Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Gillian White highlights Peter Temin's work on poverty and inequality - including the standard which a person trapped in poverty needs to meet in order to have any meaningful hope of escaping:

Temin then divides workers into groups that can trace their family line in the U.S. back to before 1970 (when productivity growth began to outpace wage growth) and groups that immigrated later, and notes that race plays a pretty big role in how both groups fare in the American economy. “In the group that has been here longer, white Americans dominate both the FTE sector and the low-wage sector, while African Americans are located almost entirely in the low-wage sector,” he writes. “In the group of recent immigrants, Asians predominantly entered the FTE sector, while Latino immigrants joined African Americans in the low-wage sector.”

After divvying up workers like this (and perhaps he does so with too broad of strokes), Temin explains why there are such stark divisions between them. He focuses on how the construction of class and race, and racial prejudice, have created a system that keeps members of the lower classes precisely where they are. He writes that the upper class of FTE workers, who make up just one-fifth of the population, has strategically pushed for policies—such as relatively low minimum wages and business-friendly deregulation—to bolster the economic success of some groups and not others, largely along racial lines. “The choices made in the United States include keeping the low-wage sector quiet by mass incarceration, housing segregation and disenfranchisement,” Temin writes.

And how is one to move up from the lower group to the higher one? Education is key, Temin writes, but notes that this means plotting, starting in early childhood, a successful path to, and through, college. That’s a 16-year (or longer) plan that, as Temin compellingly observes, can be easily upended. For minorities especially, this means contending with the racially fraught trends Temin identifies earlier in his book, such as mass incarceration and institutional disinvestment in students, for example. Many cities, which house a disproportionate portion of the black (and increasingly, Latino) population, lack adequate funding for schools. And decrepit infrastructure and lackluster public transit can make it difficult for residents to get out of their communities to places with better educational or work opportunities. Temin argues that these impediments exist by design. 

- Vickiie Oliphant writes that inequality is looming as a major issue in Germany's upcoming election. And Justine Hunter notes that the growing gap between the privileged few and the general public is shaping British Columbia's provincial campaign.

- Meanwhile, the Tyee introduces readers to Christy Clark's club of lobbyists. And Emma Gilchrist points out how the fossil fuel sector has turned substantial donations to the B.C. Libs into massive public subsidies and policy favours.

- Mike Crawley writes about Ontario's limited introduction of pharmacare for young people, while Thomas Walkom points out the limitations of the Libs' hastily-assembled scheme. And Meagan Fitzpatrick discusses the hope that Ontario's first step will lead to a national pharmacare plan - though the more important analogy seems to be that just like Kathleen Wynne, Justin Trudeau will start implementing progressive policy if and only if he recognizes that it's his only hope of avoiding being overtaken by the NDP.

- Finally, Tammy Robert highlights the fact that the Saskatchewan Party's indignity being forced on people who die while on social assistance bears no resemblance to how governments across Canada handle the issue. And Scott Stelmaschuk reminds us about the federal tax implications of Brad Wall's plans to sell off chunks of Saskatchewan's Crown Corporations.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Following up on yesterday's column, Michael Harris offers his take on how Stephen Harper refuses to accept anything short of war as an option:

Stephen Harper talks as if this is yet another of those good-versus-evil fables he is always passing off to the public as deep analysis and sound policy.

More honest and experienced minds make a more rational case. In the United Kingdom, the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove said that politicians are merely taking advantage of a distortion towards Islamic extremism. That distortion was branded on the public consciousness by the 9/11 attacks. It has since been used to exaggerate all kinds of threats, ISIS being just the latest of them.  Dearlove correctly points out that fighting in Syria and Iraq is essentially Muslim on Muslim.

He thinks that governments and the media make a great mistake in sensationalizing the threat represented by ISIS because the oxygen of publicity actually encourages their excesses. It is, he says, time to move away from the distortion that 9/11 understandably created, time to regain our footing. It is an idea not without appeal.
...
Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau are right, plain and simple. The PM needs to make the case for war, if there even is one to be made. And he needs to make it to the Canadian people, not in an interview with the Wall Street Journal while in the offices of Goldman Sachs.

If he doesn’t hold a real debate, it will demonstrate that he is in the same headspace as Republican freshman Senator and presidential hopeful Ted Cruz. According to one wag, Cruz’s idea of foreign policy is part John Wayne and part Sarah Palin; “shoot first and don’t ask any questions.” Sound familiar?

- Meanwhile, Duncan Cameron summarizes how we reached the brink of war, while Scott Stelmaschuk offers a more detailed analysis. Rick Salutin makes the case for non-intervention rather than bombing. Jeffrey Simpson points out that the Cons' supposed rationale and strategy are based on nothing but wilful ignorance and wishful thinking. And Anthony Fenton reports that the Cons are already misleading the public about the scope of Canada's current involvement.

- Tim Dickinson offers a thorough look at the Koch brothers' toxic empire. And David Dayen discusses how a "benching" remedy can make sure a corporation doesn't merely treat the price of stalling and eventually settling regulatory proceedings as a cost of continuing to do improper business.

- Finally, the Economist discusses the growing disconnect between work and wealth (and associated rise of inequality). But it is worth going further than the Economist proposes in response: in fact, the lack of a link between individual work and incomes serves as a compelling basis to both collect more revenue on higher incomes which don't reflect work or merit, and to ensure that work isn't a precondition to participation in society through a guaranteed basic income.

