Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Jim Tankersley interviews Joshua Bivens about the relative effects of economic growth and income inequality - and particularly his evidence showing that more people are far better off with more modest growth fairly distributed than with greater nominal growth concentrated at the top:

Tankersley: How do we know that a lot more growth would not have been enough by itself to help the workers who have been left behind in this period?

Bivens: There’s a bunch of ways you can do this, but there’s no way you can do it where inequality is not a huge part of the problem. The way I do it in the paper is really a simple look at average household income in the two periods — say, what if we had let the bottom 90 percent grow over the past 30 years at the rate of average growth; so basically, no rise in inequality but the average growth stays the same? That has a bigger effect on their incomes than if we did a counterfactual that says, let’s let the overall rate of growth go with the faster immediate prewar period but inequality still happens. The inequality effect is larger than the growth effect in keeping their incomes lower.

Tankersley: There is an argument that many liberals make that if we could reduce inequality, we could improve growth. You’re arguing that might be true but needs not be to justify fighting inequality?

Bivens: It’s a little bit dangerous to accept the burden of proof in the debate that says, if we stop the rise in inequality we will boost overall growth. Because even if we don’t, it will still be a worthwhile thing to do for my political goal of raising incomes for the bottom 90 percent.

- Meanwhile, Dennis Rasmussen reminds us that the theorist whose name is often invoked as a defence of unfettered greed actually had significant ethical concerns with the concentration of wealth.

- Canadians for Tax Fairness comments on the absurdity of Members of Parliament and expert witnesses being prohibited from even saying KPMG's name when discussing its tax offshoring. And Linda McQuaig notes that the Libs generally aren't lifting a finger to ensure that the people and corporations with the most spare capacity to fund a functional society actually do so.

- Meanwhile, on the long list of areas where Canadians who voted for change have every reason to be disappointed in the Libs, Andrew Mitrovica reminds us that C-51 is still in full effect without any hint of restraint or oversight. Janice Dickson points out that the NDP is having to prod the Libs to remember the need for pay equity. Kristy Kirkup reports that there's little indication the Libs are living up to the acknowledged obligation to stop discriminating against First Nations in funding child welfare programs. And Ryan Moore notes that Stephen Harper's edifice of dumb-on-crime legislation has been left standing except for the parts which had already been dismantled by the courts.

- Finally, Paul Wells reports on Justin Trudeau's pathetic excuses for selling arms to human rights violators - based on the laughable theory that it's somehow more a mark of a banana republic to prioritize human rights over immediate economic convenience rather than the opposite. And Somini Sengupta notes that Saudi Arabia's intimidation of anybody daring to even mention its human rights abuses extends to the U.N. as a whole - meaning that the community of nations would seem to have a strong interest in reversing course.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Lori Theresa Waller provides her own take on the Canadian Foundation for Labour Rights' study on labour rights and inequality:

In the 1970s, all provinces used the simple card check system, whereby an employer must legally recognize a union if the majority of workers sign membership cards. Since then, B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia have moved to requiring that workplaces also hold a vote before the union will be legally recognized.

...Studies have found that the additional requirement of holding a vote decreases the success of union organizing drives by between 9 and 20 per cent.
...
A 2012 study by five UBC economists concluded that roughly 15 per cent of the growth in income inequality in Canada throughout the 1980s and 1990s was directly linked to falling rates of unionization.

- Meanwhile, the Canadian Labour Congress offers up a handy quiz about corporate tax giveaways.

- Thomas Homer-Dixon observes that the Obama administration could do Canada a favour by rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline and encouraging some much-needed thought as to how to build a sustainable economy:

There is a less obvious but no less important reason many Canadians want the industry stopped: it is relentlessly twisting our society into something we don’t like. Canada is beginning to exhibit the economic and political characteristics of a petro-state. 

Countries with huge reserves of valuable natural resources often suffer from economic imbalances and boom-bust cycles. They also tend to have low-innovation economies, because lucrative resource extraction makes them fat and happy, at least when resource prices are high. 

...

Both the cabinet and the Conservative parliamentary caucus are heavily populated by politicians who deny mainstream climate science. The Conservatives have slashed financing for climate science, closed facilities that do research on climate change, told federal government climate scientists not to speak publicly about their work without approval and tried, unsuccessfully, to portray the tar sands industry as environmentally benign.

