Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Melissa Healy reports on yet another dangerous variant of COVID-19 which is spreading in California. Nicky Phillips writes about the likelihood that the coronavirus will become endemic even once full vaccinations have been carried out. Jessica Elgot, Noel Sample and Nicola Davis report on new modelling showing how relaxed rules in the UK could cause tens of thousands of deaths. And the Canadian Press reports on a new survey showing the popularity of public health measures in Quebec even as far too many provinces stall or even backslide in protecting against community transmission.

- Meanwhile, Heather Scoffield asks whether the federal government's COVID relief will address some of the inequality arising out of the pandemic - though she's too generous in presuming there had been progress made before coronavirus hit. 

- Madlen Davies, Ivan Ruiz, Jill Langois and Rosa Furneaux expose how Pfizer and other drug manufacturers have used COVID vaccines to hold Latin American countries for ransom.

- Andre Picard rightly wonders when we'll start acting to remediate the well-known problems with our long-term care system, rather than falling into perpetual cycles of study and inaction.

- Finally, Murray Mandryk writes that Texas' disastrous confirm both the value of Crown corporations, and the need to ensure they have adequate resources to plan for disaster scenarios in ways that private operators won't bother with. And Roque Planas takes a look at some of the frivolous nonsense pushed by Texas Republicans as they've neglected their state's basic infrastructure.

On distributive options

Both the Saskatchewan NDP and Saskatchewan Party have released their election platforms. And for all of the electioneering around what might be anticipated outside of those, we can already tell plenty from how each party has framed its flagship promises.

Take, for example, how the parallel Crown rebate promises from each party actually work.

 The NDP's plan involves using SGI's existing surplus to provide lowered rates and rebates:

Lower SGI rates by roughly $85 per vehicle and provide an immediate $100 rebate to all policy-holder...

Those benefits would then reach 800,000 licensed drivers: see SGI's latest annual report (PDF). The total cost is projected at $120 million (see the fiscal tables here) (PDF).

The Saskatchewan Party, meanwhile, is offering a 10% rebate on SaskPower bills:

A re-elected Saskatchewan Party government will introduce a one-year 10% rebate on electricity charges on power bills for all SaskPower customers...

The 10% rebate on the electrical charge on customer’s SaskPower bills will come into effect on customer’s December 2020 bills. Customers will receive monthly savings on their bills for 12 months starting in December 2020.

But while that has been framed in terms of its effect on residential and farm customers, the vast majority of the effect - and cost - involves incentivizing the use of power in the commercial and industrial sectors.

According to SaskPower's latest annual report, the province's $2.6 billion in electricity sales include $792 million to 130 power utilities (e.g. Saskatoon and Swift Current's local utilities); $571 million to just under 399,394 residential accounts; $521 million to 63,757 commercial accounts; $451 million to 19,466 oilfield accounts; and $190 million to 57,978 farm accounts.

The average benefit of $260 million in rebates would then be: $142.97 per residential customer (not the $215 specified in the platform); $327.71 per farm customer (not the $845 stated in the platform); $817.17 per commercial customer (unmentioned in the platform); and $2,316.86 per oilfield customer (unmentioned in the platform). And in the latter cases, it's not hard to anticipate that the availability of the rebate would actually incentivize the use of less-efficient power use options for as long as the price of power is being artificially held down.

The end result is that the Sask Party's plan costs twice as much as the NDP's to reach just over half as many people directly, with a built-in bias toward commercial interests generally (and the oilpatch in particular). Needless to say, it's not hard to see which of those options is better targeted at making life more affordable for people. 

Now, I'd think it's fair to question whether either of these planks should be considered a top priority given all of the other areas in desperate need of public investment. 

But it's certainly worth noting that the Saskatchewan Party is looking to spend far more Crown money to smuggle giveaways to the oilpatch and the corporate sector. And both the province's balance sheet and those of its families will be far better off with the NDP's choices.

On exclusionary measures

Even as Scott Moe and his party have declared they're determined to let people die on Saskatchewan's streets for lack of funding, and warned that there's nothing but further real wage cuts on the horizon for public servants, they've managed to find public resources to keep pushing nuclear power - no matter how clear it is that the public is rightly opposed, and there's no rational economic basis to do it. 

