments pay off, and to anchor footloose investments.

While the federal government is indirectly taking a stake in some new venture capital investments through BDC, the intent is very much to exit early in the game once a company goes public rather than to remain for the long haul. So the government shoulders the risk but does not benefit from the long-term payoff.

To conclude, the innovation agenda marks another incremental turn away from “framework” economic development policies. But the shift is unlikely to be transformational unless it is scaled up and accompanied by a greater role for long-term public investment in the knowledge-based economy.

- Meanwhile, Matt Bruenig examines the alarming level of wealth inequality within the boomer generation - particularly when home equity is set aside. And the Economist discusses how automation is restricting the availability of employment while exacerbating inequality.

- And that represents a problem in multiple policy areas, as Lana Payne highlights the connection between happiness, equality and social trust.

- Chantal Hebert points out how the Trudeau Libs are showing nothing but disdain for the concept of Parliamentary accountability. And the Globe and Mail criticizes Trudeau's plan to eliminate any chance for MPs to respond meaningfully to a majority government's whims.

- Finally, Roy Romanow discusses the how our health care system can be both more efficient and more compassionate by focusing on prevention, rather than responding only to diseases and injuries once they've already arisen.

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Roy Romanow writes about the dangers of focusing unduly on raw economic growth, rather than measuring our choices by how they actually affect people's well-being:

At the national level, the picture that emerges over the past 21 years is a GDP rebounding post-recession but Canadians literally continuing to pay the price. From 1994 to 2008, the living standards domain rose 23 per cent. Then it plummeted almost 11 per cent and has yet to recover. Gains made on reducing long-term unemployment and improving the employment rate were lost. Income inequality is rising. And, despite increases in median family incomes, millions of Canadians struggle with food and housing costs. When living standards drop, community, cultural and democratic participation follow suit. Surely, this is not our vision of equality and fairness in Canada.

(Canadians) were hardest hit in the leisure and culture domain, which declined by 9 per cent overall. We’re taking less time enjoying arts, culture, sports — even vacations — the very activities that help define us as individuals. On the eve of Canada’s sesquicentennial, household spending on culture and recreation is at its lowest point in 21 years.

To begin to narrow the gap, we can build on strengths, such as the education domain. Since domains are highly interrelated, we know that when more people graduate from high school and university, there is a positive effect on health and on almost all aspects of social, economic, and community participation. Strength in community vitality shows Canadians feel they belong and readily help one another. Collectively, we sense that action is required. There is growing support for forward-thinking programs, such as basic income and upstream health care approaches that tackle well-being issues at their roots.

- Neil MacDonald highlights some of the obvious problems with the Libs' plan to go even further down that road with an infrastructure bank. And Dru Oja Jay argues that instead of pushing to put all major infrastructure development under the control of the existing financial sector, the Libs should be working on building a banking system that works for people.

- Carl Zimmer discusses the devastating effect global warming is already having on the Arctic region. And CBC reports on the massive health benefits of eliminating the use of coal power.

- Finally, Chelsea Nash reports on Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand's observation that there are necessarily tradeoffs between facilitating voting and centralizing information in the hands of political parties - and it should come as no surprise that the Cons are trying to prevent the former by claiming their entitlement to the latter. And Althia Raj reports that Thomas Mulcair is leading the charge to restore public funding in order to reduce the influence of big money in politics.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Hamilton Nolan interviews Branko Milanovic about inequality on both a national and international scale - and how there's little reason to take heart in reductions in the latter if it's paired with increases in the former:

Gawker: Is it fair for people to ask what good the reduction in global inequality is doing them, if within their nations inequality is on the rise? 

Milanovic: Global inequality is such an abstract concept, simply because there is no global government. Telling people in rich countries who have had no increase in real incomes, stagnant median wages and so on, that on the other hand global inequality is going down because people who are much poorer than them are getting richer—it’s something that maybe they would like in an abstract sense, because everyone is happy there are fewer poor Chinese, but you may not be as happy if these Chinese are taking your job. So I don’t think a politically reasonable defense of the current situation is to tell the people who feel they’ve been losing economically within their own country that, on the other hand, they are contributing to some greater good externally.
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Gawker: What do you think the wisest move is, for those who are not the highest earners, to mitigate inequality? 

Milanovic: If the solution were simple, we would have done it. But if you agree with that sort of description of the perils of populism and plutocracy, then the answer is really greater attention from the winners of globalization towards those who are dissatisfied. Because the well understood self-interest at the top would tell them that you cannot just continue with policies forever if you have a significant pool of people who are unhappy. So the self-interest would say, “let’s see what we can do to make their position better.” It could be higher tax on the top incomes, closing down the loopholes they have at the top that lobbyists have been very successful at making, encouraging small shareholders—broadening the ownership of capital, which is very heavily concentrated...

This is not a short term solution, because whatever change you make now is going to take five or ten years to make an impact. But you cannot just ignore it forever.

- Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne examines how a basic income could work in Canada.

- Anjuli Patil reports on a move among municipalities to resume providing services directly as they learn about the higher cost and lower effectiveness of privatization. But Andy Blatchford writes that rather than taking the public's interests into account, the Trudeau Libs are looking at large-scale plans to turn public assets into private profit engines. And Brent Patterson points out just a few of the problems with that course of action.

- Daniel Tseghay and Samantha Ponting point out that actual workers have been almost entirely excluded from a federal review of the temporary foreign worker program.

