Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Iglika Ivanova discusses how British Columbia can move toward eliminating poverty in its next budget.

- Patrick Maze points out the need for Saskatchewan's education system to be able to rely on stable and sufficient funding. But Alex MacPherson notes that Scott Moe has refused to benefit people even when there's federal money available to provide such basic necessities as public transportation.

- Kelvin Gawley reports on the massive public benefits from the NDP's comprehensive and universal pharmacare plan (in contrast to the Libs' watered-down attempt at corporate appeasement). 

- The Star's editorial board calls out Doug Ford's bait-and-switch which will result in funding being pulled away from the children with autism who most need it.

- Finally, Christo Aivalis reminds us of Tommy Douglas' genuine socialism - and the continued importance of holding and conveying strong social values even when they're not seen as politicall convenient:

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Gary Bloch writes about the costs of poverty (and the small-minded attitude toward public supports which allows it to remain):

We also see the effects of poverty at home: the discomfort of living next to people who are struggling to survive, with the resulting anger and irritation this causes on both sides. Our children coming home from school talking about their friends who have to ask for help to go on a field trip or who hide their inadequate lunches out of shame.

To continue to avoid dealing with this situation is not only immoral, it makes no sense. This report highlights the negative side of continued poverty: poor health and lost productivity. But to read the report from another angle, it tells me that a society with no poverty would be healthier, happier, and easier to live in. We would also likely save money in the long run.

How do we get there? We know what needs to be done. There has been an endless stream of reports and commissions looking at how to address poverty. We have Toronto and Ontario poverty reduction strategies and are waiting for a federal version. We know we must address a lack of affordable housing or child care, inadequate social assistance rates, and the rise of precarious work. We are pretty sure climate change is making the situation worse.

But the biggest barrier to ending poverty is the political orthodoxy we have lived by for the past 40 or more years, grounded in austerity: that good government is small government, that social programs must shrink, and that taxes are evil. It is over this period that we have seen the most dramatic rise in poverty rates and income inequality, with a concentration of wealth in the top 1 per cent. It’s time for a rethink.

I’d be more than happy to pay more taxes if I knew that money would help my community to be healthier and happier. I feel good and hopeful when provincial and federal leaders talk about initiatives that will make life easier for those who are most vulnerable, and I am more than happy to put my money where my mouth is.

- Simon Enoch reminds the Sask Party that contrary to its austerian instincts, gratuitous cuts in a downturn serve only to make matters worse.

- David Morley discusses the need to measure our well-being in terms of health and other standards of living, rather than focusing merely on GDP. And Wenonah Bradshaw looks to Tommy Douglas' farewell speech as NDP leader as to the importance of mobilizing our resources for the good of people.

- Sheryl Ubelacker reports on the recommendations from a citizens' panel favouring a national pharmacare program to lower health costs and improve outcomes.

- Daniel Tencer follows up on David MacDonald's research into the costs of boutique tax giveaways to the wealthy which could fund the most important repairs to Canada's social safety net several times over. And the Star's editorial board offers its own call to end tax breaks for the rich.

- Finally, the BBC reports that even Mark Carney is offering a warning about public disillusionment with corporate-friendly economics - even if his goal in the process is to relieve just enough pressure to keep things substantially as they are, rather than to seriously reexamine whether our primary goal should be to facilitate capital accumulation in the first place.

On historical connections

Needless to say, we have ample reason to laugh at Justin Trudeau's attempt to cast himself as bearing any similarity to Tommy Douglas when it comes to social justice and economic management. But it may not be long before one significant link develops between the two.

Based on a quick scan, the 1962 federal election looks to have been the last time a major party leader managed to retain that position while losing his own riding: Douglas lost in Regina City in the NDP's first federal election, before winning a seat in Parliament in a Burnaby-Coquitlam by-election.

Well, Trudeau enjoys plenty of support within his own party to stay on as leader even if he loses the election. But he may be in tough to hold onto his own riding of Papineau.

Which raises the question: who's in line to be Canada's next Erhart Regier?

On extended intrusions

There's been plenty of discussion as to the similarities between the Cons' terror bill and Pierre Trudeau's 1970 invocation of the War Measures Act. And it's certainly worth reminding ourselves that even in the face of an identifiable security concern, the impulse to attack civil rights tends to prove wrong upon reflection.

