Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Lana Payne discusses Jordan Brennan's research showing that corporate tax cuts have done nothing to help economic growth (but all too much to exacerbate inequality). And Andrew Jackson sets out the main fiscal choice the Libs will have to make in determining whether to keep going down the same path:

(T)he Liberal platform also envisaged temporary deficits to finance higher spending on social programs such as child benefits, a higher Guaranteed Income Supplement for single seniors, public health care, child care and First Nations programs, and did not increase overall federal tax revenues. The proceeds of the new top income tax rate will be recycled entirely into a proposed so-called middle class tax cut which in fact heavily favours the top 10% and weill not even cover the cost of the middle class tax cut.

Progressives will be expecting the government to deliver on its ambitious social agenda, and will note that this could be easily funded on the revenue side by implementing a modest corporate tax increase, by scaling back the so-called middle class tax cut, and by setting more ambitious targets for the promised Liberal review of tax loopholes for the most affluent. Meanwhile, business Liberals, perhaps including Minister of Finance Bill Morneau, will likely be pushing for less social spending than promised in the platform in order to balance the books on the original schedule.

Platforms are crafted to win elections, but governments must make real choices. The Liberal government should stick to its spending promises, but this will require some adjustment to their taxation plans and stated fiscal goals.

- Meanwhile, even to the extent one wants to presume that the Libs were bound to offer tax cuts of some sort, John Geddes notes that one focused on the lowest income tax bracket would produce far more equitable results.

- Deirdre Fulton comments on the hollowing-out of the U.S.' middle class. The Economist weighs in on the UK Cons' attempts to define child poverty out of existence. And Bethany Farr writes that a strong majority of the UK public considers it important to take action to ensure people have access to food - though sadly their government disagrees.

- Sara Mojtehedazeh exposes how Ontario's provincial government (like far too many others) is contributing to the culture of precarious work in its own hiring practices. And in case we needed more indication that the commercialization of government is based on ideology rather than evidence, CBC reports on Saskatchewan Auditor Judy Ferguson's findings that the Wall government hasn't lifted a finger to measure the effects of the "lean" program it's imposing across the public sector.

- Finally, Bryan Thomas and Colleen Flood write that if we want to improve our health care system, the answer lies in modernizing public structures, not selling out to private ones.

Musical interlude

Zeds Dead feat. Twin Shadow & D'Angelo Lacy - Lost You

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Les Leopold rightly argues that financial and political elites won't offer a more fair distribution of wealth or power unless they're forced to do so:

Right now, we lack a robust mass movement with the power to reclaim our economy and our democracy to make it work for the 99 percent.

Instead, we have thousands of individual groups working on every issue from racking to a living wage. We have unions fighting for their members and worker centers fighting for immigrant rights. We have protests ranging from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter to climate justice. We have hundreds of progressive websites and jour nals to cover all this activity. But we do not have a coherent national movement with a clear and bold agenda that links us together.

We will show that runaway inequality is at the root of many of the problems we face, including the meteoric and disastrous rise of the financial sector, defunding of the public sector, environmental destruction, increased racial discrimination, the gender gap in wages and the rise of our mammoth prison population. And we will posit that if we share a clear understanding of runaway inequality - and the basic economic situation we face - we can begin to build a common, broad-based movement for fundamental economic justice that will take on America's economic elites.

The political system will not move unless we organize on a mass level like the Populists did over a hundred years ago, like the trade union movement did in the 1930s and like the Civil Rights movement did in the 1950s and 1960s.

Some liberal economists and politicians appeal to the self-interest of the super-rich. They argue that the rich would be (even) better off if they would just allow a fairer distribution of income and wealth. We disagree. Expecting the wealthy to help us secure basic fairness is a losing proposition.

Economic elites will only give up power and wealth when they're forced to do so by a powerful social movement.

- And Luke Savage notes that part of the problem lies in our acceptance of a withered conception of rights - as the economic and social rights recognized through much of the 20th century have never been given effect, and are now seldom treated as such.

- Philip Cohen and Jeff Spross both respond to a patronizing attempt to complicate the issue of poverty - Cohen by focusing on the ability to provide enough income to wipe out poverty at the source, and Spross by highlighting the potential effect of full-employment policies as well. And Bill Tieleman argues that we shouldn't have to rely on food banks and other charities to meet basic needs, especially on a systemic basis.