- Jason Warick reports on Roy Romanow's new role as co-chair of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness.

- Finally, Marie-Danielle Smith highlights the disproportionate impact of climate change on First Nations communities. And Reid Southwick reports on new research showing the growing health gap between First Nations people and other residents of Alberta.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Teresa Ghilarducci laments both the state of the union movement in the U.S., and the lack of any public discussion as to how to rebuild the strongest voice most citizens have against corporate excesses. And Bob Bryan recognizes that unions are nothing short of necessary to a balanced economy, while Alana Semuels writes about the lack of good jobs created when businesses "onshore" to anti-labour jurisdictions.

- Meanwhile, Zeeshan Aleem highlights how Minnesota has thrived after raising both upper-end taxes and its minimum wage. And Trish Hennessy takes a look at the success of living-wage employers in Ontario.

- Sean McElwee theorizes that it may be possible to encourage even the U.S. Republicans to accept meaningful income redistribution as long as it takes the form of tax credits rather than direct spending.

- Steven Hoffman and Patrick Fafard suggest a few "easy wins" for Justin Trudeau's first actions in office. And for those thinking bigger, Roy Romanow and Greg Marchildon make the case for a national pharmacare program.

- Finally, the CCPA's latest Monitor focuses on climate change in the lead up to the Paris conference later this month. Fiona Harvey reports that the latest UN review of international climate change commitments suggests that the targets set to date fall far short of what's needed to limit the damage to two degrees Celsius. And Christina Figueroa is optimistic that the world is ready for meaningful action against climate change, while Derrick O'Keefe highlights how Paris will test Justin Trudeau's willingness to put the public good over the interests of oil barons.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- In advance of this weekend's Progress Summit, Robin Sears comments on the significance of the Broadbent Institute and other think tanks in shaping policy options:

The Center for American Progress was the wakeup call for progressives around the world. Independent-minded, massively funded, deeply professional, it was created to develop winning agendas for a new Democratic president. Key Obamites trained there. Core strategies and goals were polished there. Their success helped to spawn a third generation of think tanks who understood that to have real impact, good ideas had to be married to credible execution.

In Canada today, the two ‘conviction-based’ parties of left and right as political scientists are wont to label conservatives and social democrats—have thriving think tanks that have played important roles in both the idea baking and the training of a new generation of political activists. The Manning Centre—unlike the Fraser institute—has become less fringe and more effectively political. The Broadbent Institute has quickly found its groove as a forum where greenies, left liberals, New Democrats, and independent activists can hammer out new progressive visions and the tools to deliver them.
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The Broadbent Institute’s executive director Rick Smith and his small but impressive team seem so far to have found their footing, pushing the envelope a little, rallying partisans as required, and avoiding the curse of think tanks everywhere: becoming pedantic, boring, and irrelevant. Their annual gatherings of the progressive clans have exceeded most cynical old-timers’ expectations; convening a new generation from outside partisan politics, from the NGO and environmental movements, left liberals and social democrats, and helping them build bonds both personal and political.

Ten years from now—or maybe much sooner—one may expect a proud young minister celebrating the success of a dramatic new initiative, just endorsed by Parliament, telling reporters, “Well, it all started late one boozy night, at the Broadbent summit!”

- Meanwhile, Desmond Cole interviews David Hulchanski on rising inequality in Toronto and elsewhere. And Kate McInturff notes that increased inequality is just one of the harmful results of an obsession with fighting deficits rather than improving the lives of citizens.

- Roy Romanow highlights the imminent dangers facing Canada's health care system if we don't fill in missing pieces including a pharmacare program.

- Raveena Aulakh reports on the Council of Canadians' damning study on the protection of water in Canada. And on the subject of regulatory negligence, Allison Martel finds that CN Rail has seen a massive jump in derailments even as it's carrying more hazardous products including crude oil.

- Finally, Bob Hepburn discusses how Stephen Harper decided to use the politics of fear as his main means of clinging to power. And thwap observes that a reasonable amount of Parliamentary pushback has gone a long way in countering the spin when it comes to C-51.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Elias Isquith interviews Mark Blyth about his book on the disastrous consequences of austerity, while Paul Krugman writes that austerity is particularly sure to cause economic destruction when combined with a push toward consumer deleveraging. And Bruce Campbell looks to Syriza as an example of how people have real political choices - even when parties try to tell them otherwise out of either corporate ideology or fear.

- CBC reports on Generation Squeeze's study showing the need for greater social spending to support young Canadians.

- But Angella MacEwen is rightly concerned that the Cons are instead (at least nominally) putting employment policy in the hands of someone whose stubborn refusal to let government play a positive role for citizens stands out even by Con MP standards.

- Finally, Ed Broadbent and Roy Romanow argue that our elected representatives need to defeat the Cons' terror bill:

CSIS has now been given powers to engage in the active disruption of activities that it believes threaten the security of Canada, a power that was once illegally exercised by the RCMP and which led to the creation of CSIS with the mandate to focuso exclusively n intelligence gathering – not to engage in activities that often would otherwise be illegal. As the recent unfortunate history of intelligence agencies in the United States and Britain shows, we should be wary of this expanded mandate for our country’s intelligence arm.
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Terrorism is a threat throughout the world, including Canada. We cannot adopt a passive attitude toward it. We must invest in discovering terrorist threats and in stopping them. But national security also means defending our democracy, and that depends on holding the loyalty of citizens and maintaining their confidence in a just and stable government. This requires tolerance for diverse opinions, respect for personal integrity and timely and effective accountability for governmental conduct, including security operations. Shortchanging these will only weaken our strength as a nation – and our security.