But there's a key difference between the C-51 debate and Trudeau's invocation of the War Measures Act - and it's one which makes the present-day Cons and Libs look even worse than their predecessors.

Keep in mind that the War Measures Act was aimed at providing extreme but temporary powers in the face of an apprehended threat. Those powers still exist under a statute which replaced the War Measures Act, which provides barely-fettered authority under a few key conditions: the government is required to publicly declare a state of emergency, its declaration is temporary unless extended, and its decision is subject to the will of Parliament.

In contrast, the key parts of the security apparatus set up under C-51 lack some or all of those protections.

C-51's warrant process provides for the actions which require judicial approval to be time-limited in theory. But just as the granting of a warrant takes place away from the public eye and without opposition, so too does the extension of a warrant.

What's worse, the no-warrant provisions of C-51 operate any time CSIS decides for itself - without any debate or notice - that a "particular activity" should be limited. Once that standard is met, CSIS is authorized to take whatever actions it sees as reasonable, with no limit on the time or scope of any intrusion into the lives of Canadians other than CSIS' own evaluation.

And there's no process for anybody to challenge or review CSIS' secret actions - which again can be carried out indefinitely - except to the extent SIRC is up to the task.

In retrospect, history has proven Tommy Douglas right in arguing that the 1970 application of the War Measures Act resulted in the Trudeau government using a sledgehammer to crack a single peanut. But by that standard, the Cons' C-51 is based on implementing the vision of a sledgehammer being used to smash a pile of peanuts forever.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

On greatness

Plenty of commentators have pointed to Dean Beeby's report on public consultations about Canada's most inspiring people as evidence that Stephen Harper and his Cons couldn't be much further from the mark. And that point is fair enough on its own.

But it's worth noting something else as well: respondents to the Canadian Heritage Department's survey seem to have drawn a close link between political greatness, and signature achievements in institution-building:

The Canadian Heritage Department extracted a Top 10 list for an April 29 briefing note for the minister, Shelly Glover.

Only one clearly identifiable Conservative appears: Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, in eighth place.

The list was topped by former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau, followed by marathon-of-hope runner Terry Fox; NDP leader Tommy Douglas; former Liberal prime minister Lester B. Pearson; astronaut Chris Hadfield; environmental activist David Suzuki; NDP leader Jack Layton; Sir. John A.; hockey legend Wayne Gretzky; and Romeo Dallaire, the soldier and Liberal senator who recently announced his resignation.

The consultation also asked which of Canada’s accomplishments of the last 150 years “make you most proud to be a Canadian?”

Medicare topped that list, followed by peacekeeping, then the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms at No. 3.

The Conservative government, which has recently been buffeted by a series of Charter-based losses at the Supreme Court of Canada, did not mark the 25th anniversary of the Charter in 2007, nor the 30th in 2012.

The rest of the accomplishments list, in order: contribution to the Second World War; the Canadarm; multiculturalism; contribution to the First World War; bilingualism; space exploration; and the Constitution Act of 1982.

And it's also noteworthy who's missing: relatively recent, long-serving politicians whose time was marked mostly by cuts and tinkering (Jean Chretien), or whose big plans produced few or negative results (Brian Mulroney, Stephen Harper). In effect, with the exception of Jack Layton, respondents didn't see anything about the last 20-plus years of Canadian politics to be the least bit inspiring.

Which leads to an obvious question: if we're indeed inspired by big ideas and strong principles, then why aren't there more of those on offer in our current political system?

It's well and good to recognize in retrospect the importance of Medicare, the Charter, multiculturalism and bilingualism. But in recent election cycles, anything of comparable ambition has been not only left off the table, but labeled unfit for political consumption: anybody proposing a new social program or constitutional change is immediately shouted down for trying to accomplish something which isn't easy, quick and poll-tested.

Which serves Stephen Harper and his ilk fairly well in the long run. If Harper is doomed to the "uninspiring" pile (due to the fact that his plans for giant pipelines, climate obstruction and capacity slashing tilt distinctly toward the negative side of the ledger), he'll probably accept as a second-best outcome a legacy of chipping away at past accomplishments and salting the earth so that nothing inspiring can ever grow again.

But it's less clear why anybody else should be willing to accept that inspiring politics (as a matter of setting and meeting big public goals, not merely personal branding) should be a thing of the past. And any current politician wanting to join the list of leaders who have made a lasting impact should be laying the groundwork to do more than simply outlast one or two opponents an election at a time.