So how can we explain the Saskatchewan Party's insistence on ignoring the potential to completely transform the province's grid to a renewable one by 2030, and instead dedicating scarce resources to an unproven technology might at best begin to be available as a more costly alternative at that time? 

One obvious difference between renewable energy and nuclear power arises in terms of the inputs. While renewable energy requires only a one-time installation and subsequent maintenance, nuclear power would match its fossil fuel predecessors in requiring a constant supply of fuel - ensuring continued reliance on a rip-and-ship economy.

Any reasonable observer would see that as reason to avoid nuclear. But a government which has never overcome its addiction to oil seems bent on finding an alternate vice.

We can also add another distinction to the mix, particularly compared to the Saskatchewan NDP's Renew Saskatchewan plan for distributed renewables.

Particularly as work continues to be done on storage options, the essence of any system based on renewable energy is one of interconnection. Since no one location can rely on constant solar or wind energy, energy security comes from a willingness to build and tie into a larger, more stable system than can be built in a single community (or even province).

And with that come some opportunities: for activists and community organizations to influence who benefits from power development, and for unions to organize a workforce which can be expected to remain in place over a relatively long time span.

In contrast, to the extent modular nuclear power has any plausible niche, it's as the form of energy most easily disconnected from the people and structures around it.

Looking to build a mine and associated company town which can maintain a plausible threat of picking up and leaving at any time? A luxury bunker for the wealthy which goes out of its way to minimize any ongoing connection to the rabble outside? Those are the scenarios where there's an obvious advantage to a single power source which is highly concentrated, easily moveable and suited for operation apart from any wider grid.

In other words, Moe's fixation on nuclear power figures to ensure that neither the generation nor the operation of Saskatchewan's future power system benefits anybody beyond the investor class more than can possibly be avoided. And voters will have their choice this fall between a party offering systematic benefits for everybody, and one looking to make sure power (in every sense of the term) is even more concentrated in the hands of the few.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Trevor Tombe highlights how equalization actually works - and how the bleatings of Jason Kenney, Scott Moe and other demagogues would serve only to eliminate anything worthy of the name.

- Mary O'Hara rightly argues that child poverty in the UK and U.S. is an outrage demanding an immediate response - and the same holds true in Canada as well. Alexandra Zannis comments on the need to move from temporary holiday charity to a commitment to human dignity and public support throughout the year. And Al Wiebe writes about his experience of poverty during the holiday season.

- Elizabeth Warren makes the case for a government generic drug manufacturer to ensure that public health isn't at the mercy of corporate rent-seeking. And Mariana Mazzucato discusses the importance of mission-oriented governance, including recognition of the positive role governments can and should play in economic development.

- Meanwhile, Murray Mandryk points out the lack of even a basic maintenance plan at SaskPower as a painful example of a vital public service being neglected.

- Finally, Max FineDay writes that reconciliation is only possible if everybody works toward it - and that there's far too little indication that non-Indigenous Canadians are prepared to put in the effort.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Bandy Lee discusses the need to treat inequality as a social disease which calls for immediate treatment:

Residents of countries with higher income inequality have worse health, not just of the poor but of the rich (Subramanian and Kawachi, 2006). Greater income inequality is also associated higher levels of mental illness (Burns, Tomita, and Kapadia, 2014); murder and assault (Hsieh and Pugh, 1993); obesity and obesity-related death (Pickett, 2005); as well as drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, racism, incarceration, and a number of other societal problems (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009). Such countries also have more sociopolitical instability in the form of assassinations, coups, and riots (Alesina and Perotti, 1996); worse institutions in terms of less efficient governments, higher regulatory burdens, and weaker rule of law (Easterly, 2007); and more corruption (Jong-Sung and Khagram, 2005). The wealthy have stronger motivations to minimize redistribution while at the same time having more power to influence institutions, given the relatively higher share of their resources (Buttrick and Oishi, 2017).