- Finally, the Star decries the misuse of cabinet secrecy to hide government operations from the public. And Claire Wahlen reports on the years of work required to identify and reverse the attacks on Canadian privacy implemented by the Harper Cons.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Dani Rodrik discusses the evolution of work, and notes that future development and sharing of wealth may need to follow a different model than the one that's applied in the past:

(T)he post-industrial economy opened up a new chasm in the labor market, between those with stable, high-paid, and fulfilling services jobs and those with fleeting, low-paid, and unsatisfying jobs. Two factors determined the share of each type of job – and thus the extent of inequality produced by the post-industrial transition: the education and skill level of the workforce, and the degree of institutionalization of labor markets in services (in addition to manufacturing).

Inequality, exclusion, and duality became more marked in countries where skills were poorly distributed and many services approximated the textbook “ideal” of spot markets. The United States, where many workers are forced to hold multiple jobs in order to make an adequate living, remains the canonical example of this model.

The vast majority of workers still live in low- and middle-income countries and have yet to go through these transformations. There are two reasons to believe that their future path will (or need) not unfold in quite the same way.

...

(T)here is both good and bad news for the future of work in developing countries. Thanks to social policy and labor rights, workers can become full stakeholders in the economy much earlier in the process of development. At the same time, the traditional engine of economic development – industrialization – is likely to operate at much lower capacity. The resulting combination of high public expectations and low income-producing capacity will be a major challenge for developing economies everywhere.

- Erin Anderssen weighs in on the desperate need for an effective national child care system.

- Andrew Coyne makes the case for public financial disclosure to be carried out by an independent body, rather than being limited to whatever format, timing and spin best suits the government of the day. And the CP reports on the ugly aftermath of the Cons' end-of-term patronage binge.

- Finally, Andrew Mitrovica explains why we shouldn't expect the Libs to fix what's glaringly wrong with Bill C-51 - even if we have every reason to demand it:

(I)f Trudeau truly wanted to use simple, clear language to offer Canadians some long-overdue information about the fate of this ghastly law, all he had to do was add five words to the [throne] speech, bringing the total up to 1,755: The Government will repeal C-51. Why didn’t he?

If the Liberals intended to repeal C-51, they would have said so. If they’d intended to repeal large parts of the law, they would have sent some signals by now. If they haven’t, common sense suggests it’s because Trudeau has chosen to leave C-51 largely intact.
...
Terrorism cannot be bombed or legislated out of existence. Bill C-51 and laws like it offer the gullible only the illusion of security. And they do so at a terrible cost to free societies. C-51 includes extremely dangerous language criminalizing the “promotion” of terrorism and the spread of terrorist “propaganda” — legal catch-alls that can’t help but erode the right to free speech.

It vastly expands the power of security services to make arrests without warrants, on suspicion. It targets things like interference with “critical infrastructure” (code for protesters messing with pipelines), gives CSIS the power to “disrupt” suspected terrorist plots without waiting around for the cops, and allows it to petition a judge for permission to violate the Charter of Rights.

This isn’t a slippery slope. It’s a cliff. The tired strategy of granting security services more powers in the immediate wake of the latest terrorist attack has been tried time and again, and has failed time and again.

On managing the system

Following up on this post, there doesn't seem to be much prospect of the Cons making any effort to pursue proportional representation as an alternative to a ranked ballot if Tasha Kheiriddin's latest reflects their' thinking. But I'll point out that there's reason for the Cons to give the option a second look even if the Libs have made up their minds.

It's absolutely true that a ranked ballot system will tend to favour a party positioned on the middle of the spectrum. And the exception on a single-election basis will arise only where voters are so disgusted with that one party that they drop it from the top of their lists and/or move it to the bottom (behind competitors on all sides of the spectrum).

In other words, the prospect of limiting the Libs' hegemony under a ranked ballot system depends on a national mood where people of different values can agree at least somewhat on the need (and reasons) for change. And multi-party agreement that the Libs have rigged the electoral system in their own favour in a way that's unfair to all other parties might offer the only plausible basis to get there in a first Trudeau term.

For that reason alone, the Cons would hurt themselves as much as anybody by sticking to an inflexible and exclusionary position, rather than looking for some common ground with other parties. But the longer the Cons operate as if they were still in power today, the more likely they are to be stuck with a system that keeps them away from it in perpetuity.