And Stephen Lautens duly mocks Stephen Harper's apparent belief that he's defending Canada against the Loch Ness Monster from his closeted control centre - though I have to wonder whether Harper merely mistook "fear" for "fish" among the two leading types of mongering.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Trish Hennessy's latest numbers focus on the skills gap myth in Canada. And PressProgress documents a few of the Cons' damaging public service cuts which kicked in yesterday, while Theresa Boyle reports on the end of Canada's health care accords (featuring the observations of Roy Romanow on the end of meaningful federal participation in our health care system).

- Scott Stelmaschuk's latest post fits nicely with the theme of yesterday's comment on the importance of seeing politics first and foremost as a means of improving the world around us - rather than a game defined in terms of winning, losing and entertainment:

If we want to tackle election fraud and fair elections, the first place to look isn't to the voter: It's to the parties. We need to ensure that parties are following the laws that are written down for them; and that even a single rogue campaign worker is punished for daring to step outside those bounds. We need to stop letting parties find 'gray zones' in the laws, and instead insist that all parties remain on the fair footing that we're supposed to offer.

Who cares if it's not technically illegal or only against the spirit, but not the word, of the law? Parties, it seems, will take the shortcuts and moral lowroad to achieve the victory of winning it would seem. Democracy is supposed to foster policy discussion and alternative visions for our country; that is not what we've been getting.

We've been getting petty squabbles, bruised egos, and the spewing of vitriol on such a level that you'd think every single political opponent of everyone else is the Antichrist come to Earth. This is what happens when parties focus on winning for the sake of winning, rather than winning for the sake of improving your country. And frankly, it's time that we as electors demanded better.

 - And Michael Harris notes that it's particularly worrisome when the party which has most eagerly flouted the law in past elections is now unilaterally rewriting the rules for its own benefit in the future:

The Fair Elections Act is almost like one of the dark novels of Evelyn Waugh. How absurd is it that the party that cheated in the In-and-Out scandal is now redesigning the voting process? What are they trying to fix — the system or the next election?

How absurd is it that the agency that found fraud in the 2011 election — cheating with information taken from the CPC’s own closely-guarded database — is now being carved up like Thanksgiving turkey? No powers of subpoena, a muzzled Chief Electoral Officer and the investigative arm of EC now reporting to the Director of Public Prosecution? Investigations no longer public unless there are charges? What do you call that, reform or revenge?

Greeting soldiers returning from Afghanistan while having your lawyers in court arguing you don’t have a social contract to look after them. Closing veterans offices. Unilaterally cancelling the rights of public service unions and their members. Stealthy, retroactive measures hidden in an omnibus bill to legitimize the improper appointment of a Supreme Court justice. More of the new normal.

Have you noticed how everything to do with government in Canada these days is either secret, under investigation, or in court?

- Finally, Stephanie Mencimer writes about Kathryn Edin's work in getting a ground-level view of poverty and its effect on families in the U.S. Which contrasts nicely against Richard Seymour's look at the few richest individuals in the U.K. - and the massive amount of capital which insulates them from the realities of everyday life.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Roy Romanow comments on Medicare as a major part of Canada's identity:

The achievement of universal health care took a long, acrimonious and protracted road. It is no surprise to me that Saskatchewan was at the forefront of this journey. The province’s citizens learned many hard lessons during the desperation of the Great Depression and the sacrifices of the Second World War. They learned about generosity, about hardship and fairness, about boom and bust. They learned about the imperative for co-operative action. They came to understand that the notion of shared destiny was key to our existence.

And so it is with other regions in Canada, where geography and demographics may vary, where many waves of immigration began with an initial sense of isolation, but where we all learned to see survival and progress as a test of our ongoing ability to come together and to remain united around shared values.
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(T)he well-being of our citizenry goes beyond health care; it is dependent on preventing illness and tackling the more fundamental barriers to good health, including social, economic and environmental factors. How we treat the environment has a direct impact on our health and the longevity of a sustainable economy. The growing gap between the rich and poor directly affects our health and the fiscal demands on our health-care system.

Every day, Canada faces new challenges that prompt key questions about what kind of people we are and what kind of future we wish to shape.

As we celebrate the birth of our nation and of medicare, we must ask ourselves: What kind of Canada do we want? Because, as I see it, the choice Canadians make about health care is fundamentally intertwined with our values and future.

- Meanwhile, the Cons are backtracking on their much-criticized cuts to refugee health care by declaring that they only want to leave some refugees high and dry. But it's still highly dubious the Cons are even more explicitly taking the power to pick and choose among new arrivals to Canada to determine who they want to have access to health care.

- Speaking of the Cons' unaccountable and opaque political decision-making, Don Lenihan theorizes that the Harper reign will be seen as the culmination of centralizing pattern started under Trudeau while pointing out why that's a problem:

The lesson here is simple: too much centralization undermines legitimacy. The more scope a government thinks it has to act unilaterally in the name of effectiveness, the less legitimacy those actions will have.

- But while we should be on the lookout for ways of making governance more open and democratic, Barbara Yaffe's musings about a no-party system don't strike me as a particularly realistic or desirable response.

