Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- David Blanchflower notes that there's virtually no dispute that the UK is headed into an economic downturn - meaning that there's also no excuse to hold off on fiscal relief for the public. And Brad DeLong points to a new study on the effectiveness of government spending in generating immediate economic growth well beyond the money actually spent.

- David Macdonald rightly recognizes a few important steps toward reducing poverty in Canada through broadly-available income supports.

- Jeff Guo highlights the connection between an increased workload and other job stressors, and overall health impacts on workers.

- Angella MacEwen and Laura Macdonald examine the Trans-Pacific Partnership's toxic effects on labour throughout the participating countries. And Greg Keenan reports on John Holmes and Jeffrey Carey's research showing how the TPP would harm Canada's auto sector.

- Finally, Joel French examines the massive amounts of public money being funneled into exclusionary private schools across Canada. And Morgan Modjeski reports that basic site elements including playgrounds have been left out of any design or funding for Saskatchewan schools - which both places the burden on individuals to fund-raise for community services, and effectively ensures disparity based on the wealth of a given neighbourhood.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Rosemary Barton reports on the Libs' announcement of increased funding to help developing countries fight climate change - which does represent a noteworthy improvement on the Cons' comparative stinginess. But as I've noted, it doesn't much help to deal with only one aspect of the issue - making it an especially serious problem that the business lobby looks to be setting the agenda for the Paris conference while citizen voices are silenced.

- Meanwhile, Nicholas Confessore writes that Illinois is serving as the prime example of the corporate takeover of U.S. politics - with a single ultra-rich candidate and his financial-sector buddies combining to buy his way into the governor's mansion to impose policies despised by the majority of the public. And as I've written before, there's a real possibility of the same happening in Saskatchewan due to our lack of appropriate checks on political donations.

- Jenny Wittner points out that workers end up bearing the brunt of the corporate push for holiday profits - and that our choices can shape whether businesses keep pushing the envelope.

- Duncan Cameron offers some musings on what Canada's left needs to do in light of this fall's federal election. And Andrew Jackson points out that there's ample room for advocacy in calling for central bank financing of stimulus measures.

- Finally, Claire McIlveen highlights the fact that the Libs' decision to turn away male refugees reflects exactly the politics of fear they were elected to end. And Jeremy Nuttall collects the appropriate responses to five of the most common anti-refugee excuses.

New column day

Here, on Donna Harpauer and the Saskatchewan Party are dismissing their own advisory group's recommendation to work to cut Saskatchewan poverty in half by the end of the decade.

For further reading...
- The StarPhoenix echoes Donna Harpauer's defeatism.
- Danielle Martin and Ryan Meili make the case for a basic income, which appears as one of the advisory group's recommendations. 
- And for a review of the multiplier effects of different fiscal choices, see Mark Zandi's analysis here (PDF) - showing infrastructure spending and income supports accomplishing far more than tax cuts or corporate giveaways.

New column day

Here, on how Brad Wall is kicking Ontario while it's down by demanding that it let stimulus funding leak out of a province which actually needs it - and how Saskatchewan and other provinces stand to suffer too if Wall helps the Cons impose similar restrictions across the country.

For further reading...
- The Leader-Post reported on the Sask Party's own rejection of the TILMA here, while Matthew Burrows noted Saskatchewan's overall consensus not to pursue it here.
- I posted here on the absence of any substantive differences between the TILMA which Wall rejected based on public pressure, and the NWPTA which he signed in secret without consultation. And Erin Weir addressed the problems with those agreements here.
- Lucas Kawa points out Sylvain Leduc and Daniel Wilson's work on the value of infrastructure spending here, noting that while it's generally a good investment under almost any circumstances, it can be several times as valuable if paired with stimulus effects in a depressed economy.
- Finally, Stuart Trew and Kayle Hatt discuss the dangers of the Cons' attacks on provincial government policy-making authority.

Friday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to end your week.

- Sure, it's a plus to know that Canada's military is ready and willing to leap into action to protect what matters most to the government of the day. Now if only that meant something other than serving as political operatives to protect the Harper Cons' interests.

- Which is to say that the breaking robocall scandal is far from the only example of the Cons' anything-you-can-get-away-with mentality pointed out by John Ibbitson:

(I)t is certainly true the Tories push their campaign tactics to the edge of legality and sometimes beyond. They pleaded guilty last year to violating federal election laws in 2006 with their “in-and-out” scheme to fund the national campaign with money laundered through local campaign accounts.

