Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Richard Smith highlights how there's no general connection between the cost of health care and patient incomes across different models of funding and delivery, but an obvious connection between profit motives and increased expenses which don't produce improved outcomes. 

- Meanwhile, K.J. Aiello discusses how increased discussion about the importance of mental health has all too often excluded the people facing the most severe illnesses.

- Jason Warick reports that the Moe government has chosen a program with a 26% graduation rate as the basis for online instruction across the province, signaling once again that it's more interested in promoting cronies' failures than anybody's successes. Jeremy Simes reports on the reality that a provincial tax agency will create increased costs for businesses and the province alike, with little apparent purpose other than to ensure that giveaways to the fossil fuel sector aren't rolled back through federal action. And Martin Been writes about the folly of eliminating both jobs and profits from public liquor stores in the name of an ideological crusade against non-corporate economic activity.

- Marc Lee discusses how the combination of higher consumer prices and higher interest rates is creating devastating effects on household finances (while capital takes advantage of both phenomena to goose its own returns).

- Finally, Emily Leedham exposes how the Globe and Mail's "top employer" awards represent little other than pay-to-play self-promotion which overlooks workplace abuse and even death to reward corporate sponsors. And it should be no surprise that the most notorious examples are found in the fossil fuel sector given its pattern of disinformation and deception in the name of preserving profits.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Olha Puhach, Benjamin Meyer and Isabella Eckerle examine what we've learned about viral shedding from the COVID pandemic so far, while Bhanvi Satija reports on WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus' warning that we may face plenty more dangerous mutations if we keep pretending the pandemic is in the past. And British Columbia's lessons learned report (PDF) offers at least a somewhat substantial review of what governments need to be doing in order to be able to ensure public health during an emergency.

- Kate Bueckert reports on the continued expansion of food banks which were supposed to be a temporary relief measure, not a long-term alternative to an adequate standard of living. 

- Pratyush Dayal discusses the wave of Saskatchewan residents being evicted from housing due to cost pressures far beyond their control. And Jen St. Denis writes about the supports needed to keep people from falling into homelessness.

- Doug Cuthand writes that we should be funding safe consumption sites to reduce the harm from drug use - and not lending any credence to the politically-motivated messages of the anti-social parties bent on attacking them. And Euan Thompson, Ginetta Salvalaggio and Petra Schulz add supportive housing and safe supply to the list of policies which can end the drug fatality crisis.

- Finally, Simon Enoch offers a reminder that the Moe government's plans to shutter Saskatchewan's SLGA liquor stores represents the continuation of a longstanding policy of undermining public institutions, not a result of market forces. 

New column day

Here, on how Brad Wall's belated attempts to muddy the waters can't avoid a clear verdict that he's selling off Saskatchewan's commonwealth for corporate gain.

For further reading...
- Kendall Latimer reported on Wall's announcement that the price of previously-announced corporate tax cuts will be directed toward some other business-oriented use.
- CBC reported on the announced repeal of Bill 40, while Brent Patterson commented on the win for the activists who have been fighting it. And I'll point out again my post on how the bill was deceptive from the beginning.
- Finally, CBC also reported on the latest giveaway of what was a publicly-owned liquor store in Watson. And data on that store's sales in the column is from the government's backgrounder (PDF).

Deceptive by definition

The Saskatchewan Party's introduction of new legislation (Bill 40, PDF) to define massive Crown sell-offs as not being "privatization" has received plenty of due attention. But it's worth taking a close look at exactly what the Wall government is doing - and how it reflects an attempt to sneak the change through the back door for no obvious reason.

Let's start by taking a look at the Crown Corporations Public Ownership Act, which sets out two specific process requirements for legislative changes. One section of the CCPOA covers the privatization of a Crown (section 4), requiring a set of consultations including a provincial election between the announcement of an intention to privatize and an actual privatization. The other covers amendments to its own terms (section 5), and involves an increased level of public participation compared to other legislation.

The CCPOA also offers a hint as to what's considered privatization within its terms:

6  Nothing in this Act is to be construed as preventing or restricting a Crown corporation from carrying out operations, including selling, exchanging or otherwise disposing of its property, in the ordinary course of its business.

So for a Crown to carry on business as usual doesn't trigger a consultation requirement under the CCPOA. But the selling off of a Crown in whole or in part outside the ordinary course of business is intended to be included - barring some amendment to existing legislation.

