Truth & Reconciliation Day Links

Some material for learning and reflection on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

- The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action can be found here, And Peter Zimonjic reports on the limited progress that's been made in giving effect to them. 

- The reports and calls for justice of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls are here, while Leah Gazan writes that pursuing that justice is a necessary step before we can approach reconciliation.

- The University of Alberta's free online course on Indigenous Canada is here. 

- Finally, the Tyee offers its own reading list, including a number of further resources from Indigenous and Metis writers. 

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- The Tyee's recent series on important sources of inequality is well worth a read, as Emily Fister interviews Andrew Longhurst about precarious work and Sylvia Fuller about the role of motherhood.

- David Cole asks just how corrupt U.S. politics have become, while Frances O'Grady observes that U.K workers don't believe for a second that their employer can't afford to pay living wages. Robert Reich sees Detroit as a prime example of wealthy individuals shirking their responsibility to pay for the public goods they enjoy. And Joseph Stiglitz notes that gross imbalances in political influence result in markets and other institutions serving only the privileged few rather than the general public:

What we have been observing – wage stagnation and rising inequality, even as wealth increases – does not reflect the workings of a normal market economy, but of what I call “ersatz capitalism.” The problem may not be with how markets should or do work, but with our political system, which has failed to ensure that markets are competitive, and has designed rules that sustain distorted markets in which corporations and the rich can (and unfortunately do) exploit everyone else.

Markets, of course, do not exist in a vacuum. There have to be rules of the game, and these are established through political processes. High levels of economic inequality in countries like the US and, increasingly, those that have followed its economic model, lead to political inequality. In such a system, opportunities for economic advancement become unequal as well, reinforcing low levels of social mobility.

Thus, Piketty’s forecast of still higher levels of inequality does not reflect the inexorable laws of economics. Simple changes – including higher capital-gains and inheritance taxes, greater spending to broaden access to education, rigorous enforcement of anti-trust laws, corporate-governance reforms that circumscribe executive pay, and financial regulations that rein in banks’ ability to exploit the rest of society – would reduce inequality and increase equality of opportunity markedly.

If we get the rules of the game right, we might even be able to restore the rapid and shared economic growth that characterized the middle-class societies of the mid-twentieth century. The main question confronting us today is not really about capital in the twenty-first century. It is about democracy in the twenty-first century.

- On the bright side, people can generally recognize corruption where it exists, as Thomas Frank points out what happens when corporate scams are put to the test in court: a California jury refused to accept a prosecution argument that mortgage lenders cared whether loan applications were accurate (in a trial aimed only at punishing borrowers while painting banks as victims). But Yves Smith makes clear that the greediest of the greedy are only getting more insistent on securing perpetually larger rents over growth in equity.

- Alison writes that a botched war after he first tried to push Canadian troops to Iraq over public objections, Stephen Harper has finally managed to get that done - while scrupulously ignoring any of the lessons that should be obvious from the U.S.' previous disastrous stay. And Peter Bergman and David Sterman observe that the politicians shrieking about North Americans being recruited into foreign fighting forces are doing so without any basis in reality.

- Finally, Michael Spratt slams the Cons' counterproductive spin on crime:

How can a government so keen to combat lawlessness make such a botch of its own laws? How can a government composed of law-and-order types be so astoundingly ignorant of how the law actually works?

The answer seems obvious: This government doesn’t really care about fighting crime, about victims, about respecting our most fundamental law — the Constitution. What they do care about is politics — and for Stephen Harper, wrapping himself in his crime-fighter cape is a lot more important than passing laws that work, or make sense.

That the Conservatives are indifferent to the pursuit of justice is something demonstrated by their actions, not their words. They cut the Department of Justice’s research budget by $1.2 million. According to an internal government report, the Justice Department’s research budget was slashed just as an internal report for the deputy minister was warning its findings “may run contrary to government direction” and have “at times left the impression that research is undermining government decisions” and is not “aligned with government or departmental priorities.”

Why stop at suppressing the dissenting opinions of the experts when you can stifle them altogether?

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Robert Reich discusses how we'd all better off if we acted in the public interest and insisted that our representatives did the same:

A society -- any society --- is defined as a set of mutual benefits and duties embodied most visibly in public institutions: public schools, public libraries, public transportation, public hospitals, public parks, public museums, public recreation, public universities, and so on.

Public institutions are supported by all taxpayers, and are available to all. If the tax system is progressive, those who are better off (and who, presumably, have benefitted from many of these same public institutions) help pay for everyone else.

"Privatize" means "Pay for it yourself." The practical consequence of this in an economy whose wealth and income are now more concentrated than at any time in the past 90 years is to make high-quality public goods available to fewer and fewer.

