Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Charlie Cooper reports on the UK's increasing wealth inequality, with the richest 10% now owning half of all wealth. And Facundo Alvaredo, Anthony Atkinson and Salvatore Morelli highlight (PDF) how even the best information we have now likely underestimates what's being hoarded by the richest few.

- Chris Dillow points out why even if inequality didn't itself interfere with social mobility, we couldn't count on such mobility alone to produce fair outcomes.

- Nils Pratley writes that one of the most prominent recent sources of growing inequality - being the gap between executives and other workers - could be narrowed by giving the latter a role in setting the former's pay.

- Kenneth Arrow and Apurva Sanghi discuss the increasing recognition that health is an essential building block for social and economic development. And Ariana Eunjung Cha reports on new research showing the vast majority of the risk of cancer comes from social and environmental factors.

- Finally, Terry Milewski points out that the Libs' election promises are changing far more quickly than the policies they promised to improve. And Gary Younge comments on the need for progressives to develop a movement which can hold regular influence over policy, not just win elections occasionally:

People complain that Corbyn is not electable. They might be right. Electability is not a science. But the more pertinent question is: imagine if he was?

He could soon find that not only is the parliamentary Labour party not up to the challenge of taking on global capital – nor is the nation state he would be leading. This is not a new problem. Indeed, it is precisely because it has gone on challenged, but virtually unchecked, for more than a generation, that political cynicism has intensified. Whoever you vote for, capital gets in.

This was the experience of Syriza. After standing on an anti-austerity platform, winning the election, putting its negotiating position to the test in a referendum, and winning, Syriza was forced to buckle when confronted by the might of the European Union leadership. The party was later re-elected to implement austerity in much the same way as the centre left party it eclipsed had done.

Each case, in its own way, has demonstrated both the potential of electoral engagement and the limits of democratic control. The left is finally developing the strategic skills to gain office; it has yet to work out how to exercise power in the interests of those who put it there.

New column day

Here, on how Justin Trudeau seems to have taken up the cause of unaccountable executive power even from his third-party place in the House of Commons.

For further reading...
- For some of the background on of the Libs' entitlement hangover following the Cons' taking power, see here (insisting that Parliament has no place in approving of military engagement) and here (criticizing the Accountability Act as a response to their actions while in power).
- Josh Wingrove reports on the attempt by privacy experts to challenge the Cons' appointment of Daniel Therrien. And Lisa Austin highlights some of the substantive problems with Therrien's past roles. But James Fitz-Morris reports on Trudeau's full support for the choice.
- Finally, Terry Milewski discusses the Con/Lib tag team effort to shut down the NDP's parliamentary outreach offices, while CBC follows up with on their retroactive and selectively-enforced rewriting of the rules around mailouts. But as I've pointed out before, we should be far more concerned with the yawning gap between government and parliamentary communications, rather than stifling MPs' communications solely for the purpose of attacking a single opponent.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Sadly (if perhaps unsurprisingly), the Trudeau Libs' vote with the Harper Cons against civil rights has received relatively little notice compared to the two parties' attack ad posturing. But there's still plenty worth reading on the subject - including another post from pogge, a discussion led by David Ball, and Michael Harris' assessment as to the likely targets of Con-fueled hysteria in the years to come:

(W)ith S-7 the law of the land, some dark possibilities present themselves in this country.

The federal government already has established five Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams across Canada, most recently in Alberta. Those teams, made up of officers from the RCMP, CSIS and the Canada Border Services Agency, have identified Greenpeace as a group that might attack critical infrastructure.

Harper cabinet ministers have described environmentalists as radical extremists controlled by foreign elements. Add into the mix the fact that former First Nations chiefs like Terry Nelson and Dennis Pashe have appeared on Iranian television in a bid for closer relations with that country and a chance to describe their plight and ask yourself — what would happen if either group disrupted Canadian commerce in a peaceful protest?
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When a prime minister’s favourite part of the justice system is the police, it is a proclivity that bears watching.