[Edit: fixed typo.]

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Abdul Abiad, David Furceri and Petia Topalova highlight the IMF's research confirming that well-planned infrastructure spending offers an economic boost in both the short and long term:

(I)ncreased public infrastructure investment raises output in the short term by boosting demand and in the long term by raising the economy’s productive capacity.

In a sample of advanced economies, an increase of 1 percentage point of GDP in investment spending raises the level of output by about 0.4 percent in the same year and by 1.5 percent four years after the increase (see chart, upper panel).

In addition, the boost to GDP a country gets from increasing public infrastructure investment offsets the rise in debt, so that the public debt-to-GDP ratio does not rise...

In other words, public infrastructure investment could pay for itself if done correctly.

- And the Montreal Gazette offers one example of an area where public investment is sorely lacking by pointing out the importance of making homes available as part of the fight against homelessness.

- Trish Hennessy's latest Index examines Canada's weak job market - including the continued shift away from secure full-time employment toward self-employment and other precarious, low-paying work. And the Huffington Post notes that even by the top-heavy metric that is GDP, Canada's economy is looking rather anemic.

- Which of course means that it's time for...more attacks on workers! There, Stephen Kimber notes, this time it's Nova Scotia's Liberal government breaking an election promise not to gratuitously attack health care workers - and rightly facing a backlash as a result. And Bryce Covert writes that the U.S.' already-woeful system of paid leave is getting worse by the year.

- Finally, Scott Stelmaschuk challenges Andrew Scheer's rationale for allowing irrelevant answers in Question Period by wondering why a tradition of unaccounable government would be worth preserving. And Ole Hendrickson laments the fact that we're governed by political operatives rather than representatives.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Ethan Corey and Jessica Corbett offer five lessons for progressives from Naomi Klein's forthcoming This Changes Everything.

- Following up on this post, Andrew Jackson fact-checks the Fraser Institute on its hostility toward the CPP. And the Winnipeg Free Press goes further in challenging the motives behind the "study":

Since the authors started out believing that the Canada Pension Plan and its investment arm are a "self-serving bureaucracy," it was predictable that they would find something objectionable about CPP administration. The surprise in the study is that the authors produced no evidence that private-sector pensions are more efficient. It is possible that they found evidence on that point but left it out of the published paper. Either way, their silence on the comparison suggests that the CPP stands up well to scrutiny.

A more useful study would produce evidence both from the public and private spheres. That study would have to be written by authors who gather the evidence first and then draw their conclusions. The study published this week seems more like the work of an agency with a narrow agenda -- what you might call a self-serving bureaucracy.

- Krishna Pendakur points out that the background to the B.C. Libs' latest war against teachers is several bargaining cycles worth of abuses of power which have left public educators with the lowest pay and the largest class sizes in the country. And Emma Graney reports that the Wall government's meddling with Saskatchewan's education system was based on precisely zero thought or consultation as to how shiny announcements would affect students in reality.

- Joel-Denis Bellavance and Hugo Grandpre break the story that the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development assembled an internal list of people requesting information about Jim Prentice's expenses.

- Finally, Carol Goar discusses how we need our health care system to be more inclusive rather than putting up barriers for marginalized people. And Scott Stelmaschuk makes the case for a guaranteed annual income.

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.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your weekend.

- Nick Kristof writes that the growing gap in income reflects a similarly growing gap in social perception - and that there's plenty of need to reduce both:

There is an income gap in America, but just as important is a compassion gap. Plenty of successful people see a picture of a needy child and their first impulse is not to help but to reproach.

...

There may be neurological biases at work. A professor at Princeton found that our brains sometimes process images of people who are poor or homeless as if they were not humans but things.

Likewise, psychology experiments suggest that affluence may erode compassion. When research subjects are asked to imagine great wealth, or just look at a computer screen saver with money, they become less inclined to share or help others. That may be why the poorest 20 percent of Americans give away a larger share of their incomes than the wealthiest 20 percent.

...

It’s true, of course, that the poor are sometimes lazy and irresponsible. So are the rich, with less consequence.

Critics note that if a person manages to get through high school and avoid drugs, crime and parenting outside of marriage, it’s often possible to escape poverty. Fair enough. But if you’re one of the one-fifth of children in West Virginia born with drugs or alcohol in your system, if you ingest lead from peeling paint as a toddler, if your hearing or vision impairments aren’t detected, if you live in a home with no books in a gang-ridden neighborhood with terrible schools — in all these cases, you’re programmed for failure as surely as children of professionals are programed for success.

So when kids in poverty stumble, it’s not quite right to say that they “failed.” Often, they never had a chance.

...

Johnny shouldn’t be written off at the age of 3 because of the straw he drew in the lottery of birth. To spread opportunity, let’s start by pointing fewer fingers and offering more helping hands.

- And in a similar vein, Ryan Meili highlights the absurdity of the Libs' trial balloon about barring anybody deemed insufficiently virtuous from Nova Scotia's health care system.

- Meanwhile, Suzanne Mettler discusses how a university system increasingly tied to connections and wealth is serving to reinforce class barriers in the U.S.