In fact, much of what's called "public" is increasingly a private good paid for by users -- ever-higher tolls on public highways and public bridges, higher tuitions at so-called public universities, higher admission fees at public parks and public museums.

Much of the rest of what's considered "public" has become so shoddy that those who can afford to do so find private alternatives. As public schools deteriorate, the upper-middle class and wealthy send their kids to private ones. As public pools and playgrounds decay, the better-off buy memberships in private tennis and swimming clubs. As public hospitals decline, the well-off pay premium rates for private care.
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We're losing public goods available to all, supported by the tax payments of all and especially the better-off. In its place we have private goods available to the very rich, supported by the rest of us. 

- And Peter MacLeod makes the case for political parties to serve as social movements rather than mere electoral machines. But needless to say, Stephen Harper has about as much interest in that possibility as he does in following the rules that govern everybody else.

- Monika Dutt highlights how social programs affect health, particularly for those with the least:

An ideal assistance program is one that is designed to support good health.

The Wellesley Institute suggests some ways in which this can be done: (1) ensuring people have access to the basics, such as income, housing, nutritious food and health care; (2) building skills so that people can move away from depending on income assistance programs; (3) working with existing community resources; and (4) taking health into account when designing assistance programs.

Some provincial programs across the country fulfil some of these criteria, for example through child benefits, which acknowledges that supporting children in their early years leads to long-term better health. However, more could be done to promote health in a way that ultimately benefits individuals, their families, and their communities, and lessens the use of income assistance.

Most people do not want to use these programs, particularly the ones intended for people living in poverty; they would prefer to be able to support themselves and their families on their own. They also do not want to experience poor health due to poverty.

Improving the health of people living in poverty benefits all of us, including those with high incomes. A healthy society is one in which your income doesn’t define how healthy you are.

- Finally, the Tyee documents a few brilliant Fraser Institute Kid Tips.

Wednesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Wednesday reading.

- Pat Atkinson highlights what should probably be the story of the year for 2012: the continued degradation of Canadian democracy under a government which views Parliament and the public with an alarming degree of contempt:

Harper's Conservatives see Parliament as a nuisance. Committees meet in secret, and opposition MPs aren't to reveal what is learned. And it is clear that most of Parliament's power has been centralized into a prime minister's office that is determined to control governing party MPs and even its cabinet ministers.

Paul Thomas, professor emeritus of politics at the University of Manitoba, describes the power and effectiveness of Canada's Parliament being "at the bottom of the heap."

"It has lost tremendous ground in terms of public support and confidence," he says.

So why should Canadians care about parliamentary democracy and whether the Harper government introduces two several-hundred-page omnibus bills? After all, the prime minister has a mandate from the people of Canada to govern.

But as Canadians we need to remind ourselves that we elect members of Parliament, not a government or, for that matter, a prime minister. We live in a parliamentary democracy which is "a political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them."

Each time precedents, procedures and even laws are tossed out the window by the prime minister in the name of political expediency with little or no debate, it chips away another brick in our democratic foundation.
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Democracy in Canada isn't quite what it used to be. Maybe next year we will start to pay attention.

- Meanwhile, David Pugliese reports on the Cons' efforts to hide even previously-available information about a Canadian troop killed by Israeli forces. [Update: And Dr. Dawg points to the report for those all the more curious about it now that it's being suppressed.]

- The Vancouver Sun makes the case to keep the Christmas spirit in mind throughout the year:

Whatever the origins of the current unofficial Boxing Day holiday, it's an opportunity to remember that while Christmas is always accompanied by a lot of natural Canadian generosity, it's needed all year round, not just on a seasonal basis.

It's one thing to make sure the homeless and the marginalized get a Christmas dinner and some festive cheer to mark the annual festival, it's another to make a commitment to keep the giving going at those times when it's still needed but not so high profile.
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Whether we're out there today indulging ourselves or taking it easy at home in recovery mode, let's not forget that the spirit of Christmas isn't a momentary affair that ends on Dec. 26 - it actually begins there.

- Meanwhile, Gail Shea thinks Canada's unemployed should be a bit more charitable toward employers who would like to use them on the cheap.

- Finally, the Tyee's Ideas series checks in on the remarkable progress of the Rolling Jubilee:

In November, Perisic and members of Strike Debt launched the Rolling Jubilee, an initiative that buys up debt only to erase it. Described as a bailout for the people, the project uses online donations to purchase debt in secondary markets (where collectors pay pennies on the dollar for loans already charged off by the banks). Instead of employing aggressive bounty hunting tactics, Occupiers forgive the debt.