Economic inequality may further put the world at risk of both environmental and nuclear harm. Taming the planet’s climate or reducing nuclear weapons requires trust and cooperation, but these are difficult in the setting of economic inequality and exploitation. Income and wealth gaps accelerate the environmental crisis (Martinez-Alier, 2002), with increasing local and global conflicts over the sharing of the burdens of pollution and access to natural resources. Previous failures to reach consensus in climate summits have been attributed to, among other factors, conflicting policies of rich and poor countries, which disagree on the implementation of mitigation measures (Vasconcelos, Santos, Pacheco, and Levin, 2014). When there is greater income and wealth inequality between nations, there is an erosion of trust due to the ensuing social and cultural differences, and greater perceived need for military defense, including nuclear weapons for nations that can afford them.

Social and economic inequality is linked to disease, death, and other forms of harm. To better understand these societal ills, we must look at inequality as a disorder in itself.

- And Sanjutka Paul examines how a bias toward top-down, property-based decision-making has systematically stacked the deck against workers, particularly in service-based sectors.

- The Trade Justice Network rightly criticizes the Libs for abandoning the concept of progressive trade by implementing the TPP. And Nicholas Caivano and Richard Elliott argue that if Justin Trudeau is going to give in on anything to renegotiate NAFTA (however unnecessary that may be), we should expect him to defend fair drug prices rather than fighting to protect corporate-friendly arbitration structures.

- Karina Roman points out that the Libs' privatized Infrastructure Bank is sucking up millions of public dollars without apparently accomplishing anything.

- Finally, Stephanie Taylor reports that SaskPower is backing away from plans to relocate operations to the Global Transportation Hub - but that the public is already on the hook for the land purchased as part of the previous attempt to portray the GTH as something other than an utter failure. And Adriana Christenson reports on the Saskatchewan Party's hidden selloff of SaskEnergy gas plants.

On the social environment

Having written my column this week on one of the more glaring areas of increasingly alarming neglect from the Saskatchewan Party under Scott Moe, I'll take a moment to point out the other single policy change that I find most striking.

D.C. Fraser has reported on a reduction in funding to climate change programming, with that choice having been the subject of some commentary. But a cut in what was already a pathetically small budget line for ministerial operations stands out particularly in the light of one of the few (if tiny) additional revenue sources the budget actually includes:

Saskatchewan Finance Minister Donna Harpauer announced the PST exemption on both light used vehicles and Energy Star appliances will be discontinued. 
...
The Finance Ministry says energy savings already provide a strong financial incentive to buy Energy Star appliances. The removal of this exemption is expected to generate $3 million in revenue.

That explanation is especially noteworthy in treating individual financial considerations as effectively the only reason to value energy-efficient appliances. 

Never mind the seemingly obvious advantages of energy conservation for the purposes of reining in climate change, or minimizing the load on the province's power system. Moe has decided that he doesn't care about those issues - and only wants people making positive consumer choices where (and to the extent) they're based on purely individual financial considerations. 

Of course, that position is entirely on brand with the Saskatchewan Party's hostility toward any policy oriented toward broader environmental issues. And indeed, the removal of incentives for greener consumer purchases can be seen as a mirror image of Moe's intractable refusal to discuss responsible carbon pricing (or any other form of greenhouse gas emission reduction).

But by singling out energy efficiency for higher taxes even while applying his party's boilerplate anti-tax rhetoric elsewhere, Moe is making clear that his party is determined to make the complete rejection of environmental responsibility into a foundational principle - a view which is also consistent with the slashing of the province's already-meager climate change branch. And voters who recognize that we have a common interest in a liveable environment have every reason to push back.