New column day

Here, on how the Libs' first major budgetary choice has been to continue the Cons' dangerous pattern of chipping away at the federal government's fiscal capacity.

For further reading...
-  Scott Clark and Peter DeVries have previously summarized the Cons' destructive revenue cuts and overall fiscal mismanagement. And Bruce Johnstone and Andrew Potter are among those who have pointed to the long-term elimination of fiscal capacity as a major part of the Cons' legacy.
- Meanwhile, the headline about the Libs' misnamed "middle class" tax shuffle features a $1.2 billion price tag due to the Libs' lumping in a reduction in the limit on tax-free savings accounts. But since the Libs planned (PDF) to make that TFSA change anyway, the real cost of barging ahead with the shift is the full $1.7 billion gap in income taxes.
- And finally, David MacDonald's alternative suggestions as to what the Libs could have done with any added revenue from the 1% are again worth a read.

On earned media

Ideally, a new Parliament should have the opportunity to talk about issues of far more direct significance and practical value than keeping even offensive speech such as Donald Trump's out of Canada. And so it's a bit disappointing to see Tom Mulcair pushing that issue.

That said, it's not hard to understand the reasoning behind the push. Since this fall's election, the NDP has made strong efforts to fight discrimination against refugees, highlight the need for action on climate change, for federal involvement in the fight against poverty. And its reward has been...buried or nonexistent coverage of its actual work, coupled with the familiar complaint that it's the NDP's fault if commentators can't be bothered to pay attention.

In that context, it makes sense to look for positions which (a) are likely to draw attention based on existing storylines and (b) set the NDP apart from its competitors in a positive way. And so far, the Trump message is doing that much - and indeed receiving no opposition from Canada's other parties.

In the long run, though, the NDP needs its appearances in the public eye to match its core priorities. And in the absence of the default coverage previously received as the Official Opposition, the task of winning the right kind of media and public attention may be one of the more difficult challenges Mulcair and his team face in the near future.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Robert Reich suggests that government should respond to corporations who engage in anti-social activity such as moving their earnings offshore by making sure they can't simultaneously take advantage of laws torqued in their favour. And Daniel Tencer reports on the $12.5 billion bonus pool being doled out by Canada's financial sector even as it cuts front-line jobs.

- Patrick Maze discusses the importance of investing in education as preventative medicine as well as a form of economic development:

If we agree that preventing an ailment is easier than curing it, and that being proactive is better than being reactive, then we should insist that our governments also apply this in policy development. At some point we need to flip our thinking, and our actions, from responding reactively to social needs and challenges, to working toward a vision of what we want for our future society. We should commit resources to support that vision appropriately, and faithfully.

Education is a key factor in the health of both individuals and communities. Many researchers have studied the causal relationships between the level of our citizens' education, and their requirements for societal supports like health care, social services and justice. They've found that as the education levels of a society increases, access to those supports all decrease.
...
When we combine these savings in health care and justice, and consider that more educated populations are also less reliant on social supports, it seems like such an easy decision to prioritize education as an investment in the health of our citizens, communities and our economy. The funding trends we have now are simply unsustainable, and at some point we'll be forced to look to sustainable alternatives. Shouldn't we want our government to be proactive, rather than reactive, when we try to take that approach with our own lives?

Let's consider a collective vision for our future. Let's plan proactively to prevent problems, instead of just reacting to new ones as they arise. Let's challenge our leaders to develop policy that addresses root-causes of the issues we care about, instead of relying on expensive treatment options like justice, social services and health care. If we flip our thinking, priorities and actions, we'll recognize that investing in the education of our children is far more cost-effective and sustainable.

- Meanwhile, Lawrence Carter and Maeve McClenaghan expose how climate denialists for hire are using their academic credentials to produce reports to fit the requests of secret corporate sponsors.

- Charles Mandel talks to Stephen Lewis about the need for Canada's new climate change talk to b backed by policy.

- Finally, Adam Dodek points out that there's reason for concern that the Trudeau Libs will back away from their promises on democratic reform. And Dave Meslin makes the case for a proportional electoral system - with particular emphasis on why the ranking and runoff systems which may be appropriate in non-partisan contexts are ill-suited to federal politics.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Couched cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- David MacDonald offers some alternative suggestions that can do far more to reduce inequality and boost Canada's economy than the Libs' upper-class tax shuffle. And Karl Nerenberg reminds us that the most important scandal on our political scene is the constant stream of corporate tax giveaways which has done nothing to help anybody but the already-wealthy few.