It's a symbolic gesture, allowing a few Americans struggling with out-of-control medical, credit card and student debt to start fresh. "We're trying to shine a light on the predatory nature of the industry," she says. "At the same time we're trying to shine a light on how the system works." So far nearly $500,000 in donations have rolled in: enough to buy over $9 million in distressed debt.

"It obviously touched a nerve," Perisic says of the Jubilee's eager public response. Combined with donations to Occupy Sandy, another relief-focused branch of Occupy 2.0, donations to the OWS movement in November 2012 outpaced donations for all of 2011. "We've been getting so many emails," she continues. "What's become obvious is that people are really looking for something to plug into. They want to be part of some collective action."

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Michael Harris asks why Stephen Harper is afraid to look Theresa Spence in the eye:

(Harper) believes that the government’s lying about all these things is far less important than the fact that it is the government. Incumbency is a magic potion. Under its influence, people are supposed to swoon. All too often, they do. That’s the way oligarchs think. Richard Nixon put it in a nutshell when he famously said that if the president did it, then it wasn’t a crime.

Stephen Harper has arrived at the exalted position of Tricky Dick. He thinks that the necessity to tell the truth binds other people, not him. He doesn’t adjust to facts, he manufactures them, and when that doesn’t work, he defies them. The F-35 doesn’t just prove his gross incompetence in the expenditure of mountains of tax dollars — it also shows the arrogant belief that he doesn’t have to explain himself to people he believes would be baffled by an elevated game of checkers.
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The PM’s view is that you win some, you lose some. Actually, he’s lost quite a few and will probably lose more in 2013 because of the alleged unconstitutionality of much of his justice legislation as contained in poorly-debated omnibus bills. And that is a universe the prime minister is comfortable in — the winner-take-all world of expensive court rulings and a grinding process — life as an elitist joust where he with the longest lance usually prevails.

Which is why Stephen Harper can’t understand Chief Theresa Spence. She is trying to get things done in the old way, using a habit of liberty not well understood by oligarchs or by people who are demoralized by the state of Canadian politics. She is asking for a face-to-face meeting with the man who is supposed to be working for her, for the people, not just his chosen people. She is asking for something Stephen Harper is not much good at giving — personal answers.

Chief Spence’s request might be the fatigue of a front-line respondent to the worst poverty in the country. It might be dismay at how Harper’s promise to forge a new relationship with Canada’s aboriginals has utterly failed to materialize. It might be the Harper government’s statutory war on the environment without bothering to get aboriginal approval for profound legislative change. It might be cuts to native health care or the abominable state of reserve education. Whatever it is, it has put Stephen Harper in an unfamiliar place — on the defensive.

- But then, Boris notes that if Harper manages to make matters worse by refusing to meet with Spence, he may only use the resulting popular outcry to consolidate his own power. And the fact that Idle No More is receiving plenty of attention on the world stage might not dissuade him from seeing that as an entirely acceptable outcome.

- Jeremy Nuttall takes a look behind the shadowy mining corporation responsible for deliberately establishing a long-term workforce of "temporary" workers:

"Extensive research by United Steelworkers employing sources in China indicates that while Huiyong does hold investments in mines in Shanxi province and the vice general manager of Huiyong, Ma Zhifu, is also the president of the board of a Shanxi mine, there is no publicly-available evidence that the company actually operates any mines," reads the report.

"The company itself seems to consist of little more than an email address, phone number and street address located in a modest building in a Beijing suburb. It has no obvious website -- none in Chinese, none in English."
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Recently The Tyee phoned Huiyong Holding's headquarters in Beijing looking for information about the firm, but was told by a receptionist only the company's head could answer such queries.

The receptionist refused to help The Tyee contact the company head or give the person's name.

- Finally, Cameron Dearlove points out how social determinants of health can be applied in an individual's life. But to me, the most important takeaway from the list is that the determinants themselves aren't of much use unless they're applied on a social level: indeed, a belief that it's enough to personally avoid poverty, low-paying jobs or poor housing may be part of the reason why so many people accept similar problems for others.

New column day

Here, expanding on my previous post as to why we should be wary of Brad Wall's plans for potash royalties.

For further reading, I'll again recommend Mitchell Anderson's Tyee series contrasting how Norway has handled its natural resources with Canada's laissez-faire system. (And the lesson seems all the more applicable in the case of potash, where the limited alternative sources of production make it even more obvious that we should be able to make sure Saskatchewan's interests are protected.)

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Thomas Walkom suggests that the systematic eviction of Occupy camps from Canadian cities may only help the movement to evolve from its first form:

City administrations in places like Toronto, Halifax and Vancouver are inadvertently handing demonstrators something they desperately need — a way to honourably end stage one of their protest and build on it something more pointed.