New column day

Here, on how the Boundary Dam carbon capture and storage project - cited incessantly by Scott Moe and the Saskatchewan Party as a substitute for a climate change action plan - has in fact proven a costly failure both as a power source and a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

For further reading...
- I've previously written about the Saskatchewan Party's entirely hollow excuse for a climate change plan.
- Sean Kavanagh reported on Manitoba's agreement to participate in the Canada-wide climate policy framework which leaves Saskatchewan alone among Canadian provinces in doing nothing to deal with greenhouse gas emissions generally.
- Stefani Langenegger reported on the cost difference between coal (in any form) and wind power at least as far back as 2016. And the Canadian Press pointed out how much further renewable prices have dropped in Alberta.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Nathan Akehurst writes that the Carillion collapse was just the tip of the iceberg in the corporatization and destruction of the UK's public services. And Neil Macdonald points out that the Trudeau Libs are pitching privatized infrastructure as easy money for investors - and that they can only make that offer at the public's expense:

Pretty clearly, Morneau and his masters in the PMO don't want people understanding the infrastructure scheme too well. So far, it's been rather vaguely explained, something his own staff have complained about.

The official version is that the government tosses in some money, then investors arrive and jump in with an awful lot more money, enough to build roads and bridges and electrical grids and train lines and waterways and who knows, maybe even new hospitals and airports, and things will get done that simply wouldn't happen otherwise, and Canadians will have a sparkling new public square without the tiresome, conventional pain of paying for it.

Quietly, meanwhile, the government has reportedly been promising big investors a dream: lots of return, not much risk.

According to information in documents obtained by the Canadian Press, the government is promising a healthy, guaranteed "revenue stream" for years. The exact return is not specified, but such investors tend to demand between 10 and 20 per cent – "equity-like return and bond-like risk," as the Wall Street aphorism so neatly puts it. 

Best of all for the investors, according to the documents, the government is suggesting it might even chip in some extra cash to pad investors' returns. It's a path to heaven with no alternate route to hell.

And guess who will pay for all this? The cheery fog exhaled by Morneau and his fellow cabinet ministers isn't very specific about that, but there is ultimately only one bill-payer, and we all know who he, or she, is.

- Meanwhile, Fatima Syed writes that Canada's opaque financial system makes us an easy tool for tax evaders and money launderers.

- Francine Kopun reports on the latest details from the bread price-fixing scheme among Canadian grocers, with both wholesalers and retailers colluding to increase prices 15 times over a 14-year period.

- Judith Lavoie points out a new study from the David Suzuki Foundation charting unreported releases of methane from British Columbia's natural gas sector. And the Corporate Mapping Project examines the massive carbon liabilities in Alberta oil sector.

- Finally, Geoff Leo reports that the latest step in the Saskatchewan Party's plan to counter the global movement toward renewable energy by burning the dirtiest substances possible involves a project to use chemical-soaked railway ties as fuel. 

Substandard

There's plenty of ugly news coming out about the continued problems with Brad Wall's pet carbon capture and storage project - including thoroughly unimpressive output numbers, and payouts to Cenovus to make up for a failure to deliver the carbon dioxide it's supposed to be capturing.

But perhaps even more worrisome than the project's well-known failures is the limited definition of success.

When it comes to emission standards, SaskPower's own self-declared metric is to "continue meeting federal emission regulations". (Keep this filed away for next time Wall complains about the federal government setting standards: even the single project where he's put any resources into promised emission reductions can't find any coherent provincial goals to try to meet.)

But what does it mean for a carbon capture project to comply with federal standards?

One possibility is that it means absolutely nothing for the moment. When the Harper government set up its regulations governing coal power, it made exemptions available for carbon capture and storage projects. And if it has that exemption, SaskPower can technically "continue meeting federal emission regulations" regardless of how much CO2 it dumps into the atmosphere until 2017.

Even if SaskPower is holding itself to the federal standards for coal plants regardless of any exemption, though, that's far from an ideal outcome.

The federal standards for coal plants are intended only to match the carbon output of existing natural gas plants based on 2012 technology. And those emit between ten and a hundred times as many greenhouse gases as renewable alternatives.

So based on SaskPower's self-declared goal, Wall's multi-billion-dollar gamble has a payoff no greater than the possibility of matching the output from existing fossil fuel technology - even as much cleaner alternatives have become far more affordable. (And that ignores the emission costs of increased oil output which are presumably Wall's reason for pushing CCS in the first place.)