- Meanwhile, Paul Buchheit challenges the right's constant effort to demonize people living in poverty.

- Mariana Mazzucato discusses the need for entrepreneurial government to fund and manage a transition to a clean economy. And the Vancouver Sun comments on the need for actual leadership rather than mere talk. But Thomas Walkom highlights Ontario's green strategy gone haywire as a reminder that money alone won't lead to the results we need either if it isn't paired with effective management.

- Don Lenihan points out that openness in government needs to include the willingness to actually engage with the people affected by policy choices, not merely to allow people to see one's own unilateral decisions. And Jim Bronskill's story as to how the Cons view peaceful protests as security threats signals that there's a long way to go on both fronts.

- Finally, Elizabeth Thompson exposes the Cons' deliberate (and less-than-surprising) attempt to continue imposing their agenda on Canada from beyond the political grave.

Priorities

The Libs' top 10% tax giveaway will cost a total of a previously unbudgeted $1.2 billion per year. And that apparently hasn't caused anybody to think twice about whether it's a good idea.

For the sake of comparison, the Libs' total commitment to the entire areas of "Health", "Environment and the economy" and "Indigenous Peoples" in year 1 of their platform (PDF) is $1.105 billion.

So which of those choices looks like a higher-priority use of whatever fiscal capacity the federal government has to work with?

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Bryce Edwards comments on the politics of inequality in New Zealand, while noting that there's a huge gap between talk and action:

Could the political left benefit from more focus on economics and inequality? Absolutely, according to Labour Party dissident Josie Pagani - see her blog post, We need to talk about the one per cent. She makes the case that "Global inequality is the number one issue for the progressive left." She also argues for:
1) "switching taxes from income to wealth"
2) "managed markets"
3) international treaties and agreements to harmonise economic issues such as tax and trade.
But if the public is already so concerned with inequality, why aren't the parties of the left doing better? That's a question discussed by AUT's Peter Skilling in Perceptions Of Inequality. His answer - with reference to "system justification theory" - is that social psychology means that the framing of the problem can lead to resistance to change. See also Kirk Serpes' Why we need to stop talking about inequality.

- Mark Karlin talks to Susan George about the corporate sector's rewriting the rules of international relations for its own benefit. Hilary Osborne reports on Cadbury's glaring tax avoidance in the UK, while Richard Murphy offers a few simple fixes to corporate tax evasion. And Conor Lynch responds to the regressive promise of flat taxes.

- The National Post reminds us that we need tax revenue to pay for the public priorities we all value. And Charlie Smith discusses the long-term consequences of needless austerity - with a focus on Bill Bennett's past B.C. government.

- Finally, Tom Parkin writes that the Libs' supposed "middle-class" tax giveaways are in fact aimed at the top 10%. And Daniel Leblanc reports that they're planning to barge ahead even after acknowledging that their numbers don't add up, meaning they'll need to take away from other promises to do it.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Louis-Philippe Rochon highlights why we need governments at all levels to be working on stimulating Canada's economy, not looking to cut back:

The bank was referring to what economists call "secular stagnation": a long-period of very low growth, with all its obvious consequences on unemployment and income inequality. Secular stagnation is receiving increasing attention amongst academic economists, and rightly so; and it is something Canada should try avoiding at all costs.

Secular stagnation is like quicksand: the longer we stay in it, the more difficult it is to get out of, especially with governments insisting on cutting back spending.

...

Economies are driven by demand, and yet, in the last few years, in Canada and elsewhere, governments have persistently adopted policies that purposely deflated demand, thereby condemning our economies to secular stagnation.

So the answer to both questions is the same: fiscal policy. This is why it is more important than ever that the government in Ottawa undertakes fiscal spending on a much larger scale. Yet, my only concern is that the proposed spending will likely not be sufficient: there is a general inability of the new government and technocrats to truly understand the serious nature of what is going on. It will require more than tinkering with fiscal policy. What we need is a full-fledged fiscal attack.

Combating secular stagnation will be difficult. Clearly, Canada cannot do it alone. It will require a concerted, international and sustained effort for several years.

What we need is a New Deal for this decade and beyond.

- Will Grice reports on Finland's work on implementing a national basic income - and the high level of support it's receiving from the public. And Matthew Yglesias points out that the gap between the corporate elite and the rest of the U.S. population was far smaller just a few decades ago than it's become since then.