- Stephen Maher comments on the creeping and creepy authoritarism of the Cons' selective ethnic preferences. And Scott Stelmaschuk similarly points out their scorched-earth campaign in Quebec.

- Finally, Jennifer Ditchburn reports on the efforts of independent oversight bodies to avoid being sliced to ribbons by Mark Adler's private member's bill. But if their millions in budget cuts to many of the same offices offer any indication, the Cons seem to figure that euthanizing public watchdogs is a feature rather than a bug.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Pierre Brochu and David Green study the effect of minimum wage rates, and find a connection between a higher minimum wage and greater employment stability. But if there's a choice between stable, well-paying work and precarious employment where job churn and wage reductions are seen as the norm, far too many policy-makers are choosing the latter - as Annie Lowrey notes that U.S. states are actively slashing benefits for unemployed workers to force them to grab desperately at whatever is available.

- Meanwhile, Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato and Owen Zidar offer reason to doubt the theory that corporate tax giveaways have any redeeming social value. And Toby Sanger calls out Gwyn Morgan for attacking workers' pensions as being too lavish while collecting millions each year himself (plus enjoying preferential tax treatment on his stock options).

- Martha Rosenberg looks at six examples of drugs which were approved and mass-marketed in the face of massive risks and side effects - as big pharma chased down immediate profits at the expense of unwitting patients. And Scott Stelmaschuk highlights the lack of real choice for consumers - not to mention the lack of investment in the public interest - where a few well-connected corporate entities control most of the major goods and services people need.

- Sticking to the subject of illusions of choice, Thomas Walkom reminds us of the Libs' track record in federal government - featuring their simultaneously taking credit for both introducing and slashing the public programs which once did more to mitigate against corporate domination.

- Finally, Deborah Campbell interviews Ron Diebert about the dangers of mass surveillance. And Nafeez Ahmed provides a prime example of the type of excuse being used to brand large numbers of citizens as potential threats, noting that mere opposition to fracking has resulted in activists being labeled as terrorists.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Tim Harper discusses Stephen Harper's current list of distractions - with Rob Ford and his Senate appointees naturally topping the list. But sadly, while John Ivison may be right in noting that actual citizens are having trouble getting the Cons to bother administering federal programs, the combination of scandal and dishonesty doesn't seem to be slowing down their anti-worker omnibus legislation in the slightest.

- On the Senate front, Scott Stelmaschuk compares the Duffy payoff and cover-up to the long-forgotten Chuck Cadman scandal - with the key differences in exposing the story being that Duffy both took the Cons' offer, and managed to document some of the dealings in writing. And Michael Harris points to Helena Guergis as a cautionary tale for anybody hoping to curry Harper's favour.

- Meanwhile, Rinaldo Walcott sees Ford as an ugly example of selective privilege. And John Cruickshank discusses the challenges facing the media in dealing with Ford and others who have no qualms about lying to the public - while hinting that the Star may be more willing to highlight false messages as an integral part of news coverage:

Journalistic fairness says subjects have a right to comment in stories about them. The Supreme Court of Canada insists this is indispensible to responsible journalism.

The Toronto Star has repeatedly quoted Ford denying the existence of a damaging drug video. We have quoted him denying that he has smoked crack cocaine.

But our reporters had seen the notorious cocaine video and knew that he was seeking to deceive Torontonians.

Were we unfair to our readers in allowing the mayor to practise his deceptions on them? Are journalism’s conventions too restrictive in an era when some leaders use lies and manipulative spin as basic tools to tighten their grip on power?
...
The Star has begun a practice of documenting factual errors in accounts of the mayor’s economic claims. This, in itself, is a departure from usual journalistic practice in which the fact-checking or “reality check” function is separated from the news coverage.

Until now, we have not questioned the mayor’s motives in providing the citizens with false news in our stories.

We have let him make his case as we would any news subject.

But the mayor has made all the Toronto media agents of his deceptive propaganda. And this can’t help but further erode the trust Torontonians place in politicians and the media.

- Finally, Jared Milne's detailed discussion of Red Toryism in Canada is well worth a read - even if I'm dubious about his claim that Stephen Harper has done much of anything to conform to its principles. 

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Josh Eidelson and John Schmitt take a look at the guaranteed annual income which will be voted on in Switzerland - and the sole barrier to a similar discussion in the U.S. (and likely in Canada):

What is a universal basic income, and why are we hearing more about it now?

The proposals that are floating around the world vary a lot. But the basic idea is, no matter what you do, if you’re a resident — or in some cases, a citizen — you get a certain amount of money each month. And it’s completely unconditional: If you’re rich you get it, if you’re poor you get. If you’re a good person you get it, if you’re a bad person you get it. And it does not depend on you doing anything other than making whatever effort is involved to collect the money. It’s been a topic of discussion for several decades. Why is it happening right now? I think it’s obvious that it’s a reaction to the high level of economic inequality that we’ve seen. Most European countries haven’t had big increases in inequality at the same scale that we [in the U.S.] have, [but] some of them have had much more than they’re used to.
...
So what are the merits of universal basic income?

We have a system that has high unemployment, high underemployment. This would allow people to survive and to live, with dignity, assuming that other systems stay in place. It puts a floor under wages — people could say, “I don’t have to do that job if you’re not going to pay well.” People could pursue a lot of activities that are not particularly well paid but that have a lot of social use or personal satisfaction: art, creative work, volunteer work, working with people who have disabilities.