Thursday Evening Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Andrew Jackson notes that the IMF is telling countries in Canada's position to hold off on gratuitous austerity. And Trish Hennessy wonders why so many Canadians seem to have forgotten what happened last time budget-slashing was in vogue.

- Meanwhile, Erin documents how Ontario's corporate tax giveaways have produced zero return in terms of investment. And Martin Regg Cohn wonders whether a government eager to take on bullying in schools and communities has any interest in applying the same principles when it's being pushed around by shameless corporate bullies.

- Kev notes that the Cons are giving away far more than they have to in order to complete a free trade deal with the European Union by comparing a similar deal being negotiated by India. But is there much evidence that the Cons aren't actively looking for excuses to, say, hand over another pile of free money to big pharma?

- Laura Ryckewaert points out how the NDP's planning in buying its headquarters has helped to position the party for the longer term. But I do think it's a bit speculative to suggest that the building will make a big difference in election financing: is there any evidence to suggest that any party has had any trouble securing loans for national party financing, with or without real estate to pledge as collateral?

- Finally, Greg Marchildon rightly argues that we should be looking to complete the final phase of Tommy Douglas' vision for health care - rather than looking for excuses to trash it as so many want to do.

Jack Layton Links

I won't try to catalogue all of the writing about Jack Layton's passing today, but here are a few pieces worth a look...

- Steven Staples concludes that Layton's reputation will rank him second only to the leader who first drew him to the NDP among Canada's political figures.
- As easy as it is to criticize Jane Taber much of the time, she's at her best in getting the inside story when it comes to personal moments like these - and her poignant quotes from Anne McGrath and Brian Topp are worth a read.
- Meanwhile, Les Perreaux and Ingrid Peritz survey some reactions from Quebec.
- Paul Wells charts the movement built by Layton since he started his work as the federal NDP's leader.
- And Alice traces Layton's federal political career by the numbers while raising some questions about what comes next.

Update: More from Aaron Wherry and The Mark.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Armine Yalnizyan discusses how inequality is no better for business than it is for society at large:

Just a few months ago, two IMF economists, Andrew Berg and Jonathan Ostry, showed that the more equitably incomes are distributed, the longer are the spells of economic growth. They note, “Growth and inequality-reducing policies are likely to reinforce one another and help to establish the foundations for a sustainable expansion.”

Yet the IMF analysis shows the reverse is also true, that higher inequality leads to more volatility. Against a backdrop of low and falling interest rates, wealthy investors hunt for returns with higher yields, which means higher risk and more volatility. As Mark Thoma, professor of economics at University of Oregon, writes, “When we see income inequality rising, we ought to start looking for bubbles.”

All bubbles eventually burst. The boom-bust cycle wipes out even successful businesses, and increases market share for the larger players in the game who can tough it out longer or buy up the competition. This dynamic has led to the “too big to fail” phenomenon, distorting the game for everyone, leading to bailouts and higher prices.

Lack of real income growth and falling interest rates over a generation have led to more borrowing, which points to a world of trouble tomorrow. Nobody gets hurt if the incomes of the top 10% grow more slowly than the bottom 90%, but current compensation practices make that highly unlikely. If the only change on the horizon is higher interest rates, personal bankruptcies and foreclosures will go up. That could slow access to credit for everyone, and further raise the costs of borrowing for businesses and households alike.

- Meanwhile, Marc Lee considers the option of printing more money:

The big barrier is psychological: once we start talking about “printing money” the danger is that millions of misunderstandings about what money is get amplified. In a fiat money system like ours it is the faith or belief that a colourful piece of paper has a certain value in purchasing goods and services that matters, and we need to be careful in shaking that confidence. That most people seek to get money (by selling their labour, or making investments, or buying low and selling high) to acquire things now or in the future is pretty obvious.