As a short-term tactic, the decision to occupy parks in order to draw attention to global inequality was spectacularly successful.

In a world buffeted by recession, it focused public attention on the epicentre of the economic crisis — the global financial system.
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There must be an end point at which those involved in the action can say: Yes we won something. Not everything, maybe, but something.

In cities like Halifax and London, Ont., where the occupy movements have been expelled from public parks, city officials provided that end point. Depending on how a superior court judge rules Saturday, Toronto protesters may face the same fate.

Yet none of this need spell defeat for the occupiers. They now have a chance to strengthen their fragile alliances with other organizations, such as labour unions, that are dissatisfied with inequality in Canadian life.

More important, they can now redirect their energies toward the specific elements of Canadian political economy that encourage such inequalities — from the tax code to municipal outsourcing to the provincial welfare system to the federal government’s war on labour.

- Don Drummond points out that there's plenty to be done to improve Canadian health care besides giving in to the right's relentless demands to privatize.

- Yes, it's outrageous that the Cons are raiding the Canadian Wheat Board's contingency fund (which would otherwise have been distributed to farmers) to pay a small portion of the costs of demolishing the CWB's single desk on its way to being sold off. But it's well worth noting the more basic point that the existence of a fund which gives farmers a share of the benefits of commodity arbitrage is the type of collective benefit that will be lost as the CWB is thrown on the mercy of the market.

- Finally, Ben Christopher notes that labour and management alike are aghast at the Cons' attacks on Canadian unions.

History repeating

In 2008, it was then-cabinet minister Gary Lunn who wound up embroiled in at least a minor scandal over coordinated third-party expenses.

And in 2011, there's once again some sign of shenanigans afoot. In particular, a cluster of third parties based in Richmond, B.C. - including two individuals registered at the same address - turned up in Elections Canada's third party advertising report. And it'll be worth keeping an eye on what further connections develop, as well as what the supposedly-independent ads actually said.

Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Simon Enoch rightly criticizes the Cons' fair-weather commitment to democracy in the wake of a fairly resounding vote on the part of Canadian Wheat Board members to preserve the institution and its single-desk status against the Cons' attacks. But let's note another ridiculous side to the Cons' position: they're now rejecting the results of a vote which actually offered a clear and direct choice, after choosing to trumpet the manipulated results of a far more questionable voting process as justifying their determination to destroy the CWB.

- Kai Nagata joins up with the Tyee, and makes a splash with his first warning about Quebecor's dominance of Quebec's media scene.

- Chantal Hebert points out how the Libs' willingness to play along with security-state rhetoric in their later years in government helped to lead to their subsequent electoral downfall:

The see-no-evil/hear-no-evil rules on detainee transfers from the Canadian Forces to the Afghan authorities that opened the door to abuse at the hands of local jailers were ratified by a Liberal government.

The decision to support the jailing of 15-year-old Omar Khadr in Guantanamo and the illegal CSIS interrogations that followed took place on the Liberal watch.

Chrétien was in power when Canadian engineer Maher Arar was taken off a plane in the United States and subsequently deported to torture chambers in Syria.

It was successive Liberal governments that initially refused to allow Abousfian Abdelrazik to return home from Sudan in 2003 — an exile forced on a Canadian citizen that was to last six years.

The Liberals were in power only for the first half of the past decade but they very much shaped post 9/11 Canada as we now know it.

In so doing they also (accidentally) set in motion a major realignment of the federal landscape,

The change in the channels triggered by the events of 9/11 provided conservatives of all partisan stripes with fresh common ground — distanced from the disputed terrain of the recent past — on which to focus.

It also brought a harder-edged Conservative leadership within the redefined mainstream of Canadian politics.

More importantly, the post 9/11 symbiosis between the Liberals and the Conservatives allowed the NDP and its contrary voice to become relevant again.
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Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, the events of 9/11 did not so much pave the way to a more conservative Canada as open the door to a more polarized and less Liberal country.

- Finally, Paul Wells discusses how the Cons' current decision-making core reflects the diversity that is Canada's pool of single white males.

Sunday Morning Links

Selected text for your weekend reading.

- Edmund Pries points out how the right sees wasted public money and gratuitous tax slashing as tools to force cuts to programs which actually serve a valuable purpose:

During the Reagan era, a friend and former colleague, a professor of American history, was invited to the deliberations of a Washington think-tank that provided policy direction for the Republican Party. As they discussed growing the debt and increasing the deficit, he was flabbergasted: “Are you not the party of balanced budgets and debt elimination?” The reply was unequivocal, “Our goal is to grow the deficit as much as possible in order to create political space to eliminate government-funded programming. Until then, we want high deficits while lobbying for a balanced budget — and promoting social program cuts as the only solution.”