- albertarabbit reminds us that there isn't much reason to expect a difference between the Libs and the Cons when it comes to putting corporate interests ahead of people.

- Meanwhile, Martin Patriquin too finds little evidence of change when it comes to the Libs' refusal to accept any criticism whatsoever. And Cathy Guill highlights the issues we should be addressing as a result of this week's news about the Trudeau family's publicly-funded nannies.

- Finally, Rachel Notley explains her government's much-needed efforts to ensure the safety of Alberta farm workers. And Naomi Lakritz writes that anybody protesting the effort has reason to be ashamed.

Saturday Morning Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- Jacqueline Davidson offers a personal account of the experience of living in poverty, including the need to rely on charity to make up for constantly-unmet needs. And Alana Semuels discusses how single mothers in particular have no choice but to rely on social connections to make up for the absence of both public supports and viable employment opportunities.

- Meredith Dost points out that there's strong support for a basic income and poverty relief even among U.S. Republicans who actually face low incomes for themselves - meaning that it's only the wealthier wing of a single party blocking a popular desire for improved social supports. And Sean McElwee comments on new research showing how voter disengagement allows that minority to control Congress.

- Dan Darrah writes that Canada is losing out due to our lack of proper corporate tax enforcement:

 We've almost always been soft on business. Canadian "welfare capitalism" has been around since the 19th century -- think John A. Macdonald's National Policy, which helped line the pockets of commercial interests through the production of the Canadian-Pacific Railway. James Ondrick argued in his fantastic thesis paper "The Erosion of Elite Accommodation" that elite interests -- especially business groups -- have enjoyed a very privileged treatment from the feds, and Canadians have accepted this practice as "legitimate."

We've accepted that well-positioned corporate interests are a part of the "public policy process," Ondrick argues. We respond to these political machinations not with protest, but with one gigantic, seismic nod.

Canada even has the lowest corporate tax rate in the G7.

So, maybe the question is, "have the politicians gone too soft?"

The Canadians for Tax Fairness (CTF) estimated that companies operating in Canada in 2014 held over $199 billion in "assets" -- unpaid taxes -- in havens like Barbados and the Cayman Islands. A grilling Oxfam report found that Canada is one of the biggest "losers" of corporate tax revenue. The "winner" countries are the ones with low-to-none corporate income tax, such as Bermuda, as well as the super-rich.
...
Giving the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) some power to pry into corporate pocketbooks would be a great start, as would be creating anti-avoidance legislation like the kind being explored in the U.K.

It would surely take some moxie, but for good reason. The not-so-new cash could also be injected into crumbling municipal infrastructure, underfunded healthcare facilities, improved settlement services for soon-to-be arriving Syrian refugees, or perhaps the very ambitious platform Trudeau is now charged with implementing. An easy $199 billion more bones in the federal coffers might ease the stress of doing so.

If not for the revenue, the government should crack down on principle: Canadian taxpayers have been pulling their weight since the first income tax was levied in 1917. Corporations should be, too.

- Tony Burman highlights the connection between climate change and global insecurity. And Tabatha Southey offers a handy classification system for climate-change deniers.

- Finally, Donna Baines and Pat Armstrong offer a survey of options for long-term care which deserve a close look at home.

On consensus-building

John Ivison is a bit melodramatic on behalf of the Cons in assessing the impact of possible electoral reform. But to the extent the Cons actually accept his argument, it might well lead them toward the best possible outcome in the form of a proportional electoral system.

After all, by highlighting electoral reform in their throne speech as a promise to be addressed in short order, the Libs have left themselves little room to stick with the status quo.

Nor will they have much incentive to do so. If the other parties go off in different directions, with the Cons trying desperately and alone to cling to first-past-the-post, the Libs will figure to use their majority to push through the system which benefits them the most. And that would mean a ranked ballot system which favours the Libs at everybody else's expense.

But if the Cons are willing to think through their options in supporting an alternative system (however grudgingly), their choice could be both positive and decisive.

As Ivison notes, the Cons in their current form would lose out significantly from a ranked-ballot system. And if first-past-the-post isn't an option, that leaves the possibility of supporting proportional representation - as at least some of the Cons' base has long done.