So if we were a very rich world, which I think we are to a certain degree, it would be a remarkable way to make sure that people could maximize their ability to express themselves but also maximize their ability to participate in the communities that they live in in a full way. Stay home and take care of kids if that’s what you want to do. Take care of your parents when they’re old and sick.

People sometimes refer to this as a kind of “Star Trek” economy — you just said, “Replicator, make me a ham sandwich.” There wasn’t any social conflict around production and consumption. And that, I think, is that kind of ideal in which this kind of a thing could play out. We are probably there in terms of the economics. We are very, very wealthy — we could afford to do this. But we are not there in terms of the politics.

 - And Scott Stelmaschuk joins the chorus calling for an adult conversation about taxes which might spur a discussion of the merits of more effective social programs.

- Chris Turner discusses the Cons' war on science:

This is a government interested mainly in what Canadians use and spend, and only passionate about those parts of Canada it can develop and sell off. It cares little about Canadians as citizens and even less about protecting Canada’s shared public goods and standing on guard for its natural capital.

Harper’s true agenda, pretty much all along, has been to dismantle the government’s great traditions of natural science and environmental stewardship, which until recently made Canada a world leader in both fields. This is a government waging a quiet legislative and administrative war on science — especially those fields of science dedicated to gathering and analyzing data on the health of Canada’s natural environment — and it has undone a century of good work with alarming efficiency since the passage of its sweeping omnibus budget bill in June 2012.
...
The government’s war on science was well underway by the time of the omnibus budget bill — the long-form census long gone, a crime bill passed with little recourse to the data gathered by criminologists, scientists publishing papers on environmental topics already being muzzled — but the bill was its full-scale launch. It has proceeded apace since — and inspired the unprecedented scene of lab-coated scientists marching through the streets of Canadian cities in protest from Ottawa to Victoria.

So what is the nature of this war on science? Above all else, it is a sustained campaign to diminish the government’s role in evidence-based policy-making and environmental stewardship in three simple ways: reducing the capacity of the government to gather basic data about the status and health of the environment and Canadian society; shrinking or eliminating government agencies that monitor and analyze that evidence and respond to emergencies; and seizing control of the communications channels by which all of the above report their findings to the Canadian public.

The ultimate goal is equally clear: to induce in the federal government a sort of wilful blindness, severely limiting its ability to see and respond to the impacts of its policies, especially those related to resource extraction.

- John Geddes highlights the wide-open question of whether the Cons will allow Elections Canada to do its job of ensuring fair elections - especially when fraud within the Cons' own campaigns worked to Stephen Harper's advantage in 2011.

- And finally, Tonda MacCharles comments on how our Mostly Competent Government utterly bungled its latest Supreme Court appointment - to the point where our top court will be left with one less member than it's supposed to have.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Jordon Cooper writes about the need to understand poverty in order to discuss and address it as a matter of public policy.

- John Greenwood reports on Cameco's tax evasion which is being rightly challenged by the CRA - though it's worth emphasizing that the corporate income tax at stake would figure to include hundreds of millions of dollars at the provincial level. And CBC does an undercover investigation of the types of tax evasion schemes available for a price.

- Speaking of shady practices, a witness before the Charbonneau commission has identified Harper Senate appointees Leo Housakos and Claude Carignan as recipients of largesse from corrupt construction companies. And Carolyn Stewart Olsen has been caught wrongfully claiming Senate expenses for days when the chamber wasn't sitting.

- Which, given the Cons' track record, means that we can probably expect them to launch a fund-raising appeal asking for money to ensure that their own appointees don't continue doing what their appointees do.

- Scott Stelmaschuk chimes in about the Sask Party's attack ad against on Cam Broten. And Doug Cuthand expands on the significance of Brad Wall's potshots at First Nations:

What surprised me was that the Sask. Party went after the NDP for its support for sharing resource revenue with First Nations. Is the governing party planning to use First Nations as a wedge issue in the next election campaign? Has it written off support from the province's aboriginal community, which constitutes about 20 per cent of the population? I know that aboriginal issues often are the subject of coffee row and doorstep conversations during campaigns, but this is the first time I can recall the party in power singling out support for First Nations as a liability for the province.

Resource revenue sharing is an issue that's gaining traction across Indian country. Our people have seen resources developed in their traditional territory with very little or no benefit to them. While provincial and federal coffers are getting rich from these developments, our communities remain mired in poverty.
...
To see the Saskatchewan Party throw out resource revenue sharing as a negative policy is a short-term, knee-jerk reaction to a long-standing debt, and is a slight on the province's First Nations.

- And finally, Murray Dobbin asks who will save Canadian democracy from Stephen Harper - though it's well worth noting that the pattern of tying public hands through trade agreements is as much a core philosophy for the Libs as for the Cons.

Saturday Afternoon Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- Toby Sanger asks who really bears the risk when governments agree to hand over billions to the private sector through P3 arrangements:

While Canada may be one of the leaders in the market for P3s, we’re far from a leader when it comes to transparency, assessment and accounting for P3s.   P3s are already a murky business when it comes to financial transparency—and we’re close to the bottom of that pool.  The value for money assessments used to justify P3s in Canada are simply not credible for a number of reasons...