To create this useful deficit, tax cuts to wealthy individuals and corporate sectors would be dramatically increased, especially to the banking, energy and military segments. In short, one would implement a transfer of the state’s revenue supply obligations from the wealthiest to the poor and middle classes in order to permit an even greater transfer of wealth from the middle classes to the rich thereafter.

The only trick was to convince the poor and middle classes to “buy in” via a mixture of patriotism and structural necessity so that they would vote in favour of cutting the very programs that benefitted them.
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Some have pretended that the budgetary crisis is real and not manufactured. Let us be clear: our relative wealth is greater than at any time in our history. Our collective ability to build a strong, caring and inclusive society in which everyone can participate has never been greater. This also holds true for the community of nations: we have the capacity to build a just global society.

Our preparedness to do so, however, seems utterly lacking, for an extreme individualism has taken over the mindset of many. We believe, falsely, that we are best served by hoarding as many resources as possible and letting others fend for themselves. The opposite is true. We are best served when we build a society together where all, including each reader of this article, can benefit through the building of community-wide programs.
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Have we really lost our sense of the common good? Or is each person now on his or her own? There is no apocalyptic budgetary crisis other than of our own making. The crisis is in our orientation.

- Meanwhile, Sixth Estate notes that even the corporate-friendly Conference Board of Canada doesn't buy the right-wing spin that tax slashing pays for itself.

- I'm not sure she had any reason to defer to Jason Kenney when it came to doling out sarcasm. But Tabatha Southey's warning about Kenney's attacks on Amnesty International is still worth a read:

You're excused if your first reaction on reading of the minister's “joy” is, “Who died and made you the Minister of Sarcasm?”

The concerns cited by Amnesty International are that by using the immigration system to deal with suspected war criminals – deporting them instead of charging them – Canada may allow them to escape prosecution.

In addition, “Canada's international human rights obligations are clear,” Amnesty's letter said – “no person should be deported if he or she faces a serious risk of such grave human rights violations as torture, extrajudicial execution or enforced disappearance.”

In the mildest terms, it urged the minister to “reassess” the government's approach.

That's part of Amnesty's mandate. And far from “squandering the moral authority accrued” in campaigns that Mr. Kenney sees as legitimate, the group would more likely lose some credibility if it failed to raise this issue.
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The tone of Mr. Kenney's letter to Amnesty, which was posted prominently on his ministerial website (yet is oddly signed only in his capacity as an MP, not as a minister), never gets less sarcastic. It feels personal. It reads like the kind of letter we sometimes write when we feel wronged, but then delete before sending. The tone makes sense only if Mr. Kenney recently broke up with Amnesty International. Prior drafts may well have contained the line, “And Violet Hill was never ‘our song' – it's my song.”
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He could simply have said, as he sort of did – although not simply, never simply – that prosecuting these accused criminals in Canada would be too costly, complicated and likely ineffective (this may well be the case).

Instead, he called Amnesty's position “poppycock” and claimed that their professional, innocuous letter contained allegations that are “sloppy and irresponsible” and “precisely the slander you wrongly accuse the government of directing at the deportees.”

It doesn't. But what the letter does contain is a request that the government be tougher on war criminals. It's strange that this suggestion, made to a tough-on-crime minister, didn't merit a restrained, less caustic answer.

- Finally, with housing looming as a major issue in this fall's Saskatchewan provincial election, let's note that the Tyee has been going into detail on the issue from a Vancouver perspective - and coming up with some suggestions which the federal Cons unfortunately want to ignore:

Both the City of Vancouver and Dickie's CFAA expressed support for Bill C-304, a private member's bill introduced by NDP MP Libby Davies in 2009, calling for a national housing strategy. Such a strategy, the Vancouver MP says, would establish long-term funding for housing.

But while the last election may have advanced the NDP to Official Opposition status, the party that won a majority in Parliament seems to believe it already has a housing plan.
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Groups like the Federation of Canadian Municipalities raised concerns that funding for AHI and RRAP expired on April 1, 2011. The federal, provincial, and territorial ministers responsible for housing officially announced continued funding for those programs on July 4, when they announced a $1.4 billion investment under a new Affordable Housing Framework for 2011 to 2014.*

To Davies, long-term, stable federal assistance is necessary when the private market fails to provide housing people can afford. "The reality is that the marketplace, even when it's operating at full tilt, even when it's doing everything that it's meant to be doing cannot meet 100 per cent of the need that there is for housing," she says.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Crawford Kilian interviews Linda McQuaig on inequality, including this comment on how to handle the damaging effects of inequality politically:

On whether inequality is becoming a serious political issue:

"Eventually it will be, especially if we continue on our present trajectory of the next few years. But what kind of political issue? Will we deal with it in a constructive way, or will it be hijacked by the right, as it was with the Tea Party in the U.S.? The Tea Partiers are feeding on resentment of inequality.

