Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Mitchell Anderson discusses Canada's woeful excuse for negotiations with the oil sector - particularly compared to the lasting social benefits secured by Norway in making the best of similar reserves:

Digging through the numbers, it seems Norway is considerably more skilled at negotiation. By charging higher taxes and investing equity ownership in their own production, the Norwegian taxpayer was paid $46.29 BOE in 2012. That same year, the U.K. taxpayer realized only $20.08 per BOE -- less than half as much.

What about Canada? Much of our production is bitumen, which admittedly is a lower value (and often unprocessed) product with higher extraction costs. That said, it seems the nicest nation on earth is being taken to the cleaners. In 2012, Canada produced more than two billion BOE and collected $18 billion in provincial and federal taxes and royalties. This means that the Canadian taxpayer realized a benefit of about $9 per BOE -- less than one-fifth what Norway collected in the same year.

Canada produces 45 per cent more petroleum than Norway. Imagine for the sake of argument that Canada collected what Norwegians did between 2009 and 2012. In those four years, Canada would have enjoyed revenues of $365 billion -- enough to pay off more than half of our national debt.
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Every provincial jurisdiction is also in direct competition with each other in a race to the bottom to attract private petroleum investment. Internal government documents accessed by the Alberta Federation of Labour found that B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan charge lower royalty rates than any U.S. state. Bizarrely, this was framed as a public policy achievement.

Since our country has an every-province-for-itself negotiating strategy, job strapped jurisdictions are not only contending with immensely powerful outside forces, but their own angry electorate every few years. It's hard to drive a hard bargain when voters can be maneuvered to take up industry's negotiating position. Nothing motivates a politician quite like the prospect of electoral defeat, and voters have become enlisted as unwitting allies in the billion-dollar brinksmanship of industry to access resources at ever-cheaper prices.

- Jane Gerster's report following up on David Macdonald's study of wealth inequality includes this apt observation from Erin Weir:

In many ways, the growing divide is more concerning than income inequality, said Erin Weir, economist for the United Steelworkers.

“Wealth matters because it also confers political power and social status,” Weir said, adding “wealth makes increasing inequality a self-reinforcing trend: invested wealth is a source of income, those who already have the most wealth have the greatest capacity to accumulate more wealth.”

- Update: And Alex Pareene responds to the latest U.S. Supreme Court ruling to further facilitate the flow of concentrated wealth into politics on by pointing out the possibility of reducing wealth inequality in the first place.

- Meanwhile, Jim Stanford reviews the neoliberal policy choices which have exacerbated that inequality over the past few decades.

- Finally, Sheila Fraser rightly slams the Cons' cynical attack on Canadian voting rights. And Bruce Cheadle reports on how the Unfair Elections Act is set up to facilitate yet more Robocon-style schemes - even as Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor confirm the connection between the Cons' party database and the 2011 voter suppression fraud.

Oh dear

The Cons describe what they're looking for in an Auditor General to replace Sheila Fraser (whose term ends this month):

Auditor General Sheila Fraser's term expires May 30, and sources say the Conservative government will announce her replacement by that date.
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Last October, the government provided a clue of what it was seeking when it published a job notice for the position. It said the next auditor general must have "integrity, tact, and sound judgment", and be a "team player."

Moreover, it said the person must "possess a constructive approach" and have the capacity to anticipate the "implications" of their actions.

So the Cons want to make sure that the next Auditor General cares more about not making waves and fitting into the Harper messaging plan than actually holding anybody to account. We know where this is going, don't we?

Deep thought

I'm pretty sure this whole "fabricating quotes from Sheila Fraser" fiasco will blow over without any particular damage to the Cons.

After all, as Mother Teresa said, "be faithful in (Stephen Harper), because it is in (him) that your strength lies". And who are we to doubt such a sainted figure?