All the Canadian P3s I’ve seen in the past decade or so have been justified on the basis that they transfer large amounts of risk to the private sector.   This is also what U of T professor Matti Siemiatycki and Naeem Farooqi found when they analyzed all the P3s conducted by Infrastructure Ontario for an article published in the prestigious Journal of the American Planning Association last year.  Every single P3 project was justified on the basis of Value for Money assessments that claimed P3s transferred large amounts of risk from the public to the private sector.

The average amount of risk calculated for these projects was almost half (49%) the base project costs.   For some projects, the value of the “risk” calculated amounted to over 80% of the base project cost, averaged over $100 million for each of the 28 projects and over $3 billion in total.  That’s a lot of money, no matter how you count it.   Just to be clear: not one of these P3s would be justified on the basis of the central Value for Money assessments without this assumption that large amounts of risk were transferred to the private sector.  And Ontario isn’t unique: P3s in other provinces are also justified on the basis they transfer large amounts of risk to the private sector. (see note #2 below).

But how is this risk calculated?   They don’t say.   The value for money risk assessment templates Infrastructure Ontario provides are frankly embarrassing from a public policy perspective, especially for decisions that have involved billions of dollars of the public’s money.  There’s no evidence provided for any of the numbers proposed in their risk matrix—and other provinces are no better.  The value for money assessments release for each P3 project are superficial window dressing that provide none of the details necessary for an independent assessment.    And in the instances where auditors have reviewed the actual finances of P3s, they’ve generally always found that the project would have cost less if it were publicly financed and not run as a P3.

...

But no matter how complicated—and secret—these key calculations of risk transfer for P3s are, none I’ve seen acknowledge a crucial fact: the real risk the private sector assumes through a P3 is limited by the net amount of unsecured money they have put into the project.  This amount is represented by the equity they provide and any net cash they have committed, less funds received. The initial equity share of the cost of P3s is usually no more than 10-15% and sometimes as low as 8% or less.   Since P3s are invariably set up as “special purpose vehicles” (SPVs), the big companies behind them can simply walk away if they aren’t making enough profit or if things go wrong, thanks to limited liability laws for corporations.  The maximum they lose is any equity and any net cash they’ve put in, less what they’ve been paid.   And a number of P3 companies have abandoned their projects, or used the threat of doing so to get more money out of the government.

 - Scott Stelmaschuk highlights how inequality undercuts the foundation of any meaningful concept of self-determination - while being readily reduced if we make a collective determination to do something about it. And Rick Smith notes that we have no reason to be satisfied with the structural disparities as matters stand now.

- Josh Wingrove reports on the latest abuses of the temporary foreign worker program - featuring the Harper Cons arguing that they're helpless to so much as inform provinces of TFWs working in their jurisdiction based on the belief that workers should be free to be exploited by their employers in total secrecy:

However, provinces say the federal government isn’t sharing detailed information about the workers. It means that provincial workplace safety inspectors can’t proactively enforce labour laws, because they don’t know who the workers are or where they’re working.

“It’s for us to know where these workers are, so that we can make sure their rights are being protected,” Ontario Labour Minister Yasir Naqvi said, adding the province had been pushing for more information for four years.
...
It was a request echoed by several ministers, and Dr. Leitch said she would push to improve information sharing, saying privacy issues are among the barriers.

 - Finally, Marc Mayrand shares his take on how to get younger citizens more involved in our political system.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The Broadbent Institute's "Union Communities, Healthy Communities" report discusses the significance of the labour movement in achieving positive social outcomes. And Rick Smith concurrently writes that the right's attacks on unions represent a solution in search of a problem:

(W)hen unions are strong, the gains that they make for their members in terms of decent wages and benefits spill over into non-union workplaces. In the face of Canadian conservatives trying to portray unions as some kind of impediment to economic growth and productivity, actually examining this empirical evidence is instructive.

Economists agree that the rapidly rising share of all income going to the top 1% in the US and Canada since the early 1980s is explained in significant part by declining unionization. US-style de-unionization would clearly make Canada a much more unequal society than is already the case.

And calculations by respected international organizations such as the OECD and the World Bank also show that countries with strong labour movements are more equal and inclusive, and often have very successful economies. Unions recognize that high productivity is the key to decent wages and good jobs, and many successful companies recognize that good labour relations benefit both parties to the agreement.

- But then, it's probably true that the most fervent union-bashers are among those who see democracy itself as a problem. In that vein, Doug Vaessen and Tamara Elliott report on one developer's explicit plan to take over Calgary's city council with pawns who won't "(forget) to vote the right way". And there looks to be an obvious connection between the corporate takeover of a city council, and the tens of millions of corporate dollars funnelled to the likes of the B.C. Libs.

- Meanwhile, the Star reveals another example of the illusion of participatory democracy - finding that the Cons' goals in dealing with First Nations consist primarily of ensuring that the corporate sector gets what it wants, while responsibility for any social issues gets downloaded onto the same chiefs who are supposed to forfeit any control over resources.

- Finally, Scott Stelmaschuk nicely analyzes the Saskatchewan Party's inability to accept LGBT2Q students:

We need to break down this idea that there is anything wrong or 'sinful' about homosexual behaviour; and more importantly, we need to let LGBT2Q youth know that there are people out there who care for them and support them exactly as they are. These kids need to know that they are 'normal', and that there is nothing wrong with them, and GSAs provide the best venue to create such a system.