And they may have instilled such an intensely partisan anything-you-can-get-away-with mentality among their campaign workers that one or more of them concluded it would be okay to cross the line of legality.

Political parties can’t be held responsible for the actions of rogue supporters. But they can he held accountable for creating environments that produce those rogues.

This is a mirror into which Stephen Harper and everyone who works for him should be looking.

- Meanwhile, Carol Goar slams Jason Kenney for ignoring what had been a reasonable set of compromises and accommodations developed in the previous Parliament to force through a bill designed to unduly restrict Canada's refugee system.

- Andrew Jackson points out how Andrew Coyne's attempt to dismiss Paul Krugman's economic prescription falls flat:

(A)s any reader of Krugman’s blog knows, he has acknowledged that a very modest US recovery is underway, while pointing out that the US economy is still operating well below its potential growth path.

He argues – incessantly – that the US economy needs additional stimulus if that gap is to be closed, and he has never argued that the first stimulus package had no effect, only that it was far too small to promote a meaningful recovery.

So there is absolutely no contradiction between what Krugman has argued and the fact of a very tepid US recovery.

Coyne goes on to side with the Fraser Institute argument that fiscal stimulus in Canada had no impact – an argument that has been thoroughly debunked by neutral economists such as Serge Coulombe...

- And given my own interest in chronicling what happens in Parliament, I'll readily note that it's worth reading about Elizabeth May's vigil in the House of Commons.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Jim Stanford points out that when it comes to manufacturing, any talk of an "invisible hand" doing much for productivity is based purely on faith rather than evidence:

When it comes to Canada’s lousy record in productivity and innovation, the standard prescription of economists is both clear and predictable. They believe unregulated markets are the best way to allocate resources and determine the composition of output. Therefore, to improve efficiency and innovation, simply improve markets: Eliminate “distorting” taxes. Eliminate regulations. Sign more free-trade agreements. Cut “red tape.” That will unleash the full potential of the private sector to innovate and optimize, and Canada will become a northern tiger.

Canadian economic and social policy has been generally following this advice for a quarter-century. Taxes are lower, globalization is embraced, labour markets are unforgiving, business is freer (and more profitable) than any time in our history. Ironically, however, the more vigorously we pursue the holy grail of self-adjusting markets, the worse our productivity and innovation has been.
...
This seeming contradiction between Canada’s business-friendly policy environment and the failure of the resulting empowered private sector to deliver innovation and productivity growth puzzles economists who advocate market-driven approaches. They search for some remaining imperfections or residual market impediments to explain the failure of Canadian productivity and innovation to take off.

But what if the starting assumption of their model – namely, that unconstrained private market forces always produce the most efficient, innovative economy – is not justified? What if, in fact, markets work more productively and creatively when they are guided, supported, and constrained, rather than simply being unleashed? What if the best approach is to challenge and direct markets to more productive and innovative outcomes?

International experience reinforces my skepticism of market-driven policy. The successful state-led industrialization experience of several Asian and Latin American economies in recent decades, where policy was proactive and interventionist, suggests that innovative, productivity-enhancing growth does not occur spontaneously as a result of market forces. Instead, the “visible hand” of government intervention, manifested in a wide range of forms, is more strongly associated with qualitative and quantitative economic progress. Targeted subsidies, strategic trade interventions, active industrial strategies in high-tech industries, domestic procurement strategies, and even public ownership of key firms have all been more effective in promoting innovation and export success than Canada’s hands-off approach.

- And speaking of evidence, interim Auditor General found none that the Cons cared in the slightest whether their stimulus spending saved any jobs other than their own.

- Meanwhile, Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault has pointed out that the Cons' move to destroy the data supporting the long gun registry makes for a disturbing precedent. But I have to wonder whether as secretive a government as Stephen Harper's will see that precedent as a feature rather than a bug: what better way to cover its tracks for future misdeeds than to make the disappearance of information into standard operating procedure?

- Finally, while engaging in a bit more "they all do it" than seems justified, John Ivison rightly slams the Cons' contempt for Parliament.

Parliament In Review: September 29, 2011

As Parliament heads into a week off, let's get caught up on what happened in the last couple of weeks before its break - starting with a day that focused on the NDP's choice of opposition day motions.