- But it should be obvious that anybody genuinely concerned about amoral actors interfering with a functional society should be focused elsewhere. For example, Matt Taibbi finds yet another example of jaw-dropping amounts of money being manipulated by bank insiders for their own personal advantage. Jason Fekete notes that the Cons’ perpetual cuts to the Canada Revenue Agency have allowed tax cheats to avoid paying tens of billions of dollars - while the "good news" in the story consists in part of debts being written off rather than collected. Terry Milewski exposes the latest effort by the Cons to turn the RCMP into a partisan political body, reporting to and protecting the governing party rather than the public. And Jason Markusoff reports on the Manning Centre’s attempts to strong-arm municipal representatives into serving as puppets for the developers who funded Manning in the first place.

- Meanwhile, Sheila Block proposes a public service budget (in contrast to the corporatist tomes we tend to see instead). And Tzeporah Berman and Steven Guilbeault point the way toward what we should be looking to develop as an alternative to market worship, noting that there’s plenty of room for agreement between the environmental and labour movements:

What we’ve realized is pretty simple – no one wins a race to the bottom, not workers, not wild species, and not communities. So cutting down every last tree, shipping out every last barrel of bitumen, catching every last fish in the ocean may fatten some offshore bank account, but it isn’t going to leave us with good jobs for our kids, healthy communities, or a productive environment.

Looking back, it may have all started in the woods, with a few furtive glances and a chance encounter or two, but unionists and environmentalists eventually came to understand that “environment” includes people too. So we sat down and broke bread (and a few other things) together and figured out a way forward in places like the Great Bear Rain Forest, northeast B.C. and the whole vast green boreal forest stretching across Canada. Despite our differences, we knew that the end result of successfully balancing ecosystem protection and economic development would be much more mutually satisfying than another photo op in a clearcut. 

Then another light went on. We looked at the colossal collective challenges facing our world -- like climate change -- and saw that this big black cloud could have a silver lining – if we were smart. Good jobs could be built out of new ways to make energy, new ways to conserve it, new ways to move people, and new ways to meet their need – in fact, all species’ need -- for clean air and clean water. Studies and real-world experience have shown that this approach has much stronger jobs potential than simply putting all our eggs in the export-raw-resources basket – in fact, as many as seven times more jobs for every dollar invested in things like developing renewable energy or improving energy efficiency instead of simply digging more sticky tar out of Alberta.

Together, we’ve been strategizing on how to put Canada out in front in developing and deploying these clean, green solutions. Some unions are investing directly in green solutions, such as through Cycle Capital Management, a venture capital firm supported in part by union dollars that is investing in cutting-edge products and services that help our environment. More broadly, we’re advancing a “jobs of the future are green” agenda through the Blue Green Alliance, which has become a powerful voice trumpeting the connection between action on a healthy environment and action on jobs. 

Now, to some folks in Ottawa, this may actually be seen as something of an unholy alliance. These folks haven’t quite got the message about where the world is heading when it comes to getting serious about sustainability. They hail more from the old “pillage and plunder” school and see anything that gets in the way of all-out exploitation of raw resources – and workers -- as weak-kneed. “You have to be tough,” they bark from the windows of their limos, “What’s a few caribou when jobs are at stake?” Except they don’t mean good pay-the-bills-and-buy-a-home-in-your-community jobs – they mean jobs at oil refineries in China and in bank executive suites in Toronto.

We’re on to them, though. We’ve seen how working wages – and working conditions -- fall where union membership declines. And we’ve seen how one environmental protection law after another is stripped away when governments decide that only the “invisible hand” of the market should pull the strings, leaving whole communities – human and natural – dangling by a thread. 

- And finally, Murray Mandryk writes that the profits flowing from Saskatchewan’s successful Crowns have forced even the Saskatchewan Party to acknowledge the useful contribution made by the public sector (even as try to sell off anything that isn’t tied down). But it would be all the better if Mandryk and others would recognize the obvious corollary of that reality: if our current Crowns are in fact serving the province well, then shouldn’t we be open to considering whether new ones might also serve a valuable purpose, rather than sneering at the mere mention of new proposals?