The federal minister of natural resources, Joe Oliver, has attacked “environmental and other radical groups” working to stop tar sands exports. He has focused particular ire on groups getting money from outside Canada, implying that they’re acting as a fifth column for left-wing foreign interests. At a time of widespread federal budget cuts, the Conservatives have given Canada’s tax agency extra resources to audit registered charities. It’s widely assumed that environmental groups opposing the tar sands are a main target.

This coercive climate prevents Canadians from having an open conversation about the tar sands. Instead, our nation behaves like a gambler deep in the hole, repeatedly doubling down on our commitment to the industry.

- And Kate Allen reports that the Cons' muzzling of scientists has earned them an impending investigation by the federal Information Commissioner.

- Finally, Dr. Dawg comments on Stephen Harper's decision to turn Canada into a hermit kingdom rather than a significant international actor. And Paul Heibecker writes that the Cons' withdrawal from the international community goes far beyond the drought treaty that's received so much recent attention:

There is a disappearing character to contemporary Canadian multilateral diplomacy. Like Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire cat, soon all that may remain of our country at the UN is a grin or, more accurately, a scowl.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Michael Harris follows up on the previous activism to save the Experimental Lakes Area by noting that efforts to work with the Harper Cons are providing both divisive and disastrous:

(J)ust a few months after the Death of Evidence rally, another event is playing out behind the scenes that is partly the way of the world and partly full-blown tragedy.  If those same scientists held a rally today, they would have to call it by another name. Judging from what is happening in that penumbral zone where idealism and power politics collide, a good title might be the Death of Innocence.

In a sad act of political naiveté and myopic thinking, of cowardice posing as pragmatism, the movement to save the ELA has been strategically sidelined. In its place, there is a fevered attempt to reduce the momentous public policy issues involved to one, short-term, panic-stricken objective  – finding a new operator for this unique scientific program at all costs.

The scientists who just a few short months ago asked the public to support their cause against oppressive politicians are now shunning the media, hopping in bed with the government, and fighting amongst themselves. The PhD student who gave up her studies to single-handedly run the movement to save the ELA, has been asked to “go silent” by her colleagues and mentors. The people who asked her to do that are the same people who encouraged her to fight the good fight for ELA, her fellow scientists at the top levels of this betrayed national treasure.

Why? Politics. The senior scientists have decided not to antagonize the Harper government with embarrassing reminders of the harsh facts: ELA was not shuttered to save $2 million, or because it no longer fit the agenda of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, or because recent scientific studies there had been disappointing. It was cancelled because the science being produced at ELA was a potential obstacle to the untrammeled development of projects like the oil sands. It provided the one thing an ideology-driven government can’t abide; independent, verifiable, and impartial facts.

- Meanwhile, Jeffrey Simpson theorizes that the continued movement questioning the Northern Gateway pipeline will win out in the end.

- Trish Hennessy storifies a noteworthy debate between Armine Yalnizyan and Andrew Coyne on income inequality.

- David Climenhaga calls out the media for thoughtlessly repeating Fraser-fabricated "facts" with no basis in reality.

- Duncan Cameron discusses why the Harper Cons have no interest in engaging with the rest of the world through the UN:

In another view, the UN is a coherent international organization with a mandate to promote its charter, and live up to the expectations of its founders that what unites the people's of the world is greater than what divides them. This second conception of an activist UN was what motivated Lester Pearson, Dag Hammarskjöld, and generations of idealists who believed that many issues do not bear passports, and that the world needs action from a world scale organization on issues as diverse as AIDS, social statistics, child nutrition, tourism, arms control, control of nuclear energy, and protection of heritage sites.

In its preamble, the UN charter defines its first purpose as "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which ... has brought untold sorrow to mankind."

Serious differences loom between those like the Harper government who believe political problems can be dealt with by military action, and those who are convinced that means exist to resolve the most serious differences without resort to violence.

Those in the second camp still support the UN despite its own participation in wars because, as the Swedish ambassador to Norway said in accepting the posthumous award of the Nobel Peace Prize to  Dag Hammarskjöld, quoting  Hammarskjöld'ss last article: "... set-backs in efforts to implement an ideal do not prove that the ideal is wrong." 

- Finally, regular reader and commenter Dan Tan has started a blog of his own - with the first post featuring his take on Justin Trudeau and empty-vessel politics.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Trish Hennessy assembles a handy set of ideas to deal with income inequality.