The Big Issue

While the Cons have spent nearly all of their time cracking down on immigration and pushing dumb-on-crime policies, Peggy Nash's motion started a discussion of economic issues. And the result was fairly telling on a few sides.

The back-and-forth discussion between the Cons and the NDP saw a sharp clash of economic philosophies. The Cons canonized Margaret Thatcher and cited David Cameron as an economic authority, while the NDP pointed out how much harm the likes of Thatcher and Mike Harris actually did. Robert Aubin pointed out the harmful effects of inequality and was met with the argument from Cathy MacLeod that the Cons don't have any interest in reducing inequality except through private-sector trickle-down effects. Guy Caron, Raymond Cote and Mike Sullivan all pushed back effectively against the Cons' efforts to paint any opposition to tax cuts as being an inherently unreasonable position. And Cote nicely traced the centuries of economic knowledge that have been thrown out the window in the name of corporatist dogmatism.

Meanwhile, one point from the Cons looks to be particularly worth following in the time to come. A parliamentary secretary (Cathy McLeod) suggested that the Cons' current policies don't constitute "austerity" since they haven't directly slashed transfers earmarked for social programs - which looks to imply that when the Cons do push austerity measures around the globe, that's exactly what they're supporting.

The Libs' preferred line for the day was to focus on a change in circumstances between budget day and the fall, as Ralph Goodale in particular argued that changed circumstances demanded a change in policy. John McCallum noted that by the Cons' own numbers their 2011 budget was contractionary. And Scott Brison delivered what may have been the day's best description of the Cons' policies:

(Sherry Cooper) called for counter-cyclical fiscal policy, while what the Conservatives are doing, which I guess is the only thing we can call it, is a counter-Keynesian fiscal policy. It is not just that the Conservatives are ignoring the advice of the economists. They are doing exactly the opposite of what the economists are calling for during these tough times.

Finally, Mike Wallace apparently believes that he lives in a world where opposition parties tried to stop the Cons from engaging in stimulus, rather than having to push them to implement it in the first place. Brad Butt is apparently stuck on anti-coalition talking points rather than having anything to say about actual policies. Ted Hsu mused that the Cons' success in removing some Canadians from the tax rolls may have to do with their no longer having jobs. Pat Martin and Fin Donnelly discussed the strong returns on investment in conservation and green energy. Jean Crowder focused on the harmful effects of poverty. And in question period, Nycole Turmel pointed out the costs of aboriginal unemployment in particular.

Fully Endorsed

In case there was any doubt whether the Cons' cabinet officially supports the idea of dragging sitting judges in front of committees to serve as political props, James Moore repeatedly approved of his caucus-mates' maneuvers to do just that. Outrage did not ensue.

In Brief

Libby Davies asked why the Cons are pushing a drug to treat vision loss that costs $1500 per month instead of a functionally equivalent one that costs $7. Pat Martin tried in vain to get an answer from Kellie Leitch about how a trained physician could possibly support asbestos pushers. Olivia Chow delivered a statement on the desperate need for a national transit strategy, while Martin introduced open government legislation. Charlie Angus rightly asked why Tony Clement instructed his G8 collaborators to hide their unapproved spending if it made for the good news story the Cons are now trying to claim, while Alexandre Boulerice suggested that the Cons might at least want to update their spin to respond to the steady stream of new and damning revelations. And Glenn Thibeault highlighted the consumer debt crisis which the Cons are only exacerbating by rejecting any support for the Canadians who need it most.

[Edit: Fixed typo.]

Wednesday Evening Links

Miscellaneous material for your midweek reading.

- Erin compares the stimulative effects of Ontario's election platforms:

A multiplier is the amount by which a dollar of budgetary outlay increases Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The federal Department of Finance estimates multipliers of 1.3 for public expenditure, 0.9 for personal tax cuts and 0.2 for corporate tax cuts in the year after their enactment.

Applying these multipliers to Ontario’s election platforms suggests a GDP boost of $1.3 billion from the Conservatives, $1.4 billion from the Liberals and $1.8 billion from the NDP if corporate tax credits are treated as corporate tax cuts. Counting these credits as public spending brings the NDP’s stimulus to $2.3 billion.