We have a Premier who seems to be unable to even say the word 'gay', and was evasive on the question of whether he believed homosexuality was a choice. (He did hem and haw, though he did eventually concede that from what he 'knew' of it from people that it wasn't....though it still left quite a bit of doubt over whether or not he actually sees it as a choice as he never actually gave his opinion...)

We don't need to let another generation grow up where 'gay' is muttered as an insult; or worse, where people can't even mutter the word at all. 

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Tim Harper reminds us why Brad Wall is thoroughly off base in claiming that it's the duty of every Canadian politician to demonstrate constant fealty to his resource-sector puppet-masters:

The Conservatives, of course, would like the entire country to come together behind their view of resource extraction, but the nice thing about democracy is it accommodates dissonant voices.

Keystone faces credible and determined opposition in both countries.

There is a longstanding protocol in the U.S. that politicians do not criticize the government while abroad, but if that ever was the convention in Canada, it flew out the window after Harper took aim at successive Liberal leaders while representing this country abroad during his minority years.

Mulcair owes Canadians consistency. Without that, he cannot ask them to make him prime minister.
...
If U.S. President Barack Obama eventually kills the Keystone extension in a decision expected this summer, expect the Conservatives to blame Mulcair for “talking down” Canada while abroad, just as they tried to blame then-opposition leader Michael Ignatieff’s comments for costing them a seat on the United Nations Security Council in 2010.

The UN blame-game generally drew laughter. Blaming an opposition leader who carried a consistent message south of the border for a Keystone failure should similarly be met with guffaws.

- Meanwhile, Clare Demerse tries to fact-check the Cons' attempt at greenwashing their atrocious track record - only to conclude that there are few facts to be found in their spin.

- Don Lenihan writes about the problem with a pay-wall model for online media - as many people seeking to read news online have rightly come to value the ability to respond and comment without others being excluded.

- Emma Burnell highlights the importance of "critical loyalty" in ensuring that political parties can build close connections while still evolving and growing. I'm pretty sure this isn't what she has in mind, but from my own set of loyalties I'll happily ask someone to pass the popcorn.

- Finally, Pat Atkinson and Scott Stelmaschuk both offer their end-of-campaign analysis at the end of the Saskatchewan NDP's leadership race.

#skndpldr Roundup

For those of us curious as to why one of the most significant voices in Saskatchewan NDP's leadership campaign has been fairly quiet lately, Scott Stelmaschuk offered his explanation this week - as well as an endorsement that everybody within the party should be able to support.

Meanwhile, there hasn't been much other news to cover recently. Aside from a few more endorsements and some boilerplate appeals for support, one new policy plank has been added to the mix (Ryan Meili's announcement on co-operative economic development).

But the campaigns' obvious priority has been to lock in votes during the early voting window (ending next Tuesday for voting online and by phone). And with upwards of 4,200 ballots already cast, the result could very well be decided over the next few days.

#skndpldr Roundup

As expected, the last week has been a relatively quiet one in the Saskatchewan NDP's leadership campaign - representing the break between membership recruitment and voter contact. But there have been a few developments worth noting.

Most obviously, the latest debate took place in Yorkton. Scott has already posted his thoughts, while Twitter coverage at the time was offered by Stephen Moore (with a particular focus on Trent Wotherspoon) and Paige Kezima.

But the development which figures to have the most impact on the balance of the campaign is Ryan Meili's 9 + 1 message: rather than allowing other candidates to take the lead in talking about what it means to elect a leader from outside the Legislature, he's making a highly visible pitch to the effect that the NDP should be looking to build strength beyond its MLAs. And the message looks like a fairly strong one on point - though there will be somewhat of a balancing act need to avoid distracting from Meili's broader vision and policy themes in responding to what's ultimately a relatively minor strategic consideration.

Meanwhile, Wotherspoon looked to answer some of the holiday musings about Cam Broten's relative success in influencing events in the Legislature by speaking out about the treatment of Provinicial Auditor Bonnie Lysyk by Sask Party MLAs. But I'd think that it's even more telling to see the response of the MLAs involved - who tried to excuse their disrespect for Lysyk by saying they don't know what her job actually is:

Scott Moe, one of the Sask. Party MLAs on the committee, said after the meeting members were acting on their own.

"The questions that I saw in there were more around the scope of the auditor's office and what exactly the office does and questions you might expect from fairly newly elected members in there."

As a bonus for Wotherspoon, he looks to enjoy an opportunity to follow up on the first new cycle as the Public Accounts Committee revisits the same terrain this week.

Finally, while Meili and Wotherspoon earned plenty of attention with their most recent public interventions, Erin Weir's latest should have received more. Obviously any news about PotashCorp's low royalties paid in 2012 fits with Weir's campaign message - but the minimal revenues coming in from the extraction of resources by a highly profitable private operator is also highly significant as a matter of provincial public policy.

Leadership 2013 Roundup

One might have thought that the final days of municipal elections around the province would make for a relatively quiet stretch in the Saskatchewan NDP leadership campaign. But instead, it looks like most of the campaigns are neatly using greater public awareness of politics generally to build interest in the leadership race.