To be clear, a definition could likely be added to the CCPOA itself using the consultation process set out under section 5. And that's effectively what the Wall government has done in introducing Bill 1 (PDF), which is intended to remove the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority from the scope of the CCPOA.

Not to say there aren't some severe problems with Bill 1. (And indeed, there's all the more reason to be suspicious of the Sask Party's plans for SLGA if it pushes through Bill 1 while also trying to pass legislation which would remove its liquor retail plans from the definition of privatization.) But it at least doesn't attempt a blatant procedural end-run around the CCPOA's consultation requirements.

In contrast, the effect of Bill 40 is to add a definition of "privatize" to the Interpretation Act, 1995 - which would affect the interpretation of the CCPOA without actually amending the CCPOA.

To see why that should raise red flags, let's compare the new definition to the normal use of the general definition provisions of the Interpretation Act.

For example, section 27(1) of the Interpretation Act - which is intended to be amended by Bill 40 - includes a definition of "person". And it makes sense to have a general definition of that term which can be applied across Saskatchewan's legislation and regulations because it is used frequently and consistently. The word "person" appears in 1,588 different statutes and regulations, and it would be an administrative nightmare to have to amend each of those every time a single word needs to be clarified.

By way of comparison, the word "privatize" appears in exactly one Saskatchewan law. So the effect of Bill 40 is to use a method intended to clarify definitions of general application in order to specifically change the CCPOA alone, while avoiding the CCPOA's consultation requirements for a direct amendment.

That choice makes especially little sense given that the Sask Party actually applied the CCPOA's own amendment process with Bill 1. But it's clear that Wall and company recognize the significance of opening the door to massive Crown selloffs at every stage of ownership other than the one transferring control of an entity - and that they don't want the public having any say in the choice.

New column day

Here, on how the Wall government is using a partial privatization of liquor stores to open the door to the wholesale destruction of the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority.

For further reading...
- The Crown Corporations Public Ownership Act is here. Bill 1, which carves SLGA entirely out of the existing law, is here (PDF) - while the Wall government's press release contains no explanation whatsoever as to why it goes to such drastic lengths. And as a reminder, here's what happened when Saskatchewan Party candidates were offered the opportunity to explain their party's plans during the provincial election campaign.
- CBC reported on the privatization of the Information Services Corporation, while Simon Enoch highlighted the gap between rhetoric and reality when it came to the Saskatchewan Party's position on the Crowns, and SOS Crowns pointed out the lack of any logic behind the sale.
- And finally, Aditya Chakrabotty discusses the connection between austerity, privatization and the deliberate destruction of common wealth.

Juxtaposition

Verbatim Brad Wall then:

(W)e may -- possibly -- campaign on [privatizing liquor stores] in the next election, but people will be able to decide then. In other words, we would never change the act without a mandate to do so.

Shorter Saskatchewan Party response now to every invitation to make the case for any mandate during an actual election campaign:

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Monday Evening Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Tom Parkin writes about the tendency of far too many Canadian governments to put the wealthy at the front of the line, and leave the rest of us to wait:

(O)ver the past two decades, corporate tax rates have been slashed in half. Canadians were told low corporate taxes would create jobs and increase wages. But the evidence is all around us. Even the IMF now admits trickle-down economics doesn’t work.

But trickle-down economics is great at starving our governments for revenue.

So – want childcare? Sorry, no money. Want transit? You’ll have to wait. Want social housing fixed? Send in a work order. Want health care money? Sorry, can’t.

But – want a tax cut? If you’re affluent you’re in luck – because cutting high earners’ income taxes, stock options taxes and corporate taxes is a priority. Our government will even borrow money to give it to them.
...
The growing power imbalance presents a huge obstacle to unwinding tax unfairness and getting back to Canada-building.

Because it’s a lot easier to set up priority lanes than it is to shut them down. A politician who just wants to chum around with big shots, eat free and get on TV is no threat.

But someone motivated by justice and social progress is a real danger. Any politician with the courage to shut down the priority lanes for special people will come under heavy fire. Well-funded heavy fire.