"Education as a solution would take generations. In the book, we argue for a progressive tax system that would redistribute income immediately. At the moment, 59,000 Canadians earn more than $500,000 a year, but they're taxed at the same rate as those making just $128,000 a year. Two new top rates on those 59,000 would bring in an addition $8 billion without affecting anyone else.

"Progressive forces have an attractive issue in inequality if only they pick up on it."

- Errol Black and Jim Silver point out in response to the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case that the benefits of a union go far beyond wages alone, noting that in high- and low-profile matters alike employees may have much greater ability to report abuses when they have union protection:

The initial focus of the media's coverage of the alleged sexual assault charge brought against Strauss-Kahn was on the implications for him, and on his arrest and treatment by the New York police and justice system. Subsequently, questions were raised about the implications for the IMF. The media were largely silent about the situation of the New York hotel worker and the circumstances that motivated her to report the sexual assault.

A piece posted on Alternet, May 19, 2011 (see: http://www.alternet.org/story/151022), titled "Accusing DSK of Sexual Assault Took Guts - But Union Protection is Essential”, reports that the victim of the alleged assault is an African woman from a former French colony who works as a housemaid in the Sofitel Hotel. It is, of course, a story far from over. But the author observes that there would be no story at all if the housemaid were not protected by her union contract. "There's a reason why most rapes go unreported. But there was one thing the housekeeper knew could not be done to her for reporting her account. She could not be fired for having done so, because of the contract between her union, the New York Hotel Trades Council and the Sofitel Hotel at which she works."

An editorial in the New York Hotel and Motel Trades paper also stresses the importance of union membership. "In the worldwide hotel industry, New York City has the highest proportion of unionization (75%), and hotel employees here have the strongest union with the best contract. They enjoy the highest wages in the industry, excellent benefits, strong job security, good working conditions, and powerful grievance rights. They also have a militant union - their own organization, governed and funded not by wealthy donors but by themselves - that aggressively enforces those rights."

..."(T)he union does make us strong," both collectively and individually, by creating the conditions that allow workers who suffer abuse in the workplace to retain their dignity and seek redress and justice for the harm done them.

- On a rather more mundane note, I wouldn't have thought that the addition of a new area code would make for an obvious source of inefficiency. But since we're apparently now looking at 10-digit local dialing (including what's sure to be confusion as to which local numbers fall under each code), isn't it worth asking whether there's any particular point to maintaining some nebulous sense of comfort at the expense of unnecessary inconvenience?

- Finally, Dan Gardner once again highlights the difference between the principles Stephen Harper once claimed to stand for and the sad reality of his time in office:

Stephen Harper has held power for more than five years, most of that time with far more control of Parliament and the machinery of government than is normal for a prime minister with a minority. Today, he has his majority, and he has delivered a Throne Speech and a budget.

And the record of Stephen Harper's government doesn't look much like the beliefs of Stephen Harper.

Record spending increases. Surpluses turned into structural deficits. Bureaucratic bloat. Vote-buying tax policies that make economists pull their hair out. Hyper-centralization of power. Slush funds. Pork-barrel politics. Cronyism and patronage that would make a Liberal blush. A plan to fix the budget as credible as Greek bonds.

On and on the list goes. In the 1990s, to elaborate on one of countless examples, Stephen Harper called supply management a "government-sponsored price-fixing cartel." Today, he praises it. In the Throne Speech, Harper went so far as to promise to protect supply management in any future free trade talks, even, presumably, if it kills the negotiations.
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The fact that Conservative beliefs and Conservative policies are scarcely correlated does not bother most Conservatives because they do not see it. For this, they can thank what psychologists call "compartmentalization." It's awfully handy in politics.

As a result, Stephen Harper and the party he created in his image exhibit a strange sort of schizophrenia.

In action, they can be as unprincipled as the most ruthless Liberal. In word, they are often as self-righteous as the most idealistic New Democrat.

Or, to put it in the prime minister's terms, they may spend all their time breaking instruments over their opponent's heads, but they really do believe they're making beautiful music.

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Joel-Denis Bellavance notes another noteworthy piece of the latest Quebec polling, as CROP shows the NDP's recently-increased support as being no less solid than that for any other party:

Mieux encore, les appuis au NPD se solidifient. Pas moins de 77% des personnes sondées qui comptent appuyer les troupes de Jack Layton ont «certainement» l'intention d'aller voter le 2 mai, jour du scrutin. Les électeurs qui comptent appuyer le NPD sont plus mobilisés que ceux du Bloc québécois (75%) et autant que ceux qui comptent donner leur appui au Parti conservateur.