- No, there isn't much new in the Cons' familiar pattern of deceiving the public, covering it up, then lying by about the cover-up by blaming civil servants who can't publicly defend themselves. But it is a noteworthy development that Sun TV has apparently joined Stephen Harper among the upper ranks of Con symbols whose reputations are to be preserved at all costs.

- Meanwhile, Cons' latest frivolous use of public money - tens of thousands of dollars in car rental expenses in a walkable village - looks significant largely in the Cons' total lack of shame or self-awareness.

- But have no fear: if the Cons have their way when it comes to pulling away from the international scene, the rest of the world won't have any interest in noticing they're running a banana republic. 

- Finally, Tim Harper wonders whether issue-based cooperation across party lines in Simcoe North might lay the groundwork for electoral non-competition - though if anything it seems to signal more that there's value in working through non-party structures, rather than obsessing over how to force a formal agreement among competing parties.

Sunday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Sunday reading.

- It's undoubtedly an embarrassment for John Baird to have leapt at a thoroughly implausible bit of anti-UN spin. But I'd think there's more reason for hope than concern in the long run: if a year into their majority mandate the Cons are still operating based on the minority-government mindset that they can do nothing better than to spin first and verify later (and then refuse to admit they were wrong), then surely that doesn't speak well of their ability to plan for the longer time frame leading up to the next federal election.

- Meanwhile, some commentators have bought into the claim that Peter Kent's response to climate change deniers in his own party sets him up as something less than the worst possible environment minister. But it's worth pointing out how his response frames what he sees as the acceptable range of debate: according to Kent the paranoid and/or polluter-funded ravings of anti-science denialists are "fair discussions", but anybody with the nerve to suggest that environmental considerations (including climate change) should actually be reflected in policy can only be classified as a traitor to Canada to be attacked by every means available.

- And on a related point, Dr. Dawg points out another bit of partisan absurdity, as Cons within the Senate are refusing a motion to apply their own overheated rhetoric about foreign involvement in Canadian charities when it comes to anybody other than the environmental movement the oil industry wants to silence.

- Finally, Brian Topp's Policy Options retrospective (PDF) on Allan Blakeney's tenure as premier of Saskatchewan is well worth a read.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Arash Azizi argues that the NDP's youthful caucus should be seen as a plus in better representing a wider range of voices:

That the New Democratic Party has fought to challenge (the) status quo should come as no surprise. After all, when Tommy Douglas founded its predecessor, the CCF, the political fable of “Mouseland” was his guiding principle. He thought mice should stop electing “a government made up of big, fat cats” and fight for a government of themselves, by themselves, for themselves. His was to be the party of “mice,” the party of the common folk.

The battle Douglas began has just reached a whole new stage. For the first time, the party of common folk has emerged as the official opposition. Why then should it come as a surprise that a large part of its new caucus is comprised not of political players but of youth, students, waitresses and single parents?
...
The mainstream media have raised a hue and cry in targeting the humble origins of all these new NDP Members of Parliament. After all the earlier fuss about low voter turnout, especially among youth, pundits now seem unhappy that young people actually have been elected to Parliament.

Our new MPs in Quebec are under attack every day because of their age, their “inexperience” and their humble origins. Often the $157,731 salary of a MP is mentioned in a condescending way as if they were not talking about our elected representatives but some kid who has just hit the jackpot in a casino!

Young New Democrats in Ontario and around the country welcome this new swath of MPs who are much more of an “exact portrait” of us and the working people of this country.

It is our fervent hope that after the hours of bureaucratic “preparation” they are currently undergoing they will not forget the sense of purpose and guiding principles that led them to join the NDP.

- Yes, Greg Weston's story about the Chretien Libs' duplicity on Iraq calls into doubt what had been one of the few examples of his government supposedly paying heed to progressive Canadians. But there's another side of the story that's even more significant in defining where we should go from here:

(A)fter all the fuss, the Americans didn't seem to care whether Canada contributed a lot of military might to the Iraq mission.

A former senior Canadian bureaucrat said: "The Americans knew we were stretched to the limit on the military side, and they really just wanted a political endorsement of their plan to go into Iraq."

Former U.S. ambassador Cellucci concurred: "We were looking for moral support. That's all we were looking for.… We were looking for 'we support the Americans.'"

Which raises an obvious question: after five years where Canada has been an obstacle to action on climate change and a surrogate for Republican Party messaging, would anybody value Canada's moral support on any international issue as much as the Bush administration did back then? (Here's one strong hint.)