- Finally, Dr. Dawg runs down some of the important stories of public dissent that were largely whitewashed in favour of all-jingoism, all-the-time Canada Day coverage.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Roy Romanow rightly notes that Canada's federal government needs to take a lead role in building our public health care system, rather than abandoning the field to the province.

- Now that the Cons' budget has raised the question of whether we can afford to do even less to protect against oil-related environmental disasters, the list of pipeline spills receiving public attention continues to grow - with Mike de Souza pointing out 100 spills and accidents under federal jurisdiction alone over the last two years.

- Mary Agnes Welch reports on the latest study (this one based in Winnipeg) showing the effects of inequality and income disparity on health.

- Katherine Norton writes about Saskatchewan's impending federal boundary redistribution.

- And finally, Paul Dechene laments Regina's complete failure to do anything about a housing crisis that's been festering for years.

A Healthy Society - Chapter 1 Discussion

Erin has already excerpted part of Ryan Meili's new book, A Healthy Society. And I'll be providing a brief chapter-by-chapter discussion of A Healthy Society in advance of its formal launch - beginning with this post discussing the book's introduction and first chapter.

In his introduction, Roy Romanow addresses a familiar theme: the need for a better means of measuring social progress than GDP alone, with a reference to the Canadian Index of Wellbeing. And Ryan Meili's first chapter introduces his own central organizing principle focusing on health (consisting of physical, mental and social well-being) - then informing what goes into that standard with a list of the factors which most heavily influence individual health:

In order of impact, the factors that make the biggest difference in people’s health are: 1. income status; 2. education; 3. social support networks; 4. employment and working conditions; 5. early childhood development; 6. physical environment; 7. personal health practices and coping skills; 8. biological and genetic factors; 9. health services; 10. gender; 11. culture; and 12. mass media technology (i.e., television viewing and physical inactivity).
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The lesson to be drawn from the list of determinants, and the one that is stressed to students, is that the most important factors that determine people’s health are social, and the most effective solutions are political.

Now, the difference between a narrow focus on economic measures and the need to consider more broadly what we seek to achieve through public policy is one that I've discussed before. But let's compare Meili's list and order of factors to the closest we currently have to an index of overall well-being.

Most of the factors listed by Meili map reasonably well onto the eight indicators contained within the CIW:

Income Status - Living Standards
Education - Education
Social Support Networks - Community Vitality
Employment and Working Conditions - Time Use
Early Childhood Development - Education
Physical Environment - Environment
Personal Health Practices and Coping Skills - Healthy Populations
Biological and Genetic Factors - n/a
Health Services - Healthy Populations
Gender - n/a
Culture - Leisure and Culture
Mass Media Technology - Healthy Populations / Time Use

One CIW factor - that of democratic engagement - isn't reflected in Meili's list. But we might be able to explain that as reflecting societal rather than individual health - such that it makes sense to include it in the CIW even if it doesn't correlate directly with individual determinants.

That said, it's still noteworthy that the equal weight given to different categories within the CIW doesn't seem to fit with the variable importance of the social determinants as contributors toward individual health. And indeed, two high-ranking social determinants (education and early childhood development) are lumped together within a single CIW indicator.

So as my key takeaway from the opening to A Healthy Society, I'll pose a couple of questions for discussion. Can we reconcile the differences (in weight if not in kind) between the social determinants of health referenced by Meili and the measures of well-being within the CIW? And if not, do we need to develop a new metric of societal health to inform our discussion of what we can improve based on Meili's core premise?

Leadership 2012 Roundup

I haven't done a roundup post in quite some time (having focused instead on candidate analysis and preliminary endorsement posts over the past week). But in advance of today's Montreal debate, let's take a look at some of the noteworthy developments from the week.

- Niki Ashton spoke to the Canadian Wheat Board Alliance about her rural priorities while observing again that the eliminating of the single-desk Wheat Board without any input from producers could be a huge turning point when it comes to prairie support.

- Paul Dewar was the latest subject of a Joanna Smith profile while adding Dennis Bevington to his list of endorsers. And Dewar alsoanswered Aaron Wherry's questions, including this on the question of whether the party's work in expanding its base is a matter of values or language:

Q: I’m not quite clear to what degree the debate is actually happening within the party, but to the degree that it is, where do you find yourself on does the party need to go to the centre or does the party need to continue on the path it’s on? Do you take a particular position on that?

A: I’d like to build on the work that we had done in the last election, which was fine-tuning our message and small, practical steps to get to a more equitable, egalitarian society. I think that’s what’s proven successful in the past and certainly my connections to the Manitoba party illustrate that I’m very much interested in taking that path. In doing so though, you don’t say, well, we’re not going to talk about the importance of our relationship with labour or the importance of working people. You actually open it up to say and we think that other people should benefit from solid pensions and benefits and that government has a role to play here.

- Thomas Mulcair unveiled endorsements from Robert Chisholm and David Christopherson, while releasing a labour rights policy which mostly sticks to the NDP's existing platform.

- Peggy Nash promised a Royal Commission on Electoral Reform aimed at implementing proportional representation - which looks to have been nicely timed to catch the attention of any new party members supporting Nathan Cullen in the hope that his joint nomination process would lead to PR.

- Brian Topp released a new endorsement statement from Roy Romanow, while facing round of questions about Bay Street contributions of his own.