Enfin, Jack Layton domine outrageusement tous ses adversaires fédéralistes quand on demande aux répondants d'identifier quel chef de parti ferait le meilleur premier ministre. En effet, 38% des personnes sondées choisissent Jack Layton et seulement 11% optent pour le chef conservateur Stephen Harper et 8% jettent leur dévolu sur le chef libéral Michael Ignatieff.

- It's probably too late to make the difference I'd hoped for. But the Tyee fact-checks each of Stephen Harper's outraged declarations of "that's simply not true!" from the leader's debates - and finds that Harper flat-out lied about three, while declaring clarity on a muddled issue for the fourth.

- Craig McInnes asks when compromise became a dirty word. But the more appropriate question seems to me to be where compromise is a dirty word - and the answer seems to be among Kool-Aid-addled Cons, but far less of the general public than they think.

- Finally, Bruce Campbell issues a challenge to Canada's wealthiest 0.1% to stop putting their short-term interests above the long-term health of Canadian society.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous items of interest...

- A couple of pieces deserve attention on the Cons' declaration that they plan to leave up to 1,000 troops in Afghanistan after they'd agreed to remove them. First, here's pogge:

If you look down the left hand column at the main page of National Newswatch this morning you'll see quite a few of the pundits who normally appear there weighing in on the subject. That's the public debate. Or as close to it as we're going to get. If you want to get in on it, move quickly because it will be over soon. And it won't change a thing. It would appear that Harper took the public statements by Ignatieff and Rae as all the indication of support he really needed for an extended military mission "behind the wire." With the NATO Summit only two weeks away, he's allowed a revised mission profile that will make our allies ecstatic to be leaked to the media and now he's sitting back and letting everybody at home fume about it.
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I haven't read all the material on this that I've bookmarked over the last few days but I'd like to note this Canadian Press piece. It describes a three month long "diplomatic charm offensive" by representatives from the U.S., Britain and NATO and quotes an unnamed diplomat:

"We recognize politically this is not the world's greatest vote winner," said the diplomat, adding the hope that "behind the scenes, the opposition and the government could work something out on this."

In other words, they know perfectly well that they're encouraging a government to act contrary to the wishes of its citizens. They don't particularly care as long they can work "behind the scenes" and get what they want.

We're staying in Afghanistan so we can help to bring them a democracy just like ours. Did you enjoy the debate?

- And Chris Selley laments the absurdity of the Cons' sudden decision to declare void all previous statements about bringing Canadian troops home:

Couple of problems, though. One, just because the government says it’s a training role doesn’t mean it’s true. (How can we train troops exclusively behind the wire?) Almost nothing Stephen Harper or his lickspittles-with-portfolio have said about the mission in recent months has been true. Indeed, as Martin notes, they went miles out of their way to convince Canadians there would be no military role in Afghanistan whatsoever after 2011 — and “nobody raised the bar on those expectations higher than [Mr. Harper], who was so adamant about unilaterally leaving the war zone by the end of 2011, he insisted in a National Post interview that the only remaining soldiers would be a few privates guarding the Canadian embassy.”

“It was never clear why the Conservatives perpetuated the misconception that [the government] was bound to remove every soldier from the country in 2011,” says the Globe. Yeah, golly, what a mystery. Please. What the Globe’s Lawrence Martin describes as political “ambidexterity” — i.e., guilefully stealing Michael Ignatieff’s plan for troops to stay on as trainers — is in fact just an example of the government’s golden rule. Its only rule, maybe: In every situation, without exception, do or say the thing that’s easiest to do or say, and let the communications guys figure out any ensuing contradictions. Or give them the night off. It’s not like anyone cares.

- Carl Mortished points out that the supposed purpose of workfare programs doesn't have much to do with the actual result:

We don’t know how many cheat the welfare system. I suspect the real cheats (rather than those who are chronically idle) are few in number but extremely clever. The British government reforms will not catch the big cheats who will delight in finding ways to continue claiming multiple benefits without picking up litter. Instead, it will employ contractors at large expense to drag up and down the street squads of depressed, irritable and resentful people clad in ill-fitting overalls.

Will “scroungers” acquire a work ethic picking up litter? They will acquire an urgent need to avoid loss of income but that is different to an ethic. Governments in Europe worry about a diminishing spirit of enterprise among the young. They think they see a work ethic in China but we know that many Chinese have family memories of gut-wrenching hardship. If Chinese work harder than British or Canadians, it is out of fear and the acquisitiveness of those desperate for a way out of poverty. The Chinese are not better people; they are just more desperate. If you don’t think that is true, ask yourself whether the employees who committed suicide at Foxconn’s Chinese factory lacked a work ethic or had just lost hope that their lives would get better.