- Barrie McKenna tears into the Cons' politically-motivated tax giveaways:

In the case of the Conservatives’ proposed family tax cut, the benefits would flow mainly to wealthier Canadians. A family headed by someone in the top 2011 income bracket ($128,800) would save more than $6,000. Working families in which the top earner makes less than $41,544 wouldn’t get anything. Nor would single people, including divorced parents.

The plan would also tilt the tax system in favour of single-income families, including childless ones, which are typically better off than other Canadians.

The families most in need are headed by single parents with children. But there’s no break coming for them.

- Finally, Richard Wolff points out the necessary alternatives to having an economy based on meeting the every whim of the corporate sector:

there are always two possible responses to any and all threats. One is to cave in, to be intimidated. That has often been the dominant "policy choice" of the US government. That's why so many corporate tax loopholes exist, why the government does so little to limit price increases, why government does not constrain corporate relocation decisions, etc. No surprise there, since corporations have spent lavishly to support the political careers of so many current leaders. They expect those politicians to do what their corporate sponsors want. Just as important, they also expect those politicians to persuade people that its "best for us all" to cave in when corporations threaten us.

What about the other possible response to threats? Government could make a different policy choice, define differently what is "best for us all". In other words, it could persevere in the face of business threats, and to do so, it could counter-threaten the corporations. When major corporations threaten to cut or relocate production abroad in response to changes in their taxes and subsidies, or demands to cut their prices or serious enforcement of environmental protection rules, the US government could promise retaliation. Here's a brief and partial list of how it might do that (with illustrative examples for the energy and pharmaceutical industries):

• Inform such threatening businesses that the US government will shift its purchases to other enterprises.
• Inform them that top officials will tour the US to urge citizens to follow the government's example and shift their purchases as well.
• Inform them that the government will proceed to finance and organise state-operated companies to compete directly with threatening businesses.
• Immediately and strictly enforce all applicable rules governing health and safety conditions for workers, environmental protection laws, equal employment and advancement opportunity, etc.
• Present and promote passage of new laws governing enterprise relocation (giving local, regional and national authorities power of veto over corporate relocation decisions).
• Purchase energy and pharmaceutical outputs in bulk for mass resale to the US public, passing on all the savings from bulk purchases.
• Seize assets of enterprises that seek to evade or frustrate increased taxes or reduced subsidies.
...
Of course, a much better basis than threat and counter-threat is available for sharing the costs of government between individuals and businesses.
...
Corporations have used repeated threats (to cut or move production) as means to prevent tax increases and to secure tax reductions. Likewise, they have made the same threats to secure desired spending from the federal government (military expenditures, federal road and port building projects, subsidies, financial supports and so on). In effect, corporate boards of directors and major shareholders seek to shift tax burdens onto employees. Their success over the last half-century is clear. Tax receipts of the US government have increasingly come, first, from individual rather than corporate income taxes and, second, from middle and lower individual income groups rather than from the rich.

In worker-directed enterprises, the incentive for such shifts would vanish – because the people who would be paying enterprise taxes are the same people who would be paying individual income taxes. Taxation would finally become genuinely democratic. The people would collectively decide how to distribute taxes on what would genuinely be their own businesses and their own individual incomes.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Scott Brison is partly right in dismissing the Con-based talk about a possible agreement with the NDP on the budget. But the story only seems to have gone anywhere because the Libs themselves have been so eager to parrot the Cons' spin that the NDP would support the Harper government notwithstanding that its position has been clear on the Cons' corporatist focus:

Mr. Mulcair said the NDP wants future corporate cuts to be more targeted to ensure companies are investing in jobs and productivity.

“If the budget includes the same type of blind, across-the-board corporate tax cut that the Conservatives have been doing in the past, it is highly unlikely that the NDP caucus would ever be able to support such a budget,” said Mr. Mulcair.

- John Ibbitson's year-end review of the Cons nicely highlights Stephen Harper's seven-dimensional ultrachess at work:

The morning of the vote, Lawrence Cannon arrived at the United Nations absolutely confident that Canada would win a temporary seat on the Security Council, according to someone who was close to the situation. His diplomats had assured him they had more than enough written and verbal commitments to win one of the two seats up for grabs.

When Canada came up short on the first round of voting, the Foreign Affairs Minister “was absolutely astounded,” according to one source. So certain were the Canadians of victory in the first round, they lacked a strategy to build momentum in the second round. The delegation sat there, dumbfounded, as votes drained away.