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Dr. Dawg responds to Andrew Coyne's suggestion about cracking down on advocacy by charities with an entirely reasonable suggestion as to how to allocate our resources:

Given that charities do essential work that the government does not fund—feeding and clothing the poor, defending the environment, offering training to new immigrants, etc., etc.—let the government take over those functions directly rather than indirectly, as arguably it should.

Advocacy, which as already noted enhances the democratic process, could be moved onto the national stage by subsidizing representative advisory groups, such as the recently-disbanded National Council of Welfare and the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy.

There is only one taxpayer. How my money gets to those in need is not my concern. But the latter do require, and must have, the assistance of the more fortunate: that, too, is part of our social contract. Proposing measures that would in practice simply reduce charitable revenues is inimical to the Canada that most of us believe in.

- Susan Delacourt frames her latest column in terms of frustration with an outbreak of "going forward" as a substitute for meaningful political conversation. But the more important takeaway for anybody interested in actually influencing our ultimate direction looks to be a general principle rather than a single example:

Long ago, someone gave me a simple trick to understanding political rhetoric.

Listen to what a politician is promising to do, and then put a “not” in front of the words. If the opposite is preposterous — ridiculous, even — then you’re not hearing a promise, you’re hearing a platitude. It’s greeting-card politics.

“Focusing on the economy” is one such phrase, for instance, which is just as rampant as “going forward.” If there is anyone in elected office in Canada who is not focusing on the economy, the citizens might well be concerned. Isn’t it part of the job description for politicians?

...

A real focus on the economy would involve a discussion of choices: raising or cutting taxes, where to cut the budget, which kind of jobs are going to disappear, and which need to be created. Focusing on the economy isn’t a policy or a choice. It’s a platitude unless it’s accompanied by substantial talk of the options.

 - And once one digs past the bare facade of "focus on the economy" which has served as the Cons' leading set of talking points for ages, it's virtually impossible to defend any of their actual choices - such as endangering refugees' health (and potentially public health as well) for the sole purpose of being seen as less welcoming.

- Finally, Terry Milewski reports on the challenge to the 2011 election result in Eglinton Lawrence - where the Cons once again seem to have used their list of outrage-generating hobby horses (in this case voting without proper verification) as an operating manual.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Susan Riley brilliantly slams the message that austerity is necessary for everybody but those who already have the most:

Is anyone else getting tired of being lectured about austerity by wealthy consultants in expensive suits who charge $1,500 a day for their advice and have comfortable government pensions, besides?

And do we really need another warning about saving for old age - instead of frittering away money on escalating tuition for our children; or scrambling to compensate for unexpected job loss, or medical expenses - from disapproving cabinet ministers with fat salaries and fatter pensions?

Notice how these apostles of austerity rarely want to impose sacrifices on their fellow HNW (highnet-worth) individuals in the drive to restore fiscal sanity. They talk about fairness, but there is always an excuse for not halting corporate tax cuts, for not eliminating costly, quirky tax credits for people who don't need them. And their zeal for slashing redundant public service jobs and frivolous spending always seems to exclude their pet projects. (The Office for Religious Freedom, anyone? Those problematic F-35s?)
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Oddly, the federal government takes the opposite approach when it comes to Old Age Security: no saving is too small. It will soon propose moving the eligibility age from 65 to 67, phased in over time. Aside from hurting the most vulnerable seniors, experts say eventual savings, as a percentage of GDP, will be slight.

Maybe they should call their bill Restoring Senior Poverty.

Meanwhile, there is no talk of trimming other pension plans - especially the RRSP, but also the taxfree savings account - that benefit those with ample money to save. Fewer than one-third of Canadians contribute to RRSPs, and a tiny number make the maximum contribution of $22,000 a year. But, by some estimates, RRSP breaks for the richest Canadians cost the treasury $12 billion in 2010.

The issues differ for different levels of government and different parties hold power across the country. But the austerity refrain is the same: protect the rich, hit the middle class and leave the poor for later.