Of course, all of the above multipliers would be lower in Ontario because it is smaller than the national economy. Proportionally more spending would flow outside the province than outside the country as a whole. The NDP’s Buy Ontario policy would limit this outflow by keeping a larger share of procurement spending inside the province.

Given higher outflows and lower multipliers at the provincial level, the federal government should take primary responsibility for using fiscal policy to manage economic demand. However, to the extent that Ontario provincial platforms can be evaluated as stimulus packages, the NDP proposal is strongest.

New Democrats would deliver the most stimulus and job creation at the lowest fiscal cost by focussing on measures with the biggest bang per buck: direct public investment and targeted tax credits. By contrast, Liberals and Conservatives have prioritized slashing tax rates on corporate profits, the least effective way to stimulate the economy.

- Andrew Steele is right to point out the need to treat voter suppression as the crime that it is. But it's equally important that those of us who value widespread participation call out attempts to suppress the vote through legislation and other means as well, rather than buying into the spin that we should value evidence-free assertions about a need to crack down over real access to the polls.

- CUPE notes that the Sask Party's rhetoric about privatizing surgical functions to increase the number of procedures performed has proven entirely false in practice, as millions of dollars in added funding (contingent on the money being siphoned into the private sector) have actually led to less surgeries being performed.

- Finally, I'm guessing most readers will already know about the Manitoba NDP's fourth straight mandate. But it's still a huge plus to see that the efforts to build a right-wing western bloc have hit a barrier at the Manitoba border - and hopefully we'll see even more pushback as the fall's election season progresses.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- David Olive weighs in on the disastrous results of the all-too-prevalent obsession with austerity when economic conditions are still fragile around the globe:

From London to Berlin, and Ottawa to Washington, the world’s leading economies reacted swiftly to the onset of the Great Recession with massive stimulus programs to relieve the financial stress of their people.

The stimulus worked like a charm.
...
Then the roof caved in after the stimulus programs dried up.

We should have known better. One of the few calamitous mistakes of Franklin Roosevelt was to ease up on stimulus efforts after his 1936 re-election landslide. Unduly sanguine that the Depression was by then a spent volcano, FDR brought on a significant increase in joblessness, wiping out much of his earlier New Deal gains.

With the world economy still in the ICU, public opinion polls now find respondents imploring governments to resume economic stimulus as their chief priority.

- It's a huge plus to see Mark Carney criticizing corporatists who want to pretend that the interests of society at large are subordinate to those of bankers who want free rein to squeeze out every dime they possibly can. But is there any reason for him not to follow up with similar commentary on other obvious examples?

- Tabatha Southey theorizes as to what might be behind the Cons' war on facts.

- Finally, Warren McCall rightly slams the Sask Party's effort to make it more difficult for First Nations citizens to vote:

The Sask Party knows full well that the NDP has enjoyed tremendous support from First Nations people across the province and in particular in constituencies such as Athabasca, Cumberland, Meadow Lake and Saskatchewan Rivers. As a matter of fact, without the support of on-reserve First Nations people, the NDP would not have won these seats in past elections. By targeting on-reserve voters, the Sask Party is trying to increase its chances of winning these seats while disenfranchising First Nations voters in the process. It is simply wrong.

There is simply no evidence of any voting irregularities that would require such legislative changes. These changes target people who are typically less likely to vote – urban poor, seniors, young people and in particular First Nations people – and who, when they do vote, don’t tend to cast their ballots for right wing parties like the Sask Party.

These changes go beyond party politics and right to the core of extending democratic rights to all Saskatchewan citizens. In particular, on-reserve First Nations people were denied the right to vote in provincial elections until only very recently and their voter turnout in elections they have been eligible to vote in has not been typically high. With the Sask Party purposely and blatantly putting obstacles in place to prevent First Nations people from voting, it will only breed more division and mistrust in our province long after this election is over.

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Erin catches a typically-partisan response from the Cons to the prospect that a new U.S. stimulus package might contain Buy American provisions once again:

What strikes me is that corporate Canada and Conservatives are upset about being excluded from some potential procurement contracts if Obama’s jobs plan is enacted with Buy American provisions. But they seem unconcerned about losing all of those potential contracts if Republicans block the jobs plan.

- Dan Gardner points out how the Cons are determined to turn what were supposed to be extraordinary and temporary restrictions on Canadians' civil rights into a normalized part of their security state:

(E)xtraordinary powers created in an extraordinary time will be restored long after the extraordinary time has passed - even though the powers were irrelevant and unnecessary when they were available and irrelevant and unnecessary when not. And there will be no mechanism to ensure they do not outlive the concern that created them, are not abused, and do not become a metastasizing cancer.