On costly thanks

I can only assume that Huntsville Mayor Claude Doughty somehow thinks he's defending the Cons' G8 scandal by speaking out. But if anything, his comments only raise more serious questions about how the Harper Cons have consistently abused public money:

Claude Doughty, mayor of Huntsville, the main site of the summit in Ontario’s Muskoka region, defended the program, saying some of the projects were meant more as a “thank you” to area municipalities for being host than as G8-related facilities.

“I don’t think there was ever any intent that some of them would be used by the world leaders,” he said. “You have to appreciate that a lot of people in Muskoka did a lot of work to prepare for the G8, myself included. And for those municipalities that went out of their way to really do those things, this was a bit of a token of saying, ‘Thank you.’”

So what's new about Doughty's response? Well, until now the Cons had normally at least tried to pretend that their G8 spending had something to do with the conference. But on Doughty's account, a substantial chunk of money was spent on projects that everybody knew had nothing to do even with the G8 - let alone with the border security fund the Cons used as their pot of money to dole out G8 largesse.

In other words, even the Cons' own allies say they were paying off their friends with our money - all while covering up the true nature of the funding. And however Doughty thinks he's justifying the Cons' actions from a local perspective, I'd fully expect the inconvenient questions he's unwittingly raised to ensure that he'll never ride the Cons' gravy train again.

Monday Evening Links

Content goes here.

- Andrew Jackson notes that there's more than one way to eliminate a budget deficit - and that the NDP is on the right track in its choice of ways to get there:

As Mike McCracken says in a short note included in the NDP platform, major changes in the mix of spending compared to the current fiscal plan would likely give a boost to job creation. The big items in terms of job creation are significant tax credits to business for job creation and real investment in place of no strings attached tax breaks; the major green jobs package; and modest funds allocated to child care and other services which would create new jobs while meeting caring needs.

While it is fiscally cautious, the New Democrat platform does point to a better way to bring down the deficit, through job creation rather than through spending cuts.

- Robert Silver nicely sums up the reality surrounding the Cons' attempts to pretend that some undisclosed and inaccessible auditor general's report will rebut the thoroughly damning draft released today:

Stephen Harper’s spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, among other Conservatives, alleges that the final report tells a very different story.

In the midst of an election campaign, this is what we call all-in poker. If Mr. Soudas et al.’s version of events is accurate and the report exonerates entirely the Conservative government, there is zero chance that the report will not be leaked by the Harper camp today. What, is Stephen Harper suddenly paralyzed by Parliament and its rules? Really? “Oh, I would really, really like to release a report that I have a copy of that exonerates me and saves my now-floundering election campaign; but damn, those rules of procedure won’t let me.” Yes, this sounds like the Stephen Harper that we all know and love.

Or – and it is kind of binary with these Conservatives – the final report is bad news for Mr. Harper just like the draft report is. It doesn’t exonerate the Tory Leader at all. If that’s the case, then not only does Mr. Harper have the substance of the report to deal with but the subsequent spin that will make it so much worse for him.

- It never hurts to give voters a low-effort way to participate in the election campaign. And the NDP's Spot a Senator project should nicely serve to harness the power of public interest to call attention to unelected nonrepresentatives using our money to boost their parties.

- Jesse Brown asks whether any Canadian political party is appealing to the tech-savvy voter. Cory Doctorow provides the answer.

- And finally, Murray Dobbin discusses how the Harper Cons' brand of consumer-based and cynical politics builds on decades of efforts to distance citizens from the governments who are supposed to respond to their interests.

The trifecta

Law-breaking. Lies. And cover-ups. All in one juicy story about how the Cons (and particularly Tony Clement) abused the massive public funding allocated to year's G8 summit.

We'll see if any more news is forthcoming during the course of the election campaign, or whether we'll have to rely on second-hand reports of Sheila Fraser's draft audit as the best information available. But either way, it's hard to imagine a story that cuts more directly to the Cons' supposed strengths - and the gap between the Cons' spin and the reality documented by Fraser would seem likely to support the narrative that it's long past time for a change.