- In addition to calling out the Sask Party for backing the Cons' attacks on the health of immigrants, Ryan Meili offered up his answers to Scott Stelmaschuk's questionnaire - featuring this on where he sees the most room for improvement within the NDP:

What do you plan to change about Saskatchewan’s NDP? And what do you plan to keep the same?

The fundamental principles of the CCF/NDP movement don't need to change. What does need to change is the degree to which we are connected to the social movements that built the party in the first place and sustained it through its most productive periods. What needs to change is the amount of real democratic influence that members have on the party's direction, and the degree to which our actions - both in opposition and in government - reflect those principles.

 - Meanwhile, Cam Broten released his policy on democratic reform within both the legislature and the NDP. Of particular note, the latter plan focuses on permanent policy commissions whose reports could become official party policy upon membership approval - though I'm curious as to whether that will mean members' votes will be limited to accepting a commission's text as written, or whether there's some place for further discussion after a commission reports back.

- Trent Wotherspoon made his first foray into shaping the campaign's policy agenda by releasing his education plan. And while there's plenty of talk of incremental changes, Wotherspoon's broader goals include making education more accessible from early childhood to the post-secondary level.

- And Erin Weir responded to Brad Wall's latest giveaway to the corporate sector, pointing out that a substantial chunk of the foregone revenue from a cut to corporate tax rates will in fact flow directly to Washington rather than actually helping business even under the assumption that lower taxes would result in investment.

- Finally, in addition to having created the questionnaire mentioned above, Scott Stelmaschuk continues to offer loads of noteworthy commentary on the campaign - featuring his updated take on Broten, Meili, Weir and Wotherspoon respectively.

Leadership 2013 Roundup

While all has been relatively quiet from two of Saskatchewan's NDP leadership camps, there's still been some activity worth highlighting over the last few days.

- First, Scott Stelmaschuk has made another massive contribution to coverage of the race with a thorough candidate questionnaire. And Erin Weir's response tells us somewhat more about the political legacy he hopes to build:

In 25 years, what do you hope your political legacy to be?

I hope that my political legacy will be Saskatchewan collecting a better return from our non-renewable resources and investing the proceeds in important public services, renewable power for a green economy, and a provincial savings fund for future generations.

- Meanwhile, Weir has also released a plan for Saskatchewan's potash royalty system, with a focus on eliminating loopholes and revenue leakage rather than reconsidering the underlying royalty rates. Which isn't to say we should rule out the possibility of doing both in the longer term - but looks like a valuable first step toward earning a fair return for our natural resources.

- Finally, Ryan Meili's latest blog post discusses his reason for retaining his beard. And while I'm still not a huge fan of spending time talking about appearances rather than policy and values, Meili's take does suggest some noteworthy development as a candidate since the 2009 campaign:

When I ran for leader in 2009, I caved and shaved, wanting to fit into the expected mold of political appearance. I didn’t see this as a big deal at the time, but the more I think about it, the more I find it strange to change our appearances drastically to fit a narrow set of imaginary criteria. Politicians are expected to be thin and attractive, to be well-heeled enough to dress impeccably and to betray no hint of an accent. And, more often than not, they are expected to be white, male, middle-aged and heterosexual.

Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that I’m a member of an excluded minority. Like the other declared candidates in this race, I am a majority-culture, straight male approaching middle age. A few whiskers does not by any means make me part of an equity-seeking group. But the early reaction, however minor, to my facial hair is interesting, and reflects the disproportionate role that appearance and demographics play in our judgment of candidates. This may just reinforce the factors that have led this race, and Saskatchewan politics in general, to have so little diversity in its political representatives.

For citizens, I think it raises another question. If we expect candidates to change who they are to fit a small set of cultural norms, are we selecting representatives for the exact opposite of the behaviour we desire? If we are asking potential politicians to bend themselves so far they’re unrecognizable, can we really be disappointed if they later turn out to be inconsistent and insincere?

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your weekend.

- Jonathan Bernstein comments on how the U.S.' right-wing echo chamber may be preventing Mitt Romney and other Republicans from recognizing when their spin has no hope of convincing voters:

As Romney rolled out yet another of these insipid, implausible campaign talking points, however, it occurs to me that there's yet another reason that the GOP-aligned media makes it more likely that Romney will do these sorts of things, even if they don't actually move voters. I was thinking earlier that it was a case of the Republican press influencing the campaign: they keep talking about something, and Romney feels pressure to start talking about it too. But there's a laziness to all of this too, which is also a function of how easily influenced Fox News and the rest of them are. In the old days, a campaign would come up with a theme or a line-of-the-day, and then would have to work really hard to insert it into the (neutral) media. Oh, you could do it, but it took message discipline and some real effort.

But that's not true with campaigns right now and the partisan press -- and no question but that it's far more developed on the Republican side, although it certainly exists on both sides. All Romney's campaign has to do is pull out a sentence and call it a gaffe, and it instantly becomes one. It blows up on twitter, it goes straight to Fox News and most of the conservative radio shows...it's all over the place. Indeed, if it's in those places, it's also going to be in Politico and Buzzfeed, too. So on the one hand, it must encourage laziness to know that all you have to do is come up with something vaguely appropriate to movement conservatives in order to get that effect; on the other hand, it must just feel as if you're making something happen when you do it. And the more it hits the sort of things that the GOP-aligned media loves, the more you get the immediate effect. Really, for campaign operatives, it must be incredibly temping to do it.