- It's a shame other commentators haven't put the two together yet. But could there be a better contrast for than NDP than that between the Cons dictating attacks on Old Age Security even as experts beg them to consult at least a bit, and the NDP's public engagement to discuss the effect of service cuts?

- Terry Milewski points out how Orwellian the Cons' online snooping bill is in providing for total surveillance of all online activity. And Dan Gardner makes it clear that Stephen Harper is at best a libertarian of convenience:

This week, the Conservative government introduced legislation which would create a vast system of warrantless Internet surveillance. Civil libertarians howled in protest.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews told them they could either support the government's plan or side "with the child pornographers."

Many more people howled, including conservative newspaper columnists. A few Conservative MPs even dared to suggest that maybe the legislation wasn't entirely perfect and righteous in every way.

By the end of the week, Toews suggested that perhaps it might be possible to modestly amend the bill in unspecified ways - without aiding and abetting child pornographers.

As farce, this was amusing. As governance, it was appalling. But as an illustration of the thinking of the prime minister and his circle, it was invaluable.
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One moment Stephen Harper is Ayn Rand. The next he's J. Edgar Hoover.

So how can we explain this? The prime minister could be suffering from some sort of personality disorder. But unless and until there's a diagnosis we'll have to go with something else.

It is this: Stephen Harper is interested in advancing certain political goals. Sometimes, a strong civil libertarian position helps do that. The long-form census, for example, generates the data that support social housing, employment equity, and other programs the prime minister doesn't like.

Taking the Randian position was a way of undermining those programs indirectly, and looking principled doing it.

But sometimes civil liberties get in the way of doing what the prime minister wants to do. So he goes all Hoover.

And that provides an obvious follow-up question which Harper shouldn't be able to escape: just what is it that he wants to do with all the surveillance information he gets about Canadians' online activities?

- Finally, Erin highlights that Don Drummond's slash-and-burn plan for Ontario is based on the assumption that interest rates will soar far beyond what anybody is currently predicting - even though fiscal hawks have been nothing but wrong in trying to put nonexistent inflation worries ahead of actual economic development.

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Nycole Turmel offers a reminder that we shouldn't allow the Cons and their proxies to distract anybody with shiny objects when they're so obviously wrong on the core issues facing the country:

In taking aim at the Conservatives’ priorities, Ms. Turmel criticized Mr. Harper for his seeming preoccupation with MPs’ lucrative pension plans rather than ensuring secure pensions for all Canadians.

“He thinks the most pressing issue right now is MPs’ pension, not the retirement security of millions of Canadians,” she charged. “Maybe it’s because I’m a long, long way from having an MP pension. But I’m here to fight for better pensions for all Canadians.”
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As part of the government’s search for cuts in government spending – the Harper Conservatives have vowed to find $4-billion in annual savings – Treasury Board President Tony Clement has said that reforms to the MP pension plan are on the table. In fact, Mr. Clement has suggested there are no sacred cows and everything is being considered for the cuts.

Ms. Turmel’s argument – and that of her party – is that this simply a smokescreen to avoid dealing with issues such as helping Canadian families.
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The Prime Minister recently dropped a 10-year health-care accord on the laps of premiers – saying take-it-or-leave-it.

Ms. Turmel called out Mr. Harper for again failing to show leadership on this file – and offered the premiers to join with the NDP as partners on fighting for good health care for all Canadians.

“We are New Democrats ... we will not let our health care wither and die,” she said.

- Terry Milewski points out that Stephen Harper's talking points from the free-market playbook are now out of place even among the elite gathered in Davos - meaning that they're even further from the reality actually facing most Canadians.

- The Canadian Labour Congress highlights a Corporate Tax Freedom Day as of February 1. And reporting on the same study, Elizabeth Thompson takes note of the fact that corporate tax cuts have led to massive piles of hoarded capital rather than the investment that's been promised.