And once again, it's well worth wondering whether the Cons' hubris may well result in similarly surprising results at home.

- Yes, I understand the appeal of using anti-tax language against the Cons. But can we agree that a message that the CPP and EI should be seen as "common villains" might not be one that deserves repeating?

- And finally, Preston Manning offers up a short story about the Underpants Gnome Privatization Theory of Health Care. I'd suggest that he stick to his day job, but he's probably doing less damage as long as he's writing extremely short fiction.

In all fairness...

It's only half right to say, as Stephen Lewis did today, that the Harper Cons had no clue what they were doing when it came to their failed bid for the UN Security Council.

Far more accurate to say instead that the Harper Cons don't have a clue what they're doing the bulk of the time - with the Security Council vote serving as just one more glaring example.

On overestimation

Based on today's reports, the Harper Cons managed to convince themselves they had the support of 150 countries for their Security Council bid. In the end, they proved to have barely half that.

Which seems worth keeping in mind as we evaluate the accuracy of the Cons' electoral math at home.

On predetermined outcomes

Shorter David Frum:

Stephen Harper's five years of making enemies around the world totally wouldn't have stopped Canada from winning a UN Security Council seat - if only we'd been unopposed.

Wednesday Afternoon Links

This and that to pass the time...

- PCS has released a "pledge to Saskatchewan" in an apparent effort to pressure possible bidders. But while the most obvious point of criticism is the fact that most of the pledges are themselves based on actions which are still only in the planning stages, I'd think the larger issue is the fact that the pledge itself is utterly unenforceable - that is, as long as its conditions aren't imposed as part of the federal investment review process. (Which may actually provide some argument in favour of approving a sale.)

- Greg has already pointed out one serious problem with John Ivison's column on the Cons' UN Security Council seat defeat. But the more fundamental flaw seems to me to be Ivison's complete failure to note what I noted earlier: the Cons managed to muster far more votes in the purchased-commitment first ballot than the subsequent one - signalling that part of their fault was in wrongly accepting the premise that votes could be bought and paid for.

- Meanwhile, Murray Dobbin notes that the rejection should serve as an opportunity to agitate for policy that can actually restore some of Canada's lost reputation with the world:

The humiliating rejection of Canada's bid provides a unique opening for civil society organizations working on issues embraced by the UN. Activists now have to move quickly to take advantage -- on bio-diversity, asbestos, Palestinian rights, and on Indigenous rights, the right to water, poverty reduction and climate change -- exposing the now undeniable fact that Canada's policies on these fronts and others have gained us the status as recalcitrant, reactionary state.

Stephen Harper has humiliated us internationally and we need to make him pay for it.

- Finally and on a lighter note, Paul Krugman's Theory of Interstellar Trade makes for a surprisingly hilarious read.

Behind the failure

A couple of follow-up notes worth highlighting on the Cons' unprecedented UN disaster yesterday.

First, it's worth noting (as pointed out by John Ibbitson) that yesterday's two votes reflected a difference between the effectiveness of a country's pressure and lobbying, and its genuine support in the international community. And it shouldn't come as much surprise that while Harper mounted a campaign based primarily on the former, he failed miserably on the latter:

On Tuesday, after receiving 114 votes in the first round, Canada saw its support collapse to just 78 votes in the second. It’s an unwritten rule at the UN, diplomats said, that commitments are only valid through the first round of voting, which means the second can demonstrate the real strength of a country’s backing.

Now, part of the fallout within Canada has to be the question of what was promised or threatened in order to win the first-ballot votes of 36 countries who didn't ultimately want to see the Cons win a seat. But it's striking that under Harper, a country known as a soft power which could inspire other countries to seek common goals despite its relatively small population instead focused its bid on arm-twisting rather than persuasion. And Harper evidently had to learn the hard way that the vote would come down to principles rather than promises.

Meanwhile, Embassy's coverage of the failed bid raises another question: if the Cons plan on blaming the international community's rebuke on a single instance of concern from Michael Ignatieff, wouldn't it stand to reason that they should have sought opposition support and assistance wherever possible? Because they instead chose to nix the NDP's efforts to help bring the international community onside:

NDP foreign afffairs critic Paul Dewar, speaking from Parliament Hill after the UN vote, said it was "too cute by half" to blame Mr. Ignatieff.