- Cameron Fenton highlights the gigantic climate change loophole in the Libs' new pipeline review process. And Bob Weber points out that Canada stands to suffer some of the most drastic effects of climate change if we can't massively reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

- Matthew Campo investigates the impact of privatized liquor retailing on the small Saskatchewan communities which have already seen public stores replaced with private sellers. And Cory Collins discusses the cost of privatizing food services in public institutions.

- Meanwhile, David Cochrane reports on one of the Saskatchewan Party's most ridiculous fiscal choices yet - as due to Brad Wall's choice *not* to repay a federal loan when he had a billion dollars of NDP surplus to work with, Saskatchewan is now having to scrape together loan payments when it can least afford it.

- Finally, Ian Welsh offers up some worthwhile reading on the basic ethics which all too often seem to be lacking in public policy-making.

[Edit: fixed wording as per comments.]

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Alison Griswold points out how little systemic information we have about the growing gig economy. And both Scott Santens and Richard Reeves make the case for a basic income to provide financial security where an increasingly precarious labour market won't.

- Meanwhile, Branko Milanovic argues that we may be approaching a reversal of the trend toward inequality - but that if we don't get there through peaceful politics, it may take a major shock like wide-scale war:

The pro-inequality trends will be very hard to overturn during the next generation, but eventually they may be – through a combination of political change, pro-unskilled labour technological innovations (which will become more profitable as skilled labour’s price increases), dissipation of rents acquired during the current bout of technological efflorescence, and possibly greater attempts to equalise ownership of assets (through forms of ‘people’s capitalism’ and workers’ shareholding).  

Now, these are of course the benign factors that, I think, will ultimately set inequality in rich countries on its downward path. But history teaches us too that there are malign factors, notably wars, in turn caused by domestic maldistribution of income and power of the elites (as was the case in the World War I), that can also do the job of income levelling. But they do it at the cost of millions of human lives. One can hope that we have learned something from history and would avoid this destructive path to equality in poverty and death.

- PressProgress highlights the Libs' plans to break their promise to close a stock option loophole. And Steven Chase and Robert Fife report on the compelling evidence that any armoured vehicles Canada sells to Saudi Arabia - with the Libs' approval - will be used to attack civilian targets.

- Brent Patterson summarizes a new paper on how the Trans-Pacific Partnership could limit Canada's ability to preserve and manage its fresh water. And Marc Jaccard writes that a full plan to deal with environmental issues such as climate change needs to include regulation alongside "market" solutions.

- Finally, Simon Enoch exposes the Saskatchewan Party's complete failure to do their homework on the costs of privatizing liquor retailing.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Andrew Jackson argues that a federal infrastructure program can and should be oriented toward developing a skilled and diverse workforce, rather than rewarding free-riding contractors who don't contribute to those outcomes. And a joint statement from community and labour groups posted by Angella MacEwen argues that a major focus of the upcoming federal budget should be to repair and strengthen Employment Insurance.

- Andrew Sayer laments the fact that our economy is set up to disproportionately reward unproductive ownership and rent extraction rather than actual contributions to social well-being. And Jill Treanor provides a prime example, as UK banks who are laying off frontline workers and seeing their share values decline are nonetheless handing out billions of dollars in bonuses to a lucky few.

- Sabrina Tavernise writes about the U.S.' growing inequality in life expectancy between the rich and the poor.

- Glenn Burley studies how it's possible to eliminate tuition and compulsory fees from post-secondary education at a readily affordable price. And PressProgress follows up by highlighting how much tuition is currently costing Canadian students. 

- Finally, Andrea Hill exposes the Saskatchewan Party's appalling slashing of services for homeless residents of Saskatoon. And Ken Gousseau reports on the CCPA's research into what Saskatchewan stands to lose if the Wall government gets the chance to follow through on its plans to conduct a fire sale of publicly-owned liquor stores.

New column day

Here, on the decision-based evidence-making behind the Sask Party's selloff of Crown land and planned gutting of publicly-operated liquor stores.

For further reading...
- The Sask Party's announcement of a program to sell off farm land (and ratchet up lease rates for anybody who doesn't want to participate) is here. And the consultation process which made absolutely no mention of that plan is documented here (PDF).
- Similarly, yesterday's liquor retailing announcement is here. And while I've already discussed some of the problems with a glaringly biased survey, it's worth noting the massive gap between what people were asked about (PDF) and what the Sask Party plans to impose on the province as a result.
- Finally, the CCPA's study (PDF) on the effects of privatizing liquor sales is well worth another read.