- And finally, Ryan Cleary suggests that the viability of seal products should be measured based on market demand rather than a stubborn insistence on preserving the hunt. Predictably, the result is a wave of attacks from the Harper Cons, and zero defence from any free-marketeers.

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Plenty of observers have noted the Cons' complete lack of a reasonable explanation for standing in the way of a global consensus to at least ensure that asbestos is accurately labeled as a hazardous substance. But you'll find the best examples of sheer, evidence-free spin documented by Sarah Schmidt (on the media side) and Nathan Cullen (on the parliamentary side).

- And Susan Riley discusses how the Cons' asbestos stance conflicts with their self-image when it comes to foreign policy:

(T)here is ample evidence developing countries, like India, pay no heed to safety, and that Indian workers, like the young Chuck Strahl, are being directly compromised. But Harper seems to imply it isn't our concern.

His indifference is strangely at odds with his moral, even moralistic, approach to foreign policy generally. He famously refused to remain silent on China's human rights abuses despite potential trade repercussions, yet is prepared to isolate Canada internationally to prop up a dying industry.
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Two Conservative MPs - Mark Warawa and Patricia Davidson - have also been discreetly questioning asbestos exports, which suggests the Harper decision isn't resting easily on every Conservative conscience. Even federal Liberals are belatedly opposed.

Unlike the seal hunt, which harms no one but the seals, or the tarsands, which are environmentally damaging but economically important, there is no justification - moral, political or economic - for continued federal support for the asbestos industry.

But we should never discount one man's stubbornness.

- Terry Milewski points out that as part of its role in helping the Cons to cover up the facts, the now-defunct Afghanistan torture documents panel managed to redact information which was already on the public record. And Greg Weston notes that such an outcome fits perfectly with the Cons' normal modus operandi.

- And finally, while the Cons try to avoid any actual analysis as to how neutering the Canadian Wheat Board will affect farmers and others, the groups who stand to lose out are starting to go public - with the town of Churchill looking like one of the major victims if the Cons decide to push ahead.

On non-answers

There are some questions that can reasonably be left unanswered before election day.

The Prime Minister's willingness (or lack thereof) to accept Canada's constitutional means of transferring power is not one of them.

Good on Terry Milewski for challenging Stephen Harper to make it absolutely clear whether or not he'll accept the Governor General's authority to ask another party to form government. And as long as Harper refuses to answer, we have to assume the worst as to how far Harper is willing to go - and how much damage he's prepared to do - in clinging to power regardless of the will of Canada's voters and elected representatives.

Update: After serving as one of the Cons' chief cheerleaders through most of the campaign, even John Ivison can't help but to see serious problems in both Harper's evasion and his party's attempt to intimidate Milewski and the rest of the media:

CBC Television’s Terry Milewski asked whether Mr. Harper would respect the Governor-General’s decision, if he called on a second-placed party to form government after a Conservative minority was brought down. The Prime Minister said he wasn’t going to speculate on what might happen after the election, despite the fact his whole campaign has been based on conjecture about what might happen post May 2. Mr. Milewski accused the Conservative leader of ducking the question and repeatedly asked him to answer. By this point, the assembled partisans felt it their duty to jump in for their man. “Shut down the CBC,” shouted one man. Another behind Mr. Harper was screaming, gesticulating and visibly upset. To be fair to Mr. Harper, he gestured for calm and maintained his composure. In days gone by, he would have responded to such a challenge by attacking the source.

Quite why the press conference needed to be held in front of a hostile crowd is not clear, unless it was an attempt to intimidate journalists. Other parties hold the presser in a separate room after the event.

Party spindoctors suggest Mr. Harper likes the visuals of being surrounded by supporters but it lends the appearance of a lynch mob when the inevitable happens. One suspects the visuals of this morning’s episode will be replayed on newscasts across the country and confirm many people’s impressions of the Conservative Party as the home of anger, intolerance and blind partisanship.

Update II: Mark Kennedy nicely summarizes the stakes:

His refusal to answer the question Saturday raises fundamental questions about whether Harper might provoke a constitutional crisis in the wake of an election.

[Edit: fixed wording.]