"I do lay this at the feet of our Prime Minister and our foreign affairs minister. They have had an opportunity for a number of years to underline Canada's goals in the world, and they failed to do so," he said.

He argued that the NDP reached across the aisle and offered to help the government win Canada's bid, but that the Conservatives did not follow through, canceling a planned trip with Mr. Dewar and Mr. Kent to New York.

"So there are hollow words and vacant actions from the government, whom simply think it can do what it will, and it doesn't look to work with others."

Now, I agree with the general view that the Cons' attempts to blame Ignatieff are misplaced. But it would seem fairly obvious that it would be worth putting together all the support from within Canada that the Cons could muster. Yet they chose to go it alone rather than allowing at least one opposition MP to work in Canada's interest - which should make it even less surprising that the Cons ended up isolated when it counted.

So many narratives

Stephen Harper. Pariah.
Stephen Harper. Quitter.
Stephen Harper. Failure.
Stephen Harper. All of the above.

Alone in the world

Lest anybody think Susan Delacourt's damning comparison of the relative international interest in hearing Stephen Harper compared to other leaders is an anomaly, let's not forget that this is far from the first time leaders from around the globe have distanced themselves from the Cons when given the chance. And one has to wonder how much of the rest of the world is waiting for Canada to do the same.

On crisis management

JimBobby is right to point out that the global food crisis deserves more attention than it's getting. So let's note a couple of facets of the story which seem to have passed largely without comment so far.

First of all, from the Globe and Mail story pointed out by JimBobby, it's worth pointing out just what it took for the U.N. to take note of the need for action:

The United Nations plans to establish a task force to tackle the global food crisis to avert "social unrest on an unprecedented scale," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday.

Mr. Ban, who will lead the task force, said its first priority will be to meet the $755-million (U.S.) shortfall in funding for the World Food Program.

"Without full funding of these emergency requirements, we risk again the spectre of widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale," he told reporters in the Swiss capital, Bern, where the UN agency chiefs have been meeting.

Obviously the anticipated increase in starvation may make the stakes higher than usual. But as JimBobby notes, the pre-crisis situation already involved 24,000 deaths every day due to starvation. And given that that number apparently wasn't seen as deserving of special attention, it seems that the possibility of "social unrest" is serving as a greater motivator than any agreement that hunger should be tackled in general.

Even once it's acknowledged that there's some need for action, of course, it still falls to individual countries to determine - if at all - they plan to improve matters. And the indications from Canada don't look promising at this point, as only the NDP appears willing to discuss whether proposed regulations on ethanol might make matters worse:

Concerned about the widening food shortage, the NDP has introduced an amendment seeking to have Bill C-33 sent back to committee where issues such as food scarcity, and whether or not ethanol is helping the environment, can be considered before the law is passed.

"We need to take a breath here and think about this," said Nathan Cullen, NDP environment critic. "Politicians need a little humility, and sometimes they need to say that it's time to think before we act, especially in light of recent events."

Which would seem to be an eminently sensible suggestion as to one means not to make the problems worse - particularly if coupled with discussion about contributions to the World Food Program and other ways to help.

But even Lib David McGuinty responded by trying to shout down any discussion of whether the impact of biofuels on food supplies should be considered. And given the Cons' connections to the industry group which pushed for an ethanol plan based on foods rather than other inputs, there's little prospect that Canada's possible role in contributing to the diversion of food will receive the attention it deserves.

Race to the bottom

Shorter Con foreign policy:
Of course the U.N.'s anti-racism conference is beneath us. After all, it's not as if we have any issues of racial inequality worth talking about internationally.

Canada's New Friends

From Deceivin' Stephen on down, the Cons seldom hesitate to try to undermine the United Nations by complaining that countries with questionable human rights record have too much influence. But when it comes time to seek allies in trying to shoot down a declaration of aboriginal rights, suddenly the Cons believe that the more abuses, the merrier:

Amnesty International is accusing Canada of stalling a United Nations negotiation on the rights of indigenous peoples...

It notes that Canada and Russia were the only two members of the 47-country Human Rights Council to vote against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in June 2006.

Amnesty says that since the Conservative government came to power in January 2006, it has been lobbying the UN General Assembly to vote against the declaration, which the previous Liberal government helped draft.

The group contends Ottawa has been encouraging abusive states in Africa, Asia and Latin America to oppose the declaration.