- On the commentary side, Dan Lett offered his analysis of the field in the wake of last weekend's Winnipeg debate:

The NDP should be happy to see seven candidates in this race. It tells Canadians this is a job worth fighting for. The Manitoba wings of the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties, which are both in search of a leader but have not a single declared candidate between them, would be well-advised to pay close attention to the breadth and strength of the slate of candidates looking to fill the late Jack Layton's shoes.
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In late March, Layton's shoes will be filled by a new leader who will be given a little more than three years to prove 2011 was something more than an anomaly. Sunday's debate did not demonstrate with certainty who the best person is for that job. But it did show that the NDP has some fascinating options.

Meanwhile, Alice crunched Dewar's polling numbers to figure out which candidates have an apparent path to victory. Quinn compiled the available candidate positions on LGBT issues. Gloria Galloway summarized the voting process and noted that between 80% and 95% of ballots may be marked in advance of the convention. And Ian assembled his candidate rankings.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Roy Romanow, Linda Silas and Steven Lewis make the case for significant federal involvement in shaping health policy in Canada:

Provinces can’t transform their systems on their own regardless of how much money they spend. The politics of health care are simply too fraught, and the vested interests too powerful, to effect large-scale change. Even worse, the jurisdictions routinely engage in unconstructive bidding wars for personnel and are whipsawed by vendors, such as pharmaceutical companies, that exploit their isolation and vulnerabilities. Ottawa should play a major role in creating a more collegial and co-operative federation that overcomes obstacles to reform and bargains more effectively in the public interest.
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Ottawa must proudly stand up for single-payer, not-for-profit health care and ensure that its financial contributions reinforce this commitment across the country. Several provinces have turned a blind eye to blatant violations of the Canada Health Act, and Ottawa has stood by in indifference. The country needs to know where its government stands on the basic character and values of medicare.

And the general public agrees in overwhelming numbers: indeed, I'm not sure I can recall any poll question receiving the 97% support given to the idea that "the federal government's responsibility for the Canada Health Act is important". Which makes it all the more maddening that it's the other 3 per cent who are in charge.

- Dan Leger remembers when Stephen Harper promised open and accountable government.

- Paul Krugman points out that the 0.1% benefitting from trickle-down politics is already a remarkably homogeneous group - and likely getting more so due to decreased social mobility linked to increasing inequality.

- Sure, it may be piling on at this point. But Sixth Estate checks Canada's lobbying records and finds that if the Cons actually cared about limiting the influence of foreign wealth, they'd be a lot more concerned about the large amount of lobbying originating from foreign corporations.

- Finally, Paul Wells compares the Libs' convention to a "controlled flight into terrain":

I keep running into Liberals this weekend who are delighted by the “turnout” and the “energy” of their event, as though those were signs of something. I don’t have the heart to remind them they’re in a convention centre, which makes millions of dollars off organizations that fill it year-round with turnout and energy. Upcoming events at this same venue include the Autoshow, the NHL Fan Fair, the Helicopter Association of Canada’s 16th Annual Conference and Trade Show, and Sexapalooza. None of them is going to lead the next government either.

What wins elections is ideas large numbers of Canadians find attractive, ideally large numbers of Canadians who didn’t vote for your party the last six or eight times you asked. At a time of widespread economic uncertainty approaching mass panic, the ideas likeliest to intrigue Canadians are the ones closest to their own preoccupations about money, family and community. No, that’s not me swallowing the Harper koolaid: it’s a pretty good summary of the contrast Jean Chrétien drew with the Mulroney Conservatives when he ran his denim-vs.-Gucci campaign in 1993.

I ran into two friends at the convention who asked me, in the tone of the Liberal times, whether Canada should abolish the monarchy. I pointed out that most Canadians could not possibly care less. (As a kind of bonus, the ones who do care are divided in surprising ways.) Meanwhile, on the convention’s first day, NDP leadership candidate Peggy Nash unveiled an innovation platform that was uneven, but superior in important ways to anything any Liberal has produced in a half decade. The NDP leadership candidates are unanimous in supporting some form of carbon pricing. The Liberals, who bet all their marbles on carbon pricing only four years ago, are not considering any resolution on the question this weekend. But they’re all over the pot legalization debate that holds the nation in the grip of apathy.
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Students of flight safety are familiar with the terrifying, paradoxical notion of “controlled flight into terrain.” That’s when a well-functioning aircraft, with a conscious and alert flight crew, somehow flies into a mountain or the sea or a cornfield before anyone on board notices what is happening. The flight crew isn’t dead when this happens, or not until it does. They would be very upset if a prominent author tried to tell them they were dead. And in most cases they are working hard, in good spirits, until the last disaster happens. It’s just that they are distracted or oblivious, so none of their hard work does anything to change their course.

New column day

Here, on how the Wall government's idea of health care "innovation" utterly fails the test for reasonable experimentation by prejudging the results.

For further reading...
- The man responsible for the most thorough study of Canadian health care in recent memory reminds us that as a general rule, public service delivery of core services is more efficient than the alternative.
- CUPE points out that the Omni experiment actually resulted in less surgeries being performed in Regina than the previous year, while my earlier post highlights the region-based cuts that opened the door for private CT services.
- Frances Russell writes about some key myths in our current health-care debate.
- And assorted sources point out the problems with privatized delivery models in B.C., Ontario and the UK.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Dr. Dawg views the latest attacks on workers by employers in Canada as a new front in all-out class warfare. And the New York Times notes that some of the main policies being pushed by the anti-worker side serve absolutely no purpose other than to damage unions and the workers who stand to benefit from them.