High praise indeed

The spin is in on Sheila Fraser's first report on stimulus spending. So now that we're all agreed that she had absolutely nothing but compliments for Canada's New Government that's Getting Things Done, let's see what Fraser actually had to say:

Program officials relied on the information provided in project applications as confirmation that projects were construction ready. We found that, despite the information provided in the application, many of these infrastructure projects did not proceed on the start date stated in the application. There were a number of reasons for the delays, including that projects were not, in fact, construction ready, or that departmental approval was provided after the start date proposed by the applicant.
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Infrastructure Canada informed us that 93 percent of the project proposals it reviewed for the Infrastructure Stimulus Fund were excluded from environmental assessment. The Department relied on information provided by other levels of government and organizations in their application forms and performed minimal additional verification to determine whether a project could be excluded from an environmental assessment or not. The Infrastructure Stimulus Fund application form collected information on federal environmentally sensitive land for projects; however, information on provincial, regional, and local environmentally sensitive areas was only collected for buildings and not other types of projects. Infrastructure Canada relied on the provincial, regional, and municipal governments in order that projects submitted for funding consideration adhered to the relevant laws and management plans for the various provincial, regional, and local environmentally sensitive areas. As a result, the design of the application form was critical to gathering correct and complete information about a project and its surroundings, including environmentally sensitive areas.

During our testing of a sample of 52 approved projects, we found that all projects were excluded from environmental assessment under the new Regulations, but 35 of these 52 projects lacked sufficient information to make the determination about whether an exclusion was warranted. These gaps were due to weaknesses in the design of the Infrastructure Stimulus Fund application form.
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In their reports to the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, we found that, for the infrastructure programs we audited, departments used different units of measure and methodologies to estimate the number of jobs created or maintained from the stimulus funding they delivered. For example, some departments described the type of professions employed through Economic Action Plan programs, such as construction trades and manufacturing. Others reported on the number of jobs created and maintained for construction and renovation projects but provided no indication on how the estimates were calculated. In one department, the number of hours worked were calculated and reported. Taken together, estimates of Economic Action Plan-related jobs created or maintained provided by departments to the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat were not consistent among programs.
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We found that the Department of Finance Canada relied on model-based macroeconomic analysis to measure and report on the Economic Action Plan’s impact on jobs and the Canadian economy, because project-level job information was unreliable and did not provide a complete picture of jobs created or maintained. Due to the significance of the Economic Action Plan, it is important that departmental performance reports include specific analysis of their individual programs and how these programs contributed to the Economic Action Plan objectives.

That's right: your Harper Cons, belatedly approving projects without dealing with environmental issues, then making up job numbers for lack of any accurate information. What more could one ask for in a government?

Burning questions

Who, other than Cons reviewing the report for their own damage control purposes, would have access to Sheila Fraser's report on stimulus spending before its release?

And why in the world would Don Martin give them free rein to spin the report in advance?

Welcome to the enemies list

It shouldn't be much surprise that the Cons' house organ is out to trash Sheila Fraser before she can shine a spotlight on the Harper government's stimulus fiasco.

But I'd think it's worth wondering exactly what prompted the line of attack. Is it simply a pre-emptive measure to try to limit even the potential for a damaging report? Or does Harper know exactly what Fraser plans to say, and need to destroy her before she takes him down first simply by doing her job?

Update: Or maybe the goal is simply to cast doubt on independent analysis to undercut Kevin Page's report today.

On value for money

We may not find out exactly what some MPs think they have to hide until public opinion actually forces the Board of Internal Economy to allow a full value-for-money audit. But while we've heard some odd excuses as to what's being covered up, I'll point out another possibility.

It's not much of a secret that to varying degrees, the federal parties have pooled resources that were initially to be the prerogative of individual MPs to be used instead based on centralized instructions. The most obvious example may be the ten-percenters which have since been restricted, but other areas such as the use of private members' bills and speaking time in Parliament have also largely been brought under effective party control.