Of course, the money spent on Boundary Dam Unit #3 can't be recouped. But there's no reason at all to keep pouring precious public resources into the CCS money pit - particularly when we can achieve a far cleaner power grid simply by matching what's already working around the world.

New column day

Here, on how Brad Wall is looking like more and more of a climate change laggard compared to every other leader in Western Canada.

For further reading...
- CTV broke down the state of provincial climate commitments here. But as John Klein noted, the Saskatchewan Party has long since tried to hide its former promises.
- I've previously linked to reporting and analysis on Alberta's recent climate change plan. And CJOB reports that Manitoba will be unveiling its new plan shortly.
- Environment Canada has data on emissions by province here, including British Columbia's drop since 2005 (along with every other province east of Manitoba).
- Meanwhile, for background information on emissions by industry and sector, see Environment Canada's national sectoral breakdown here, as well as Saskatchewan's more specific one here.
- Finally, CBC reported on SaskPower's recent renewable energy announcement, while SaskPower's own explanation and analysis seems to be limited to a blog post (offering all the more reason to think it's more posturing than policy). And Murray Mandryk offered his take on the announcement as well.

On suckers' bets

We've sure learned some important lessons from the failure of the first billion-dollar Boundary Dam CCS project:

SaskPower's president, Mike Marsh, says the company had hoped to make a decision on whether to retrofit another two units at Boundary Dam power plant by next year.

But on Monday, Marsh told reporters that decision has been pushed back to 2017.

"You don't undertake a project in excess of $1 billion without having your facts," Marsh said.

Meanwhile, Brad Wall's plan is still to hope that the rest of the world is paying little enough attention to be suckered into making the same mistake he did. So what's the market for billion-dollar technologies among customers who lack access to teh Google?

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Roderick Benns interviews Michael Clague about his work on a basic income dating back nearly fifty years. And Glen Pearson's series of posts about a basic income is well worth a read.

- Meanwhile, Julia Belluz interviews Sir Michael Marmot about the connection between inequality and poor social health. And Gillian White writes about a lack of access to credit (and the resulting reliance on payday lenders) as just one of the many extra stresses facing people with lower incomes.

- Jamie Livingstone is optimistic that Scotland has hit a tipping point in reversing inequality. And Carol Goar looks for reason to hope in the fact that the Libs' new cabinet at least includes some responsibility for social justice issues - though Daniel James Wright points out that the pursestrings are being controlled by a rookie MP with strong corporate connections and little inclination toward progressive policy.

- Erin Obourn offers a survey of a few of the major problems with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And others are highlighting issues ranging from the entrenchment of temporary foreign workers, attacks on digital freedom including access to source code, limitations on personal privacy, damage to Canada's auto sector and the draconian enforcement of more harsh intellectual property provisions. 

- Finally, Paul Hanley weighs in on the Saskatchewan Party's appalling mismanagement surrounding the Boundary Dam coal plant.

New column day

Here (via PressReader), arguing that there's no longer any escaping the fact that Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party can't be trusted to be either honest or reasonable about its biggest and costliest decisions.

For further reading...
- Mike McKinnon reported here on the glaring gap between what Brad Wall knew about the failings of the Boundary Dam carbon capture and storage project, and the propaganda he spread publicly starting last year. Geoff Leo has exposed one set of design issues which have been withheld from the public. And the Canadian Press raises the question of what SaskPower is supposedly trying to sell abroad.
[Update: See also McKinnon's later report questioning the business case for Boundary Dam in the first place.]
- Meanwhile, Ryan Ellis reported here on the ballooning costs of the Regina bypass (including a P3 maintenance scheme), while the concerns of affected residents about the location of the Tower Road interchange have been brushed of. And CBC reported here on the simple request for traffic lights to ensure safer travel in the short term.

On radioactive proposals

Never mind Brad Wall's hand-picked group of nuclear industry shills using public money to further their own profits found that nuclear power is not price-competitive even among an artificially limited set of options absent a substantial carbon price - and that Wall himself refuses to set one.

And never mind that a subsequent public consultation found that "the overwhelming response...was that nuclear power generation should not be a choice for Saskatchewan".