If the Cons were to join the NDP and the Greens in backing PR, the Libs would have a much more difficult time imposing a ranked-ballot system. Instead of being able to push their preferred choice on a divided opposition, they'd have to choose between facing criticism from all sides for rejecting a consensus alternative option, or being able to claim all-party support in delivering on a major promise (with a system which itself would be far from a clear loss for a party likely to be included in most potential coalition governments).

Of course, it remains to be seen whether the Cons are willing to accept that they're no longer in a position to dictate terms. And indeed the most likely outcome is probably that they'll try (and fail) to block any electoral reform whatsoever. But if they're willing to move past Harper's my-way-or-the-highway approach in shaping our electoral system, the result may be one that all parties can count as a win in the long run.

Musical interlude

Matt Darey & Aeron Aether feat. Tiff Lacey - Into The Blue

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Tom Bawden notes that inequality is as much a problem in our relative contribution to climate change as it is in so many other areas of life. And Steven Rosenfeld lists some of the ways in which the increasingly-wealthy few are making life worse for everybody else in the U.S.:

The super-rich are more politically active than average Americans, financing and contacting elected officials and knowing many on a first-name basis. Their agenda, which is often cited by public officials across the country, emphasizes private profit-making and is skeptical of almost every public program to address economic inequality, the study by Chicago-based university researchers found. The top 1 percent’s social agenda, while “more liberal than others on religious and moral issues, including abortion, gay rights, and prayer in school,” is still “much more conservative than the non-affluent on issues of taxes, economic regulation, and social welfare,” the researchers found.

Put another way, today’s top 1 percent generally do not believe the longtime conservative line that a rising economic tide will lift all Americans, but have a darker view in which one’s fate is tied to the survival of the fittest. They consider climate change a non-issue and most would cut federal and state safety nets and anti-poverty programs, shift taxpayer dollars into privatized education and do little to ensure access to higher education.

“We speculate that the striking contrast concerning core social welfare programs between our wealthy respondents and the general public may reveal something important about the current state of American politics,” the report says. “If wealthy Americans wield an extra measure of influence over policy making, and if they strongly favor deficit reductions through spending cuts—including cuts in Social Security and Medicare—this may help explain why a number of public officials have advocated deep cuts in the very social welfare programs that are most popular among ordinary Americans.”

- Mike Moffatt writes that there's plenty our governments can do to ensure that wealthy individuals pay their fair share of taxes, but that it will take significant political will to take the necessary steps.

- The OECD documents how tax contributions have changed over the past decade - with corporate taxes in particular plummeting (contrary to the promise that tax cuts will pay for themselves) while individuals pick up the slack. And Alexandra Posadzki reports that bank profits alone seem to be skyrocketing even as the rest of our economy largely stagnates.

- Roderick Benns argues that our next major national project should be a basic income. And David Gratzer suggests that we should work on eradicating homelessness.

- Meanwhile, Ben Walsh highlights the need for far more investment in avoiding catastrophic climate change. And Martin Lukacs challenges Justin Trudeau to follow up on his shiny climate rhetoric with action.

- Finally, Ed Broadbent follows up on this week's show of public support by making the case for a a more proportional electoral system rather than an even more distorted ranked-ballot version. And Dylan Penner also weighs in to support proportional representation.

[Edit: fixed typo in excerpt.]

Movements and moments

Let's continue this line of thought about the federal NDP's most recent election campaign with my slight twist on one of the more familiar questions which has faced the party (in various forms) over a period of decades.

I'll start by drawing a distinction between two related goals which are bound to figure in a political party's plans. Any party with the foresight to last more than an election cycle will put meaningful effort into building a movement over the longer term; any party wanting to accomplish anything during an election cycle will likewise prioritize the goal of capturing the moment when it counts most during an election campaign.

And while I'll question the respective allocation of resources between those two goals in hindsight, there are certainly precedents the NDP could point to in focusing largely on a "capture the moment" philosophy.

The 2011 Orange Wave resulted in no small part from a phenomenal amount of movement-building work by Jack Layton and his team. But it also concluded with a crescendo of support which went far beyond what would have been expected based on the the party's infrastructure.

And the NDP's provincial election wins in Nova Scotia and Alberta can also be taken as triumphs of a "capture the moment" philosophy in different ways - with Nova Scotia being based on stronger party infrastructure but less appeal to activists (and likely serving as the model for the 2015 federal campaign), while Alberta reflected the converse.

After 2011, the federal NDP faced the task of converting its sudden increase in votes, seats and public opinion into other gains, including the development of a broader movement. And lest there be any doubt, it took some important steps to do so.