We cannot change people’s attitudes to work by taking away benefits. A tougher regime that might turn us all into a “Chinese” work force is politically impossible. All we can do is tip the balance of fear and greed temporarily in favour of turning up for a day with the dust cart.

- Finally, the Tyee is doing yeoman's work in countering the apparent media effort to redefine Gordon Campbell after his resignation, with Will McMartin's piece doing a particularly good job comparing Campbell's promises to what he actually did.

British Columbia Election Links

With this blog's recent focus on the Saskatchewan NDP leadership race, I haven't written much about the provincial election in British Columbia - which of course features both a furious battle between Carole James' NDP and Gordon Campbell's Libs for provincial power, and a vote on BC-STV which may have widespread implications for electoral reform. But for those looking for must-reads before tomorrow's election, here are a few of the pieces worth keeping in mind before going to the ballot box:

- Andrew Coyne delivers his summation in favour of BC-STV.

- The Tyee has the two must-read articles on the B.C. Rail scandal, including a status report along with its discovery that a related trust fund is breaking the law to avoid reporting investment losses until after the election.

- Alison points out that the Campbell government has not only pushed the Ministry of the Environment to exempt private-sector power producers from environmental laws, but asked that any refusal to do so be escalated to the Minister for easy political reversal.

- One more from the Tyee, this one as to which provincial party has overseen the most economic growth while in office. (Hint: the "bust" part of a right-wing boom and bust pattern tends to do a lot more harm than good.)

- And finally, Peter Kelly calls for progressive voters to back BC-STV and the NDP.

Return on investment

Last month, I was one of many to point out the Tyee's experiment in providing readers with coverage of the areas they wanted to see addressed within the B.C. provincial election campaign. Today, the Tyee follows up with the results - and it's remarkable how much a single independent newspaper was able to uncover in a short period of time. So kudos again to the Tyee and its donors for finding an innovative way to meet some obvious demand for greater attention to issues in the campaign.

But the Tyee's success in breaking multiple stories with an investment of $25,000 for a month raises some other serious questions. To wit, why is it that such significant stories - especially those about ballooning health records costs and a lack of required reporting from a B.C. Rail trust which figures to show a significant loss - managed to slip through the cracks until it was too late for them to be fully canvassed before the election? And if B.C.'s corporate press has been as negligent in documenting the provincial government's activities as appears to be the case, then how much more figures to be lurking just below the surface, presumably to be disclosed at just the right time to make sure that voters can't pass an informed judgment on the Campbell government?

On headline news

Bill Tieleman is right to point out the key topics which are all too likely to get buried in B.C.'s provincial election campaign. So let's give them a bit more exposure here - and those looking for the reasons why they deserve attention will find them in Tieleman's article.

Here are three screaming front page newspaper headlines that you should see -- but likely won't -- in British Columbia before the May 12 provincial election:

1. Premier Gordon Campbell's B.C. Liberals worst economic managers in province's history!
2. British Columbia job losses lead all Canada in recession!
3. B.C. 2009 budget deficit phoney as $3 bill!

On targeted coverage

The Tyee's push for reader funding of its B.C. election coverage - coupled with a choice of issues to be covered by one's donation - was an interesting enough story on its own (not to mention a worthy cause). But it's especially noteworthy that the national press has taken notice:

British Columbians who say the media is ignoring the most pressing issues in next month's provincial election now have an opportunity to put their money where their mouth is.

The Tyee, a B.C. online web magazine, is collecting pledges from its readers to fund its election reporting.

Those who donate can tell the magazine's brass what election issue - environment, housing, Olympics, for example - their money should go towards covering...

The Tyee hoped to raise $5,000, enough to hire an extra reporter for each day of the election campaign.

Donations are already nearing $7,000 with the pledge drive slated to run until April 14...

Mary Agnes Welch, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, likened the Tyee's money-raising efforts to those of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, which regularly ask their audiences to donate.

"Is it any worse than selling ads to big advertisers that you often write stories about? When it comes to ethical issues and readers driving coverage, this seems to be a way to actually get readers more engaged in the kind of coverage you provide," she said.

It remains to be seen whether the Tyee will be able to replicate the election coverage model at other times - not to mention whether or not other Canadian media outlets will recognize the opportunity to follow suit by directly tailoring their coverage to what viewers and readers see as most important.

But it's a huge plus to see the Tyee's efforts succeeding so far. And one can't help but figure that major media chains will have little choice but to pay attention to the fact that customized coverage may be the one area where there's some pent-up demand to be met even when the corporate world is scaling back.