- Yes, the real story in the tar sands lobby's cynical effort to attack the international environmental movement is the fact that far more has been spent pushing for the interests of the oil industry:

West Coast Environmental Law executive director Jessica Clogg said its campaigns are not dictated by the sources of its funding.

She said, instead, they seek funding to support the initiatives they decide on as a British Columbia organization.

"Polls have shown that 75 to 80 per cent of British Columbians are opposed to tanker traffic on our coast," said Clogg.

She also argued their funding is dwarfed by that of oil producers and refiners, which put up $100 million to promote the Northern Gateway project and push it through the regulatory review.

One of those was China state-owned Sinopec Corp. Enbridge also put up another $100 million of its own money.

- But for those who do distinguish between foreign and domestic oil interests, Alison points out that even on that point there's far more reason for concern about foreign intervention on the side of the tar sands than in the opposite direction.

- Roy Romanow worries that the Harper Cons' decision to do absolutely nothing with health care other than cut back on funding expectations may do serious damage to the concept of a universal national health care system:

“To say, ‘Goodbye and good luck’ could be the beginning of the end of a reformed modern-day functioning health-care system,” said Romanow.

“If that argument is advanced, we have a prescription for a patchwork-quilt series of programs by the provincial governments based on their fiscal capacity.

“It will mean more privatization in more provinces, or some combination of private and public. It will be a very much weakened fabric of national unity without Mr. Harper’s direct involvement.”

- Finally, Joan Bryden runs down the endorsements in the NDP's leadership race. Mia Rabson hopes the leadership campaign will lead to a strong push for proportional representation. And Lou Arab offers his analysis of the candidates.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your weekend.

- Dr. Dawg highlights the fact that a shift toward private charity doesn't do anything to escape the Cons' politicization of public services, as the Ottawa United Way is systematically defunding exactly the same women's programs that have come under fire from the right on the national level.

- Sixth Estate is fleshing out the Fraser Institute's pay-for-play research model - leading me to wonder just what kind of disclaimer could possibly justify reporting on future "studies" from an institute that so shamelessly promotes itself as a service provider to big-money interests seeking a predetermined outcome.

- pogge comments on the insanity of the Cons' funding to stop tobacco farming which was administered by an industry lobby group - and seems to have done nothing but provide free money for continued production.

- Finally, Roy Romanow weighs in once again against the efforts of Preston Manning and others to push more-expensive private care as some kind of solution to health costs:

"The notion of private and public is a bit of a mistaken debate," he said. "The evidence is very very clear that the core provision of health services is more effectively done through the public model."

And he suggested that the discussion of federal versus provincial funding is a moot point.

"The problem with respect to the whole issue of funding is the cost will have to come out of somebody's pocket one way or the other," he said, warning that giving the provinces the means to raise their own health care funds is the wrong way to go.

"Patchwork quilt Canada," he said. "It's as simple as that."

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Assorted material for your midweek reading.

- With market-based quackery being pushed yet again as a quick-fix "solution" for our health care system, Brian Topp reminds us what the most thorough look at the future of health care in Canada actually found:

Roy Romanow rejected the American model for health care. Not just because it produces grossly inferior health outcomes compared to public systems. But because American health care is simultaneously grossly expensive, with out-of-control annual cost increases.

It is also true that Mr. Romanow proposed that Canada's public health system be built on – with a catastrophic pharmacare program, homecare, and a move toward a “primary care” model – change paid for through a modest increase (compared to American growth rates) in federal transfers.

These steps would improve health services – by ensuring people can afford critical drugs; heal at home; and be dealt with as a person instead of as a transaction by the health system.

These steps would also control costs in the public health system. Using the public system's power as a group buyer to hold down the spiraling costs of pharmaceuticals. Getting people out of crowded hospitals (the fundamental solution to crowded emergency rooms). And evolving toward a better model to compensate health providers.

- I'd like to think Douglas Bell is right in his view that Stephen Harper won't succeed in demanding an electoral do-over if he falls short of a majority. But I'd much sooner put money down on Paul Wells' take that there's going to be just as much of a fight after the election as during the campaign.

- Dan Gardner compares the Libs' dilemma to that of WWI-era Germany in being squeezed by strong rivals on each side. But I'd think that analogy only further exposes their folly in declining to try to turn one into an ally.

- Cliff nicely defines why many NDP voters don't have any interest in the Libs' invitation to fold for the greater glory of Michael Ignatieff:

To the casual observer, or the observer deliberately avoiding the details - liberals and social democrats may seem to have more in common than liberals and conservatives - but have you noticed that in provinces where the NDP is a legitimate, even default governing option that the provincial 'liberals' and 'conservatives' have long since merged into default chamber of commerce conservative parties? Have you noticed that in the UK the two parties that felt their policies were most aligned to form a coalition were the 'liberals' and the 'conservatives'? You don't think the same thing would happen in Canada in a heartbeat if it ever looked like the NDP was becoming a viable governing option?

When we say 'Liberal/Tory, same old story' that isn't just a slogan, we New Democrats really do believe that on the really important issues particularly on economics and social spending there is no real daylight between Liberal and Tory policy books.

So pardon us if we look for an alternative to either the 'liberal' or 'conservative' wings of the single corporatist Bay Street Party presented to us as our only options. Pardon us if we fight for every seat where we have a chance - usually because the local progressives are tired of being wooed in an election and then pimped out as soon as the vaguely more progressive sounding corporatists who call themselves 'liberals' beat the vaguely 'conservative' sounding corporatists they agree more than disagree with.