There are even internal bureaucratic incentives. After all, it's never easy to measure whether some campaign line moved voters, but it's easy to measure how much it resonated in the press. And the more it appeals to movement conservatives in the media, the more you'll get that "hit."  So if you're in the Romney press office, it's just incredibly easy to monitor the president's speeches, pull out a "gaffe," turn it into a firestorm, and show your bosses that you've been productive. Sure, it might blow over in 24 hours without actually having any effect at all on voters, but who is going to point that out...in the midst of a campaign, who will even know?

Needless to say, I hope the Cons and their media wing don't take a lesson from the above.

- And there's plenty of reason to suspect that they don't recognize the dangers of feedback loops - such as the connection of a single PR firm to every step of W5's blocked attempts to get information about the Cons' F-35 debacle.

- Meanwhile, Nathan Vanderklippe writes that the Cons' predominant line of spin is running into reality beyond political control, as tar-sands operators are having to question whether constant expansion makes economic sense despite the Cons' efforts to make it their sole economic priority.

- Finally, Alice has unveiled her aggregator/almanac for federal Liberal leadership news. And Scott takes a look at the slogans and logos of Saskatchewan's NDP leadership candidates.

New column day

Here, taking a quick look at the early-campaign strategies of Saskatchewan's NDP leadership candidates.

For more analysis on the race...
- Pat Atkinson offers her take on what the NDP needs to do while building through the leadership campaign and beyond.
- Murray Mandryk focuses largely on Trent Wotherspoon's crowd as defining the race so far.
- Bernadette Wagner endorses Ryan Meili.
- And Scott Stelmaschuk has been contributing plenty of thoughtful discussion about the leadership campaign at his blog.

Saturday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- Gerald Caplan weighs in on Jack Layton's legacy:

It seems to me that Jack Layton’s enduring legacy is twofold. First, he set a standard of doing politics that, if followed by others, would change the entire tone of public life for the country. You could see his influence in the decorum that characterized the leadership contest to choose his successor. The media saw only tedium. The party understood it was Jack’s insistence on civility that was at work.

Jack regarded those he disagreed with as democratic opponents, not as dishonorable, even treasonous enemies to be destroyed. For him politics was not the brutal, no-holds-barred permanent war being waged against all comers by the governing party. He rarely attacked motives or personalities. He treated his opponents with respect and civility. He stuck to the issues, about which he felt passionately and which he pursued forcefully.
...
Until May 2, (2011), I saw the party’s role as being the conscience of the nation, an influencer of those with power, not a government-in-waiting. That’s how I interpreted election results from the 1930s all the way through to the 2008 elections, during which time the CCF/NDP only once polled as high as 20 per cent of the votes; often it was considerably lower. This was even true of the 3 elections Mr. Layton had fought before his last one. The message from the party’s beloved “ordinary Canadians” seemed to me self-evident.

Jack rejected this destiny as the NDP’s permanent fate, and at the last minute he was vindicated.

- Andrew Nikiforuk comments on the Cons' attempts to make Canadian democracy subordinate to the will of Enbridge and other oil interests:

To get a million barrels of bitumen a day to the Gulf of Mexico at Port Arthur, Texas, the Harper government strenuously lobbied politicians in Washington on behalf of the Keystone XL pipeline. When that project became bogged down in public protests and regulatory delays, Harper abandoned a 2008 policy that restricted bitumen shipments to China and became an outspoken cheerleader for Enbridge and Northern Gateway. Putting bitumen on supertankers bound for Asia "will require some significant infrastructure projects to go forward," Harper said recently in Bangkok. "And we’re obviously…looking at taking steps necessary to ensure we can get timely regulatory decisions."

There is nothing subtle about Harper or the "necessary steps" he has taken. His government has been characterized by the Economist as "intolerant of criticism and dissent," with a penchant for rule-breaking. Early in 2012 it branded First Nations and environmental groups opposed to Northern Gateway, including the Canadian office of the U.S.-based nonprofit ForestEthics and the David Suzuki Foundation, as foreign-funded "radicals" opposed to economic prosperity. Environmental groups with charitable status that have challenged bitumen mining have been subjected to federal investigation. And to make sure that Enbridge’s pipeline experiences none of the delays that have beset Keystone XL, the Harper government launched a concerted attack in March and April on most of Canada’s main environmental laws.

"The debate is no longer about a pipeline," says Robyn Allan, an economist and former CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. "It’s about an energy strategy designed in the boardrooms of Big Oil that’s being forced on the Canadian public."

- One might hope that the Libs' fine for robocalls in Guelph would help push the Robocon investigation along. But I have to wonder whether the story featuring both full cooperation from the Libs and a political price will simply reinforce the Cons' apparent conclusion that the cost-benefit calculation favours continuing to stonewall against any attempt to figure out who's responsible for their own misleading robocalls.

- Finally, Scott Stelmaschuk and Bruce Johnstone both offer rather more generous interpretations of Brad Wall's talk of royalty revisions than my take. But I'm still inclined to be skeptical until there's some evidence to suggest a Sask Party-led review would actually serve to increase revenue, rather than operating as yet another handout to the corporate sector.