Given that tendency elsewhere, would it come as much of a shock if the same is effectively happening with MPs' funding so as to ensure that money gets directed toward party-friendly actors as service providers?

That might not become apparent on an audit which looks solely at a single MP's expenses, as a single charge for a service with some confirmed work product might not seem out of place. But adding up the total for a number of MPs for effectively the same work might paint an entirely different picture of the "value" involved - leading to embarrassment for both the party and the provider.

Of course, this is purely a matter of speculation for now. But it looks to me like one of the more plausible reasons why the federal parties might want to guard their MP expenses - even if it also serves as an additional reason why the public should demand that the books be opened up.

Unavoidable

When I posted on what the federal leaders might be expected to do when it comes to the auditing of MPs' expense accounts, I have to admit that this didn't even occur to me as an option which would merit consideration. And I'll stick by that assessment, even as Michael Ignatieff has made it his public stance that Sheila Fraser should present a lesser request to Parliament than the one which has won such widespread public approval.

That said, I have to wonder whether Ignatieff's bizarre statement might only make it more likely that we get a full audit in the end.

After all, the lone road which seemed to lead away from that outcome involved the leaders themselves refusing to say anything, with some external events then distracting the outside actors driving the issue. But now that Ignatieff has made a public statement, I'm not sure how either of the other national leaders in Parliament can resist the temptation to create a contrast by coming out in favour of the principle of auditing public expenses. And once that debate gets started, there still doesn't seem to be any way for it to end other than agreement on a full audit.

(Edit: fixed typo.)

On waiting strategies

I've noted before that it seems that the Cons would have more to gain than anybody from pushing the concept of auditing Parliamentary expenses if they didn't think the results would be disastrous for their own MPs. But on further reflection it's worth noting neither they nor any other party would figure to get a lot of mileage out of such a message - if only because it's highly unlikely that any move by a national party as a whole to demand such audits will meet with any particular resistance.

After all, the cost of being seen rejecting transparency when it's being demanded by one's main opponents will be far higher than the cost of accepting non-disclosure as a mutually agreed status quo. Which means that any advantage associated with taking the first step will be a limited one - and will create some additional risk of being labeled a hypocrite if the first party to move ends up taking the worst of any coverage once the results of an audit are released.

So if there was any reasonable expectation the issue would die off, I'm not sure any of the federal parties would be upset to keep up the current system. But with plenty of voices coming together to keep MP spending in the headlines, it now seems like only a matter of time before at least one of the national parties decides to take that first step toward calling for a full audit.

To date, only a couple of individual MPs in Michelle Simson and Peter Julian have done so. But as long as the issue stays in the front pages with public opinion squarely on the side of audits, there can't be much doubt that one of the leaders will eventually decide that it's worth getting in front of the parade - and again, the others will have little choice but to follow when that happens.

Which means that the main decision for each of Jack Layton, Michael Ignatieff and Stephen Harper is whether to try to claim any boost that comes from being seen to move first, or to wait for somebody else to momentarily own the issue. And considering all the effort that the party leaders put into achieving even the smallest of gains, I'll be shocked if it takes long for one of them to take the opportunity to be the first leader to speak up for full auditing of MPs.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

- Alison and EFL have each offered their own takes on the Cons' maneuver to force through the Colombia free trade bill. But I'd raise another question: if it's that easy to dictate Parliament's agenda on a majority vote with no notice, why doesn't the opposition do so more often?

- This week's must-read is Rabble's series documenting Jason Kenney's office's interference in George Galloway's planned visit to Canada.

- Auditor General Sheila Fraser is rightly concerned that ancient technology will make it impossible for the federal government to collect taxes or deliver benefits in the near future. Fraser of course isn't to be confused with the Fraser Institute, which is presumably giddy about the prospect.

- But don't worry: it's not as if the federal government is paying the costs of its own policy anyway.

- Finally, while there's been no lack of attention to the Cons' refusal to say when they might get around to supplying documents to the Military Police Complaints Commission, isn't it even more striking that the government has the nerve to whine that the MPCC is bothering to ask for them?