- Finally, Dr. Dawg serves up a disturbing list of what the Cons consider to be normal.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Andrew Coyne's proposal for a Truth in Politics Act offers an interesting way of trying to hold politicians to their promises. But surely our current federal political scene offers the most obvious lesson as to why it would likely be ineffective.

After all, the Harper Cons have responded to every allegation of wrongdoing - however well-founded - by attacking the messenger and claiming that any attempt to hold them to account is politically motivated. And is there much doubt that anybody looking to enforce a campaign promise would immediately face exactly the same type of abuse, dragging the entire system into the same hyperpartisan political ground where the Cons so love to operate?

- Roy Romanow contrasts the pursuit of limitless resource exploitation with the choice to encourage sustainable well-being:

On Thursday, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing releases a report tracking trends in Canada’s environmental performance from 1994 to 2009. My hope is that it will empower Canadians to say, “For God’s sake, put the brakes on and turn the wheel” because we can no longer accept — in this country or any other — the degradation stemming from our seemingly endless and unsustainable appetite for fossil fuels, water, metals and energy. The notion of limitless growth is no longer a viable economic paradigm.
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Fortunately, we Canadians are not caught up in some form of predetermined drift, rushing headlong toward an inescapable future. We have the collective capacity to shape our future, to decide which values we will embrace, which visions we will pursue and which policy decisions we will enact.

But preserving our natural resources and improving our environment for future generations will require more far-sighted policies and enforcement by government, better stewardship by industry and lifestyle changes by individuals.

- Kevin Milligan's analysis of the cost of the Cons' plan to hand yet more money to those who need it least is well worth a read. But Milligan's analysis does fall into the trap of focusing needlessly on the over/under line rather than the distribution of benefits on the income scale - and just as an increase in the number of people below the income-tax cutoff does absolutely nothing for those already there, so too does the line at which a household could put all of its assets into a TFSA a look rather insignificant to Canadians without plenty of capital assets to move into a plan in the first place.

[Update: I should have known Armine Yalnizyan would already be on the case.]

- I'll temper Dan Gardner's latest by noting that at least some repetition for effect and clarity isn't necessarily a bad thing: indeed, the principle of "say what you're going to say, say it, then say what you've said" is well-established in plenty of arenas beyond the political one without any implication that the audience is being held in contempt. But he's right to note the absurd lengths to which the concept has been applied, particularly on the faux populist right.

- Finally, James Laxer nicely summarizes the limited group of voters who the Cons want to see at the polls - and why we can't afford to let them succeed in driving others away:

Here’s the profile of those they’d like to see at the polls: white men over fifty, especially those who don’t spend much time in city centres; Christian fundamentalists; those in “ethnic” communities who have been vetted by Jason Kenney (a leaked memo exposed the Conservative plan to harvest votes from those they depict as “ethnics”); gun owners; youngish neo-cons who want to grow up to be like David Frum (not a large demographic); and, of course the rich, as well as those who think they will be rich. Women are generally unreliable; and the young are a downright menace. If you’re under twenty-five, Harper almost certainly wants you to pass on voting. Look what happened to the nineteen year old woman who was muscled out of a Harper rally because Conservative spooks found a picture of her on Facebook side by side with Michael Ignatieff.
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Lower voter turnout is not just a lucky break for the Conservatives. Right-wing political parties have been assiduously working to lower voter turnout in Canada, the U.S. and Europe for several decades. While running for office, the leaders of these parties denigrate government, those who work for governments and the benefits to society that flow from government programs. They promote the idea that politicians are cynics who are “all the same”, “in it for themselves” and “not to be trusted.” (The rich, who DO vote, know that whatever the ethical merits of those who hold leadership positions of right-wing parties, they can always be counted on to back business against labour and to spend billions bailing out the banks when that is required.)

Negative advertising, it has long been known, has the effect of driving down voter turnout in the electorate at large.

No, Stephen Harper does not want YOU to vote. His plan is to tranquilize the majority of Canadians into a state of torpor while he takes complete control of the instruments of the Canadian state.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading...

- The most remarkable part of Kevin Page's latest report isn't so much the fact that it suggests doubt that the Cons' claims to creating jobs were utter nonsense, but rather the group of stakeholders who actually hold that viewpoint:

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s department has issued numerous progress reports on federal stimulus spending, but his department has not tied job numbers to specific projects. The budget watchdog sought to answer that question by surveying 1,143 organizations that were eligible to receive grants under the program; it received 644 responses.

And if even the exact organizations who were eligible to benefit directly from the stimulus were generally skeptical that it accomplished anything, the number would figure to be far lower when one takes into account those who weren't.

- Meanwhile, the Cons' latest bit of fiscal genius is their strategy for dealing with the inflated cost of the F-35s they've ordered. Which consists of...hoping that in what would have to be a global first, the price for military procurement will somehow go down:

Canadians can't be told precisely what the top criteria are that made only Lockheed's plane eligible, said Dave Burt, Canada's director for air requirements, because they are "highly classified," and "a question of national security."

Burt conceded the $70-million to $78-million price tag per plane is not guaranteed. It could rise or fall, he said, depending on the timing of the delivery. Lockheed Martin has only recently started the F-35's mass-production process. The earlier the slot in which an aircraft is produced, the more costly it is.