And this will be done by a prime minister who claims to so cherish civil liberty that he considered the long-form form census a violation of freedom so outrageous it had to be stamped out no matter what the cost to social science and sound policy.

- Jim Flaherty exhorts Canadian businesses to invest more in research. Because we know how seriously the business community takes Jim Flaherty's public appeals.

- And, for that matter, how seriously the corporate sector takes Canada's laws and standards. Just ask your friendly neighbourhood food importer.

- Finally, after a day of reports that he planned to endorse Brian Topp, Romeo Saganash has instead announced his candidacy in the NDP's leadership race.

On permanent brands

Perhaps the most telling part of today's story on permanent self-promotion for the Cons is the source of the request for a program to administer the strategy:

Those temporary Economic Action Plan signs promoting federal stimulus projects have proved so popular with Conservative cabinet ministers that some want to make them permanent.

Documents obtained by The Canadian Press reveal that a formal recommendation for a "permanent signage" program went to Prime Minister Stephen Harper last Dec. 17 — at the request of his ministers.

"Interest has been expressed by Ministers in the placement of permanent signage at selected, completed Economic Action Plan (EAP) project sites," says the opening line of a 12-page memo to the prime minister dated Dec. 17, 2010.

"If you agree, we will work with departments and your Office to ensure implementation of the guidelines."

Now, the fact that the ministers involved aren't apparently named in the recommendation should make for a rather interesting set of follow-up questions as to who exactly put the idea forward - and whether anybody among the Cons disagrees with it.

But either way, it seems fairly clear that as thoroughly as Harper has clamped down on his party, he's been far from the only one looking to wring the maximum possible political advantage from every public dollar supposedly intended to stimulate Canada's economy. And even if the centrally-controlled signage was only temporary, the blight on the Cons from their politically-motivated stimulus distribution and promotion looks to be permanent.

Monday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- The Cons may be able to de-fund and silence Canadian analysis which might show how useless their choice of priorities has been. But they can't stop the UK from concluding that their stimulus program created 154,000 less jobs than it should have while simultaneously missing opportunities to make a positive environmental impact.

- Erin points out another entirely valid theory as to why a potash royalty review is called for. But the need for a review now looks to be the most important conclusion - whether one thinks the 2002 review was reasonable but has been overtaken by events, or whether one thinks it should have provided for higher royalties in the first place.

- Yes, it's sad to see some confirmation of the twenty-eight percent theory based on the number of respondents who place inexplicable trust in the Harper Cons. But there's a bright side: on the same question, twenty-two percent of respondents overcame any bias against seeing the NDP as capable of winning power to declare it the party most capable of "providing honest, open and trustworthy government". And with the NDP well ahead of the Libs on the question, there looks to be plenty more room to convince Canadians that the "government" part is close enough to be worth pursuing.

- And in other good news, Andrew Coyne sees reason for hope that Parliament's start at pushback against the Harper Cons' arbitrary secrecy might just be the beginning:

Knowing they were all but incapable of pulling together the votes to bring the government down—for when one opposition party is up in the polls, the others are sure to be down—they were not only obliged, but in a way freed to pursue other means to bring the government to heel. In a more typical minority, the opposition might have simply defeated the government rather than appeal to the Speaker to defend their rights. Instead, a precedent was set, and then another. Muscles that had long atrophied were given a workout. MPs began to stand a little straighter.

It isn’t only in matters of privilege that Parliament is showing signs of life. Committees, accustomed in the past to deferring to government, are acting with new vigour under opposition control—why, they’ve even begun (gasp!) to issue summons to recalcitrant witnesses to appear before them. Half as many private member’s bills were passed in the first Harper minority as were in three majority governments under Chrétien.

The question is whether any of this new-found feistiness will survive the current Parliament. It has not, after all, been widely observed on the government benches. When, someday soon or later, the opposition is returned to power, will they remember the heady days of 2011, when they fought for their rights as MPs? Or will they go back to sleep?