But how the money supply itself grows through the expansion of credit in the banking system is not broadly understood. The scale of private money creation is huge. Bank of Canada data for a number of monetary aggregates show that money expands rapidly during boom times, and slows down during downturns. Going back to 1996, M1+ has been at lows of about 4% annual growth, while peaking at more than 14% annual growth. M1++ peaked at around 20% annual growth through much of 2009. A broader monetary aggregate, M2++, did not grow as fast as that, but still was in the 8-9% annual growth range between late 2006 and late 2009. All of this money supply growth was compatible with low and stable inflation.
...
(F)inancing a $50 billion deficit through the Bank of Canada at a time when demand and private credit creation are slow is not a really big deal – apart from fear that would be whooped up in the media by those who do not get this or whose economic interests were adversely affected. Even a modest uptick in inflation is likely to bring hysterical cries from those who own the debts that must be repaid. And higher but stable inflation can get locked in to price and wage expectations that impose some economic costs on society, although costs will be minor for inflation rates in single digits.
...
(G)iven that there are horribly polluting industries out there that need to be phased out, why not use public money to offset the economic hit of decommissioning? At a time of deleveraging and record high household debt, a new public sector stimulus program is just what is needed, rather than the conventional wisdom that nothing more can be done by governments.

- Which leads nicely into Megan Leslie's column on the need for real investment in renewable energy and conservation:

We must not forget that the development of the oil sands in Canada was the result of substantial government-sponsored research and subsidies. As part of a federal initiative, taxpayer money was invested into figuring out how to extract and refine bitumen, which has led to enormous profits for the industry. However, we have not seen a similar long-term commitment from the federal government to support the transition to clean energy, including long-term investment in energy efficiency technologies.
...
Oil and gas subsidies have been touted as necessary for keeping the industry competitive through development of modern, cleaner technologies, yet a recent government study found that research subsidies for the fossil fuel industry have done little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

It's time to shift the focus of the government's initiatives from big oil to renewable and conservation technologies. All Members of Parliament should commit themselves to supporting the much-needed and greatly-delayed transition to a green economy powered by renewables and energy efficiency technologies. This transition should include putting a price on carbon.

- Finally, Anne Lagace Dowson weighs in on the media's baseless attacks on Nycole Turmel, while Tim Naumetz neatly ties the latest loyalty test to the RCMP's history of spying on Tommy Douglas which is still only in the process of coming to light.

Greatest Canadian vs. Worst News Source In The World

Shorter Fox News North:

Oh, how we hoped that fifty years of covert RCMP surveillance would give us some dirt on Tommy Douglas beyond the same tired attacks that have been duly mocked for decades. But no such luck. So who's up for another round of the same tired attacks that have been duly mocked for decades?

Monday Afternoon Links

An extra helping of content to start your week...

- Tom Ford nicely contrasts a couple of Tommy Douglas' more notable (and valuable) governing philosophies against those we've come to expect from right-wing parties:

Managers are supposed to get work done through others. But Harper gets work done through his own efforts or those of confidants a few offices away. Initiatives come from the Prime Minister's Office. Communications are closely controlled. There's an emphasis on scoring political points.
...
In short, Harper, "a control freak," is a lousy manager.

Douglas, on the other hand, ran a more open administration. In their book Tommy's Team: The People Behind the Douglas Years, Stuart Houston, a Douglas expert, and Bill Waiser, a historian, say Douglas had an "uncanny knack" for choosing the right person for the task at hand.

And he ranged the world to find the right people including a member of one of the UK's wealthiest families and a world expert on rural health. The diminutive premier had socialist leanings, but he was "both realistic and practical."

He made clear to his experts what he wanted and when -- particularly in the case of health care -- but he rarely told them how to do their jobs. Douglas delegated responsibility, but he did not abdicate.

As a general manager in the federal public service for 20 years, the Douglas accomplishment I most admire is this: When they stormed into office in 1944, most of his followers had never been in government before, but because of Douglas's management skill they were able to clean up the leftovers of the Great Depression and the Second World War; to start a complex health care program, North America's first, and to deliver 16 consecutive balanced budgets -- all without the help of massive oil, gas and potash revenues.

- I'll join the many bloggers pointing to iPolitics as an intriguing new source of political information. (Though I'd be more impressed if it wasn't imposing registration requirements simply to read its basic content.)

- What thwap said. X2. And see more from Murray Dobbin.

- All of which leads nicely to Alice's post on what can be done to try to cultivate more fertile territory for progressive politics:

Progressive groups must learn from the strategies adopted by the conservative movement in Canada, and spend less time being “think tanks” and more “do tanks” if they want to fight the erosion of democracy in Canada, delegates to the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives’ 30th Anniversary conference were told Thursday.