Last chance to weigh in

While there's always reason to be skeptical of the Wall government's consultation processes, there's also plenty of risk in not participating - as a lack of expressed opposition will all too likely be taken as agreement with the Saskatchewan Party's plans.

Which is to say that I'll strongly encourage Saskatchewan readers to participate in the province's consultation on liquor retailing before today's deadline passes.

If you're looking for a strong general message to send as to the importance of preserving our current system, you'll find one at Keep Liquor Public. I've chosen instead to focus on the opportunity to build on what we already have in the public sector; you can draft your own message either through the province's survey form or by e-mail.

Saturday Morning Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- Reviewing Darrell West's Billionaires, Michael Lewis discusses how extreme wealth doesn't make anybody better off - including the people fighting for position at the top of the wealth spectrum:

A team of researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute surveyed 43,000 Americans and found that, by some wide margin, the rich were more likely to shoplift than the poor. Another study, by a coalition of nonprofits called the Independent Sector, revealed that people with incomes below twenty-five grand give away, on average, 4.2 percent of their income, while those earning more than 150 grand a year give away only 2.7 percent. A UCLA neuroscientist named Keely Muscatell has published an interesting paper showing that wealth quiets the nerves in the brain associated with empathy: if you show rich people and poor people pictures of kids with cancer, the poor people’s brains exhibit a great deal more activity than the rich people’s. (An inability to empathize with others has just got to be a disadvantage for any rich person seeking political office, at least outside of New York City.) “As you move up the class ladder,” says Keltner, “you are more likely to violate the rules of the road, to lie, to cheat, to take candy from kids, to shoplift, and to be tightfisted in giving to others. Straightforward economic analyses have trouble making sense of this pattern of results.”

There is an obvious chicken-and-egg question to ask here. But it is beginning to seem that the problem isn’t that the kind of people who wind up on the pleasant side of inequality suffer from some moral disability that gives them a market edge. The problem is caused by the inequality itself: it triggers a chemical reaction in the privileged few. It tilts their brains. It causes them to be less likely to care about anyone but themselves or to experience the moral sentiments needed to be a decent citizen. 

Or even a happy one. Not long ago an enterprising professor at the Harvard Business School named Mike Norton persuaded a big investment bank to let him survey the bank’s rich clients. (The poor people in the survey were millionaires.) In a forthcoming paper, Norton and his colleagues track the effects of getting money on the happiness of people who already have a lot of it: a rich person getting even richer experiences zero gain in happiness. That’s not all that surprising; it’s what Norton asked next that led to an interesting insight. He asked these rich people how happy they were at any given moment. Then he asked them how much money they would need to be even happier. “All of them said they needed two to three times more than they had to feel happier,” says Norton. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that money, above a certain modest sum, does not have the power to buy happiness, and yet even very rich people continue to believe that it does: the happiness will come from the money they don’t yet have. To the general rule that money, above a certain low level, cannot buy happiness there is one exception. “While spending money upon oneself does nothing for one’s happiness,” says Norton, “spending it on others increases happiness.”

- Lucinda Platt discusses the devastating effects of poverty on childhood development - while noting that more than half of children experience poverty at some point.

- CBC News reports on the continued growth of food bank use in Saskatchewan - a fact which seems to be entirely in keeping with Brad Wall's plans. And Will Chabun reports on a new CCPA/Parkland Institute study showing that the Sask Party's determination to privatize liquor sales will make it far more difficult to fund adequate social programs or other public priorities in the future. 

- Meanwhile, thwap highlights how we face both constant demands to borrow for the sake of meeting consumer expectations, and severe punishments for giving in to that pressure.

- Kathleen Mogelgaard examines what's needed for a climate change summit to be successful. And the Cons' familiar distraction tactics (with the obvious goal of continuing to facilitate pollution from the tar sands) have absolutely no place in accomplishing anything useful - while their international lobbying to avoid having anybody else make up for the Cons' negligence may not be working out as planned.

- Finally, Ian Welsh writes that while it might seem obvious that police violence should be discouraged and punished, the complete lack of consequences for police officers killing civilians reflects an authoritarian culture working as intended rather than a failure of the system in its present form.