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- We can say this much for Bev Oda's KAIROS forgery: it ranks up there with the census debacle and the 2008 fiscal update crisis as one of the moments which has launched the best commentary on Stephen Harper's government. For sheer outrage, it's hard to top Stephen Whitworth:

It’s past time to say it: it is no longer possible for any informed, intelligent person of sound mind to vote for a Conservative candidate as the party is currently constructed. Voting Conservative automatically indicates the voter is either uninformed (which this paper’s staff and writers will work harder to help correct), or a demented ideologue and possible sociopath.

- Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne is somewhat more restrained, but makes up for it in style points:

In times past — not under the last government, but in any previous — a minister who lied to Parliament, even once, would be gone, immediately: if not out of any genuine sense of shame or remorse on the part of the government, then certainly out of a sense that it could not afford to be publicly associated with such deceitful behaviour. But this government, and this Prime Minister, seem instead to be bent on riding this out. They do not deny that she lied. But neither do they acknowledge that she did. They simply do not address the issue at all. Instead they make another point altogether: that the minister was within her rights to overrule her bureaucrats.

Yes, of course she was. She may even have been right to do so, though that is something that can be debated. What cannot be debated, what she had absolutely no right to do, was to misrepresent her bureaucrats’ views, alter documents, and lie to Parliament.

WHICH IS to say: it is the government’s defense of her, more even than the minister’s misconduct, that is now the issue. Ministers in any government will screw up from time to time. Some will even lie. That is fallible humanity. But when they are caught, when the jig is up, when there are no longer any lies to be told, it is to be expected — it has always been expected — that consequences should follow. At the least, one could expect the government to acknowledge that what she did was wrong — or at the very least, to acknowledge that she did it.

If it then tried to keep her on, arguing that the sin was not so great as to warrant a resignation, that would be objectionable enough, and a denial of all previous precedent. But it would at least be a tacit concession that ministers should not lie to Parliament. If it had tried to pretend there were some doubt about what she had done, that would be graver still, since it would be to deny facts that were not capable of dispute, and thus to cast into doubt the very possibility of fact and evidence as guides to public debate. But just to ignore the charge altogether, to carry on as if nothing had happened, takes us into the kingdom of dada.

- Alex Himelfarb's post on the shifting of the Overton Window is well worth a read. But I have to wonder whether his conclusion matches his analysis: if it's true that the most substantial impact of the right's well-funded push over the past few decades has been to shift the terms of political debate, isn't it more important to develop and amplify a competing narrative than to spend time and energy denouncing the current one?

- Finally, Stuart Thomson makes a good point about the Cons' targeted political stimulus which looks to be worth some follow-up on the national level:

A year after the Citizen published its stimulus story, it occurred to me that maybe 30 smaller, $1 million projects were more effective than a single $30 million project. Maybe even 30 times more effective.

The government would seem to agree. Re-sorting my stimulus spreadsheet by the number of projects, rather than the amount of money spent, produced some startling results.

Vaughan, the so-called battleground riding that recently switched from Liberal red to Tory blue, received funding for a whopping 136 projects. That’s 136 billboards for the government. It’s at the top of the list for all of Canada, but that doesn’t even begin to tell the story. It has 60 more stimulus projects than the second-place riding. It has more than six times the average for Ontario. If you look at the results on a bar graph, Vaughan shoots into the sky, towering above every other riding. It looks not unlike the Toronto skyline, with the bar representing Vaughan mimicking the CN Tower.

Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but the second riding on the list also tells a story: Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing, home of NDP MP Carol Hughes, who found herself high on a Conservative hit-list after she voted to scrap the gun registry. She changed her vote, but not before attracting a series of attack ads.

How do you tell if a riding like Hughes’ is coveted by the Conservatives? Look around at the 76 stimulus signs dotting the landscape. It’ll tell you all you need to know.

Not to praise HRTC, but to bury it

Kady is right to note that the Cons should face plenty of questions about why they're spending public money promoting their now-past home renovation tax credit. But she leaves out the most obvious reason why it's a bizarre choice: after all, how can a party possibly keep a straight face lauding a program even while repeatedly rejecting another party's demand to keep it alive?

Just wondering

Macleans apparently feels the need to set up an experiment as to the relative effects of stimulus vs. austerity - presumably on the basis it doesn't like the comparisons already in progress. But is it too much to ask that one of the options actually involve some actual stimulus?

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted reading material for your weekend.

- Alice has all the background you could need to the much-discussed bill on seat redistribution.