Mr. Prefontaine said numerous requests from the commission are making life difficult for government record keepers because they have to keep screening more of them as new demands are made.

The reviews are in

Greg Weston:

Canadians who fear their hard-earned tax money is disappearing down a black hole will no doubt be relieved to learn they are actually investing in government mismanagement on a grand scale.

Auditor general Sheila Fraser's latest compendium of federal misdeeds calls into question the basic competence of a Conservative government already under fire over stimulus squander and the current flu-shot fiasco.

Surprising only to those awaking from a long coma, Fraser concluded that Stephen Harper's government of big cardboard cheques is far better at making announcements than actually implementing them.

Some of Fraser's findings would be worthy of a comedic spoof were the consequences not so dire.

Clear communication

It hasn't taken long for the Cons to try to backtrack somewhat from their draft communications plan which would force even independent officers of Parliament to have their public communications vetted by Deceivin' Stephen's inner circle. But it's worth noting both that the Cons' clarification still looks to create problems for even the offices which should most obviously be excluded from the plan, and that the proposal still looks seriously problematic even if it's going to apply more narrowly.

First, let's take a look at what the Cons have said with respect to the Auditor General and other offices which would fall under the policy:

Treasury Board officials claim it's a misunderstanding as they try to "simplify" the government's communications policies. And they insist that the statutory independence of these agencies would trump any new guidelines.

"I can assure you that we respect the independence of the officers of Parliament and this government would not do anything inconsistent with the independent role of those officers," Treasury Board President Vic Toews told the Commons yesterday.

In March, he sent a letter to officers of Parliament saying that he accepts that not all Treasury Board policies can be applied to the independent agencies. He said disputes would be handled on a "case-by-case" basis.

His spokesperson, Mike Storeshaw, said that the new communications policy "will respect and maintain the independence of agents of Parliament like the (auditor-general), as they always have."

If there's anything we've learned from the Cons' stay in office, though, it's that the Cons tend to read what they want in the law rather than what's actually there - and Conadscam offers a prime example of the Cons refusing to acknowledge that their interpretation could possibly be fallible.

Based on that background, there's a serious risk that the Cons will handle any "disputes" by sticking to their own interpretation of what an office should be able to say, and forcing independent offices to go to court to affirm their ability to say a single word more. And while it might suit the Cons just fine to mire Canada's independent watchdogs in litigation rather than being able to do their jobs unimpeded, it should be obvious that the effect would seriously affect the ability of those offices to hold the Cons accountable.

Moreover, the Cons' "case-by-case" handling of disputes looks like it could relate to specific communications "products" rather than offices as a whole - meaning that every press release which the Cons would like to see re-worded would be the start of a new battle.

So the Cons' plan still figures to cause problems even for the likes of the Auditor General and the Information Commissioner (i.e. independent entities whose main functions include determining whether the government is hiding information which should be made public).

But let's turn to a broader question which seems to have been missed so far. Even leaving aside offices which are independent by statute, what valid explanation can there possibly be for the Privy Council Office demanding to vet every single press release or public contact coming from every single entity related to the federal government?

From what I can tell, this is the most ridiculous example yet of Deceivin' Stephen's obsessive micromanagement. And it should be fairly obvious that such a requirement will make it more difficult for every branch of the federal government to get anything done - particularly since there's no indication that the Cons have given any meaningful thought to whether the PMO has the ability to handle what would figure to be a significant amount of material.

Of course, it's not entirely clear just how much of the plan is an extension of what the Cons already have in place, and how much has already been in effect for some time. But from Sheila Fraser's testimony, it looks like an already secretive government is trying to put in place wording designed to expand Harper's control even further - and to force even arm's-length bodies to fight for any ability to inform the public. And if the Cons see a need to formulate their communications guidelines on the basis that they can't afford to have any government office speak openly and honestly, there doesn't seem much reason to dispute that conclusion.