“Yes, research is important, but it can’t be such a large focus,” University of Ottawa professor Paul Saurette urged the audience, arguing that their opponents in the conservative movement, such as the Fraser Institute and more recently the Manning Centre, “understand that they’re in the persuasion business, not the research business,” and that progressive groups will need to develop new ways to advocate.

Prof. Saurette, whose academic work has studied the development of conservative think tanks and organizations in both Canada and the United States, said that unlike the think tanks of 30 years ago, which used to follow a “tree-tops strategy” of influencing policy, there has been a massive growth in the conservative “ideological persuasion industry,” which funds a variety of narrative tools targeted at the grassroots.

The past 30 years has also seen enormous change in the media landscape, Prof. Saurette argued, citing Tony Blair’s observation that after the war in Iraq, he had to spend the next biggest amount of time responding to the media. Not only has the media adopted a “highly pro-market fundamentalist orientation,” he said, but they “have very limited content capacity now, and journalists are scared of being labelled as biased, which is the result of a campaign by right-wing bloggers, making them even more susceptible.”
...
“The problem is that political parties can’t create these narratives alone, or create the intellectual property behind them. Preston Manning’s idea of ‘surfing the wave’ has been important to building the Conservative Party, but happened outside of it,” said Prof. Saurette.

“The progressive movement has to help recreate a narrative that allows politicians to tap into that.”

- Finally, it may not be news that the Cons' choice to gut the long-form census will have real consequences in ensuring that decision-making is less well-informed. But a reminder can never hurt.

By way of comparison

Shorter Murray Mandryk:

Brad Wall's decision to allocate medical research funding at a political level makes him a policy innovator like Tommy Douglas. And this stick-figure drawing makes me a Renaissance man like Leonardo Da Vinci.

A call for transparency

Stefani Langenegger reports on some good news from the Saskatchewan legislature, as the NDP's motion calling for the release of the RCMP's secret files on Tommy Douglas has passed (as expected). We'll find out in time whether the unanimous agreement among Saskatchewan's MLAs can help to push CSIS to release the documents - but the NDP and Sask Party alike deserve credit for the motion's success.

That said, it's worth noting that the motion also seems to signal that both parties in the Legislature can agree on the value of public disclosure about how government has operated in the past. And that may make it difficult for the Sask Party in particular to keep arguing against transparency (or changing the subject from their own secrecy) in the present.

On insinuations

Shorter Les MacPherson:

As far as I'm concerned, Tommy Douglas must have been doing something wrong to have been the subject of 30 years of covert RCMP surveillance. And it's for Douglas' own good that we should keep suppressing the files which can prove otherwise.

Suggested slogan

Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party: Reflexively supporting cover-ups since 2007.

More like this

I'm not quite sure what's gotten into Gerald Caplan lately. But his latest features exactly the appropriate level of snark in response to CSIS' continued suppression of information about its efforts to spy on Tommy Douglas dating back to the 1930s:

We have learned from the powerful research of Professor Franz Kafka that if the state is after you, you must be guilty. If you're not guilty, the state would not be after you. What you are guilty of is purely irrelevant and often unknown. But you're guilty of something. There can be no question Tommy was guilty of something. Why else would the Mounties have spied on him for 50 years?
...
Fortunately for Canada, during his entire political career, from the moment he was still an unknown impoverished politically active Baptist preacher in Saskatchewan during the Depression, until his death in 1986, Tommy Douglas was spied on by the Mounties. As the repeatedly re-elected premier of Saskatchewan and then as national leader of the NDP, who had more power to undermine the very foundations of Canadian capitalism that the RCMP is sworn to protect by all means necessary?

From his thousands of speeches and many writings, they were able to collect invaluable secret information that was otherwise known only to the millions who heard him speak or who read his words. But only the Mounties had the resources to decipher the real message embedded deep within Douglas's deceptively sincere calls for a more just society for all Canadians. We now know this was one of the greatest hoaxes in Canadian history, equalled perhaps only by the notion that the Harper government is fit to govern.
...
Have no doubt: there are other Tommys out there, feigning patriotism and devotion to the betterment of Canadians, perhaps even hatching clandestine plans to promote such menacing proposals as a higher minimum wage or universal dental care. Some may even be preparing to criticize the government of Israel. But fear not. Our secret police are standing on guard for thee.