- Apparently it's time for a reminder which party to the contracts surrounding the G20 is actually in charge of running the country:

Anne White, Deerhurst communications director, says it is against company policy to make public how much the resort was paid by the federal government to run the central venue for the G8 meeting.

Which, last I checked, wouldn't seem to trump the law of the land. But I suppose we can never rule out the possibility that the Access to Information Act passed by Parliament setting out a right to information about how Canada's government works has quietly been made subordinate to corporate policy.

- Thomas Walkom follows up on Kevin Page's report showing that the Cons' stimulus didn't actually do anything much to create jobs:

u(U)employment remains persistently high. Even Friday’s announcement that the official jobless rate fell to 7.6 per cent must be seen in the context of a labour market where thousands have simply given up looking for work.

So perhaps the economists — and the government — should pay more attention to Page on this. Granted, those he interviewed may not have taken into account the spin-offs from stimulus spending (as, for instance, when a construction worker laying sewer-pipe buys a submarine sandwich).

Granted also that recipients of federal cash may not have considered the jobs that stimulus spending saved from being lost.

But if one-fifth of those at the sharp end found that the government money they spent reduced employment in their communities, alarm bells should ring.

- Finally, Scott Feschuk's compilation of Julian Fantino's childhood correspondence nicely skewers his post-election diatribe.

Deep thought

Yes, that sound you heard was the opening of a spring election window.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your responsible economic managers at work.

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

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

Monday Afternoon Links

Content goes here.

- I don't entirely agree with Andrew Coyne on his observations about the Cons, at seems to me they've done plenty in pursuit of their easily-identified ideological position - even if it's normally been supported enough by the Libs not to set the two parties apart. But it's difficult to argue with his conclusion as to what happens when brokerage politics gets taken to its extreme:

The consequence of all this realpolitik, oddly, is more or less to make politics extinct in this country, or at least redundant. The forms are maintained, the rituals are observed, but without purpose or urgency, the kind that motivates activists and inspires voters. To be perfectly clear: absolutely nothing is at stake in Canadian politics. There is no clash of visions, no conflict of values, because neither party has any. Nothing is riding, therefore, on the outcome of any election. It simply does not matter who wins.

Well, it does, but not in any way that is relevant to the voter: that is, whatever policies a given party or leader might enact after the election, in response to whatever random events or pressure groups, they must remain an impenetrable mystery before the election, or indeed at any time until the moment they are enacted. The analogy here would be with the stock market: it obviously matters what stocks you own, but you’ve no way of knowing how they will perform in advance. You might as well pick them at random. Likewise, I defy anyone to predict what the Conservatives—or Liberals—would do on any given issue. Certainly nothing they say or do beforehand should be taken as evidence of anything. Therefore no one who is not actually paid to follow politics should pay it any serious attention. It is not worth your time, except as a diversion.

I admit I have been as reluctant to admit this as anyone. My whole career has been based on the proposition that somewhere, under all the insults and lying and general bad behaviour that makes up the bulk of political life, there was some genuine issue at stake: that if you could just strip away the politics, you would eventually get to the policy. It has taken me all these years to understand that, no, it’s just politics all the way down.

- Dennis Gruending weighs in on the Cons' unilateral Afghanistan extension:

Polling since 2007 has shown consistently that international public opinion is largely opposed to the war in Afghanistan. Even a majority of respondents in seven out of 12 NATO member countries want troops withdrawn as soon as possible. In Canada, an Angus Reid poll conducted in October 2010 indicates that 55% of Canadians oppose our involvement in the war, while only 35% support it, the lowest level of support recorded by the poll in question in the past two years. Among Canadians, 34% have “strong opposition” to involvement in the war, three times higher than the number in “strong support”, standing at only 11%. Our government does not see this popular opposition as something that should be heeded. It is perceived rather as a public relations problem that should be met by attempts to manipulate us.

- Anybody want to change the odds on how much federal infrastructure money will get spent before the Cons' March 2011 deadline?

- Finally, having managed to goad the opposition parties into restricting the use of ten-per-centers, the Cons and the Canadian Taxpayer Federation are now apparently looking to build similar outrage about the use of in-riding mailouts. But in case there was any doubt what the real goal is, the far more costly federal communications spending that's entirely controlled by the Harper government is once again being ignored.

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.
...
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.
...
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.
...
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?