Burt added that commodities prices and other factors could also drive up prices. "But they could also drive prices down," he noted.

Your responsible economic managers at work.

- Dan Gardner slams Michael Ignatieff (and others) for choosing poor spin over remotely realistic analysis of the issues facing Parliament in dealing with the striking down of prostitution laws. But leaving aside the obviously flawed "not my job" line, does that make for any difference from how the Libs (and indeed Cons) handle most issues?

- Finally, Gary Mason criticizes the idea that politics can be taken out of health care decision-making. But isn't the bigger problem that plenty of processes that were supposed to produce non-partisan advice - such as, say, the Romanow commission - have been utterly ignored by the governments who claimed they wanted some better ideas to strengthen our health care system?

And no, we're not done here

Among the latest indications that nobody cares about data collection and any controversy will blow over without the Cons having to offer anything even remotely approaching a reasonable explanation for gutting the census, here's Roy Romanow:

Policy shapers and government decision makers have underscored that the absence of reliable data will make it harder to set priorities and allocate government spending and develop, monitor and evaluate policy changes. The United Way of Toronto has said that it will lose its most reliable tool for understanding neighbourhoods, weakening its ability to target root causes. Marketers and business are wondering how they will tailor their products and services to specific communities. More than a few Canadians have noted the irony of a country reducing its information flow in the midst of an information age.

Let’s consider the gap in our knowledge that might have existed if the last long-form census in 2006 had been voluntary. How would we have known with unimpeachable certainty that the top 20 per cent of Canadian families earned 10 times more that the bottom 20 per cent? That for every dollar earned by a native-born Canadian, a recent immigrant male earned just 63 cents and female 56 cents? That 20 per cent fewer farmers worked at home on a family farm, or that the numbers of commuters rose by more than 9 per cent?

Census data are more than just a compendium of numbers. They enable us to view the changing face of our country and those who live in it. They allow us to prepare for the future by understanding the past and present.
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Information must be the bedrock on which we build public policy in areas that matter to Canadians. Trying to get a snapshot of our country with inaccurate and unreliable data is like using a camera without enough pixels. The blurrier the picture gets, the harder it becomes to recognize the face of our nation.

Mind you, Romanow's examples of the type of information we'd lose in the absence of an accurate census are probably exactly what the Cons are eager to suppress.

But that doesn't mean that anybody who isn't under Harper's thumb has any particular sympathy for the argument. And Mel Cappe, Pierre Fortin, Michael Mendelson and John Richards aren't under Harper's thumb:

If there is one overriding shared value among Canadians, it is a desire for good government. This does not mean we are indifferent to the Americans’ concern for “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It does mean we are prepared to incur certain obligations to enable good government. Among them is a willingness to accept mandatory participation in a census able to generate reliable information about Canadian social conditions. Information provided is confidential, and this confidentiality has never been violated.
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This is an occasion for MPs to stand up and be counted. We call for the three opposition leaders to agree on the text of a resolution in defence of census integrity and preservation of the mandatory long form, and to state publicly their intent to move it upon reopening of the House of Commons. In the spirit of democracy and non-partisanship, the vote should be open, unconstrained by party whips. Parliamentary endorsement of the integrity of the census would be a powerful affirmation of a core Canadian value.

Then there's Alec Bruce:

(T)he controversy over Ottawa's decision to eliminate the mandatory requirement that a fraction of Canadians fill out the long census form next year is not, as the Harperites would have us believe, an inconsequential salvo launched by malcontents. It cuts to the very heart of democratic meaning and responsibility in a tolerant, pluralistic and informed society.

More than 200 organizations -- representing teachers, economists, businesses, activists, progressives, moderates, conservatives, and liberals - have implored the federal government to reverse its tack. Without this periodic statistical evaluation, they argue, fiscal, monetary, social, industrial, education, and health policies will suffer.

But just as recently as yesterday, Mr. Harper and Industry Minister Tony Clement - pointing to the support they've received from a grand total of three rabidly reactionary think tanks - clung to their entirely discreditable claim that Canadians don't want their government to insist they do anything under penalty of law.

This specious argument conveniently fails to acknowledge that no resident of this country has ever served time for failing to answer any portion of the census. It also makes light work of the actual, numerous and eminently enforceable obligations of citizenship, which are already installed.

And David Campbell, acknowledging he was wrong to have given the Cons the benefit of the doubt when they were elected:

I was one of those people back in 2006 who chuckled when we were told that Stephen Harper was "scary" and had a hidden agenda to transform Canada into a totalitarian, right-wing state. My view was that if he was elected prime minister, national politics would tilt more conservative - but the election cycle every few years ensures that no political party can take the government too far to the edges of the ideological spectrum.
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In the end, I think the Conservatives have corrupted the census process - maybe for good. Even if they reverse the decision, there may just be enough Canadians who either decide to not fill it out or who fill it out with inaccurate information because of all the scaremongering.

There is just about zero chance any personal information from filling out the long form will ever be leaked.

I feel like we are in an especially strange episode of The Twilight Zone. Scary is back.

All of which is in addition to the document dump which has already confirmed that Tony Clement and the rest of the Cons have lied through their teeth. And since the Cons have helpfully released those documents only in part, we can look forward to plenty more revelations to come (since nobody's going to buy "national security" as an excuse for keeping the redacted parts secret from the Industry Committee).