When it comes to locking in a high-cost, high-risk nuclear plant just as renewables are emerging as a viable large-scale alternative, Wall won't take "no" for an answer. But if Wall is telling us that he insists on having Saskatchewan pay for an expensive nuclear toy with the rent money saved by living in Ontario's basement, that's all the more reason to ensure he isn't in a position to make the call.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Mariana Mazzucato comments on the role of the innovative state - and the unfortunate reality that we currently lack anything of the sort due to corporatist thinking:

(T)hanks in part to the conventional wisdom about its dynamism and the state’s sluggishness, the private sector has been able to successfully lobby governments to weaken regulations and cut capital gains taxes. From 1976 to 1981 alone, after heavy lobbying from the National Venture Capital Association, the capital gains tax rate in the United States fell from 40 percent to 20 percent. And in the name of bringing Silicon Valley’s dynamism to the United Kingdom, in 2002, the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair reduced the time that private equity funds have to be invested to be eligible for tax reductions from ten years to two years. These policies increase inequality, not investment, and by rewarding short-term investments at the expense of long-term ones, they hurt innovation.


Getting governments to think big about innovation is not just about throwing more taxpayer money at more activities. It requires fundamentally reconsidering the traditional role of the state in the economy. Specifically, that means empowering governments to envision a direction for technological change and invest in that direction. It means abandoning the shortsighted way public spending is usually evaluated. It means ending the practice of insulating the private sector from the public sector. And it means figuring out ways for governments and taxpayers to reap some of the rewards of public investment, instead of just the risks. Only once policymakers move past the myths about the state’s role in innovation will they stop being, as John Maynard Keynes put it in another era, “the slaves of some defunct economist.”


- And Ross Gittins describes how an obsession with balanced budgets and tax tinkering is preventing Australia from even discussing meaningful social and economic goals.

- Of course, that will sound all too familiar based on the Harper Cons' treatment of Canada. And Carol Goar surveys some of the crazy policy choices which have led us to be grossly overreliant on unstable resource prices, while Trish Garner notes that poverty remained endemic even a supposedly strong economy prior to the resource bust.

- Murray Mandryk recognizes that the Wall government's determination to favour private consultants rather than building a strong public sector workforce is thoroughly counterproductive. And Paul Hanley laments the waste of $1.4 billion of public money on a carbon-capture scheme which is both dirtier and more expensive than renewable alternatives.

- And finally, the CLC rightly blasts the Senate for refusing to apply either second thought or any apparent sobriety in rubber-stamping an anti-labour bill which all parties agree contained serious errors.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Friday reading.

- The Cons' latest line of talking-point addiction isn't passing without some substantial comment from Canada's political press. Today, Jeffrey Simpson lambastes Stephen Harper and his party for trying to wipe out their own history and promises, while Dan Gardner considers the Cons to be a Monty Python skit in progress (minus the humour of course). And Aaron Wherry continues to document the farce. 

- Meanwhile, Susan Delacourt suggests that we should expect any government to leave out democracy in no worse condition than when it took power - and I'll readily agree with that as a general principle. But it's also worth noting that the surest way to continue in the wrong direction is to focus solely on the problems with any given government, rather than holding all parties to the standard.

- Likewise, I appreciate the purposes behind Steve's proposal for a political code of ethics (including a requirement that public statements have some basis in fact). But I'm rather wary of any policy which may give top-down parties just one more way to force MPs to stay on a predetermined script - as MPs will surely see it as safer to take their party's word for the facts than to strike out on their own.

- Christopher Majka thoroughly reviews the effect of voter suppression in the 2011 federal election.

- Finally, Peter Prebble rightly criticizes the combination of Con neglect and Sask Party coal boosterism that's locking Saskatchewan into a needless dependency on coal power.

Saturday Afternoon Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- Dave Coles comments on Brad Wall's attempts to erase a century's worth of gains when it comes to labour rights, but recognizes that we instead have an opportunity to again lead the way toward social progress:

During this moment of relative prosperity in the province, Saskatchewan is perfectly placed to once again lead the way towards greater equality for families, youth, seniors and all members of our communities. Rather than moving backwards, this overhauling of labour legislation should be a moment to advance workers' rights.

How about making Saskatchewan the first province to bring its minimum wage up to the poverty line and to tie it to a cost of living allowance? Or why not make Saskatchewan the first jurisdiction in North America to reduce the work week to 35 hours? Even better, the new labour code should entrench the idea that all workers deserve collective bargaining rights and a say over workplace decisions?

Short-sighted people will say "this can't be done, business won't survive". But, those same people argued that universal health coverage wasn't feasible. On the fiftieth anniversary of Medicare, Canadians across the country are thanking Saskatchewan for proving otherwise.

- Meanwhile, Bruce Johnstone points out the utility sector as another area where Saskatchewan's commitment to functional public services rather than blind faith in markets has paid off handsomely compared to chaos faced by Alberta:

Saskatchewan energy prices are competitive with, or lower than, those in Alberta. What about security of supply?

You may have heard about the rolling blackouts that hit Alberta last week. Four coal-burning power plants went down without warning last Monday, and backup natural gas-fired generation wasn't sufficient to make up the difference. With a fifth coal plant already out of commission, the province was caught 1,200 megawatts short, causing power outages in Calgary and Edmonton.

This is the second major supply shortfall to hit the province in last 10 years, which is two too many for most Albertans. Meanwhile, Saskatchewan has been coping with its usual spate of local power outages due to storm damage, but nothing like the rolling blackouts that Alberta had to implement to prevent the entire power grid from crashing.
...

This is not to say that our more regulated energy system is perfect, But when you look like the track record of our energy Crowns, SaskPower and SaskEnergy , they've been able to provide more reliable service at relatively low cost compared with our bigger, wealthier, deregulated sister province to the west.

- The Canadian Press and Dr. Dawg both discuss Carleton University's willingness to trade off any semblance of academic freedom to an oil magnate in exchange for a multi-million donation.

- Finally, I generally see Elections Canada as deserving the benefit of the doubt when it comes to its choices in how to enforce the law. But as Saskboy notes, the sheer absurdity of its refusing to enforce rules against foreign electoral interference because the perpetrators aren't in Canada to be investigated looks like a rather worrisome sign.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Ed Broadbent discusses the connection between unions, democracy and equality:

In democratic societies, there are two principal arenas of non-violent conflict over power: the state and the workplace. Just as political democracy entails the right to select or reject one’s representatives and enables us to pursue, share and exercise power in the real world of free citizens, democracy in the workplace also requires that workers have their own representatives and some real power.
...
Canada’s stronger unions have helped ensure we have less extremes than in the U.S. (falling wages tend to be limited to the middle-class) and have certainly not undermined our economic performance, comparatively. Even hard-hit Ontario (which has the second lowest unionization rate in Canada after Alberta) has an unemployment rate significantly below the U.S. average.

Don’t believe those politicians and pundits who say unions threaten prosperity. The effort to emasculate unions is about silencing the voice of Canadian workers, and at risk are our hard-won rights – both inside and outside the workplace.

- And David Olive points out some important reasons not to take Canada's economic future for granted.

 - I'm somewhat more skeptical than Michael Harris about the impact of yesterday's pro-evidence protests. But it's certainly worth doing what we can to prove him right in thinking a sea change is afoot.

- After much hemming and hawing, Christy Clark has succumbed to NDP pressure by questioning the impact of a Gateway pipeline on British Columbia. Meanwhile, Andrew Nikiforuk reveals what Enbridge's top executives took away from their Michigan oil spill - with "take the money and run" apparently leading the way.

 - Finally, SOS Crowns wonders whether this week's SaskPower rate hike announcement represents some of the fallout from privatized production.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- The blogosphere is now out in force in chasing down new angles on Robocon. Dave pointed out that the misleading calls look to be linked to a "target seat management unit" set up by the Cons' central brain trust; Saskboy connected that same unit to familiar Harper apparatchik Ryan Sparrow; Sixth Estate both highlighted how the Cons' desperation has pushed them into several easily-disproved lines of spin and caught a Con donor trying to change the subject and sully the good name of Elections Canada all at once; and Alison neatly tied all the news together.

Meanwhile, one of Richard Nixon's co-conspirators declared the vote suppression scam to be worse than Watergate, with Susan Delacourt concurring; Scott Tracey noted the direct pressure the Cons' national campaign exerted in Guelph; Chantal Hebert tied Robocon into the Cons' greater disconnection from anything resembling what Canadians want out of our government; Nycole Turmel cited Robocon as just another example of a broken Ottawa which needs to be fixed by a progressive government which has respect rather than contempt for its citizens; and Gerald Caplan nicely summarized the real danger posed to Canadian democracy by the Cons' war-against-all-dissenters mindset.

- EKOS' latest poll shows the NDP holding in the high 20s - meaning that even without a permanent leader, the party is within the margin of error against a collapsing Con vote.

- SOS Crowns points out the latest example of how the Sask Party can't pretend to show interest in, say, renewable energy without setting up a nine-figure corporate giveaway which undermines the ability of the province's public sector to provides services.

- Jesse Brown notes the failure of Canada's ISPs to impose usage-based billing has only led to another attempt to use the CRTC's regulatory scheme as a means to ensure government-endorsed price-fixing at consumer expense.

- Finally, Rob Anders made news. No further comment necessary, though followup invariably only makes the story even better.

Tuesday Morning Links

Tab-clearing time...

- Joe connects the dots between what the Wall government hasn't told Saskatchewan's citizens and what Northland Power is telling its investors - and the predictable result is that the province being kept in the dark is getting a raw deal:

According to Northland Power Income Fund’s annual information form, filed with securities regulators in March of this year, under the PPA’s the projects “will receive monthly payments that are designed to cover all fixed costs and investment returns.” The agreements also provide “protection against changes in the market price of natural gas, as fuel costs are passed through to SaskPower.” Furthermore, the contractual structure of the projects “is designed to ensure predictable, stable and sustainable cash flows over the entire” term of the PPA’s.

Or to put it another way, the one-sided deals guarantee a profit for Northland. What they ensure is a predictable, stable and sustainable cash flow from Saskatchewan to Ontario.

- Peter Wilby rightly points out that if the participants in the billionaires' "giving pledge" really want to make a positive difference in the world, the most important step would be to live up to their duties as citizens rather than looking to take credit for philanthropic largesse:

(W)e should welcome the Gates-Buffett initiative and applaud those who have joined it. Generous, public-spirited billionaires are preferable to mean ones. But remember that two-thirds of US corporations contrive to pay no federal income tax at all and that transfer pricing alone – a legal device, used, for instance, by Ellison's Oracle Corp, that converts sales in one country to profits in another where tax liabilities are low – deprives the US treasury of $60bn annually. Such sums, which pile more taxes on the poor and reduce funds for government projects that advance the public good, dwarf what the 40 billionaires propose to give away.

If the rich really wish to create a better world, they can sign another pledge: to pay their taxes on time and in full; to stop lobbying against taxation and regulation; to avoid creating monopolies; to give their employees better wages, pensions, job protection and working conditions; to make goods and use production methods that don't kill or maim or damage the environment or make people ill. When they put their names to that, there will be occasion not just for applause but for street parties.

- While there's still plenty of need for answers and accountability about the Cons' G20 security fiasco (civil rights abuses and all), it's also worth looking forward to the next time we're likely to see similar strategies employed to selectively suppress public activism. And it doesn't seem to be a coincidence that the RCMP's otherwise laughable musings about a "coup d'etat" parallel the language that the Harper Cons have used to talk about democratic votes in the House of Commons - raising the spectre that any public dissent against the Con government could be a target for the RCMP.

- Finally, Barbara Yaffe gives undeserved attention to a number of Cons who bear direct responsibility for the dumbing-down and polarization of the federal political scene, but are now putting on a show of hand-wringing over what they've wrought. We'll have reason to take them remotely seriously just as soon as they actually do something which could possibly loosen the control of the autocrat in charge.