Not only did Tom Mulcair put in double duty personally to match his opponents' travel schedule while also serving as an ideal leader of the opposition in Parliament, but the NDP also started engaging members in the type of ongoing issue-based outreach which hadn't been seen in some time. And indeed, the NDP's success in 2015 was founded in no small part on the combination of parliamentary work and activist engagement around Bill C-51.

But the effort to build activist support was complicated by Justin Trudeau's arrival as the Libs' leader - which bumped the NDP from its place at the top of the polls, and prevented the NDP from being seen as the lone magnet for Harper opponents. Hence the rise of the "promiscuous progressive" whose support remained in play through most of the 2015 election campaign. 

Trudeau's rise represented a factor beyond the NDP's control. But the party also took numerous steps (including focusing on MP and candidate "discipline" as well as rejecting candidates for questionable reasons) which narrowed its range of acceptable supporters and dampened enthusiasm within its usual base - presumably with the goal of remaining acceptable to a wider range of voters in the hope of capturing late deciders.

That on its own was problematic enough. But coupled with a choice to focus relatively little on values and policy definition during the campaign, it set the NDP up for failure in the battle to be seen as the alternative to the Cons - or at least, took the shape of the campaign out of the NDP's hands.

To be fair, it's entirely possible that the commentariat would now be lauding the political brilliance of Prime Minister Tom Mulcair and his far-sighted team if Trudeau had fallen down during the campaign, leaving the NDP as an inoffensive alternative to clean up the anti-Conservative vote. But the NDP's election plan didn't work against a Lib campaign which ran smoothly - and the appeal to default status is certainly outdated now that the Libs are back in power.

Fortunately, if the above analysis holds up as to what went wrong, the election result on its own should push the NDP in the right direction out of necessity. A leader who can't rely on being perceived as the default alternative is bound to make the case for his own values; a smaller caucus will inevitably have to focus more on outreach and advocacy than on discipline; a party with less parliamentary resources will need to put proportionally more work into its base of volunteers and donors.

Those are thus the measures I'll be looking for in assessing Mulcair's continued leadership. While it's important to offer effective opposition in Ottawa, it's more clear than ever that the NDP's future success depends on its ability to foster and tap into an active progressive movement. And it's by developing that popular base over time (and keeping it all the more engaged during a campaign) that the NDP can best position itself to win overall voter support when it counts most.

On purposes

There are plenty of questions which the NDP is rightly asking in the wake of this fall's federal election results. But Susan Delacourt is uncharacteristically far off base in her view as to what the main question is.

By way of contrast, the question of "What’s the point of the party anyway?" was a highly relevant one for the Libs after 2011 precisely because the longstanding answer seemed like it might no longer apply. A party whose historic base of support was built around the willingness to take on and discard principles in the name of power brokerage figured to have a great deal of trouble establishing a raison d'etre if it held no realistic prospect of actually winning power. And while I'd have been interested to see what the Libs would have come up with if forced to hash out a coherent ideological base, their remaining forces lined up as readily as they did behind Justin Trudeau precisely because his star power relieved them from any need to answer that question. 

In contrast, the NDP has always had a distinct identity as Canada's labour-based, egalitarian party which has held up through good times and bad. And while it may have spent large (and perhaps undue) amounts of time in the past election trying to reach voters who weren't motivated by those principles, there's no reason to think the NDP will have any trouble fortifying and building on its historical foundation.

And in case there was any doubt, the party's policy messages since the Libs' election win reflect exactly that philosophy - making Delacourt's hand-wringing about the NDP's positioning look like little but a symptom of a failure to pay attention.

So while there are questions about how the NDP can best pursue the goal of exercising and influencing power for the benefit of the many, there's no reason at all to question what its purpose actually is.

New column day

Here, on how the Saskatchewan Party's mid-year fiscal update shows it hasn't learned a thing about managing a boom-and-bust resource economy - and how it may take Saskatchewan's electorate to fix the underlying problem.

For further reading...
- The mid-year update discussed in the column is here (PDF). And the increase in unemployment of more than half - from 3.5% to 5.6% - can be found in the difference between Statistics Canada's numbers for October 2014 (which the Wall government crowed about here) here and the ones from October 2015 mentioned in the province's most recent monthly economic indicators report.
- CBC reports on the update and the related deficit, while Bruce Johnstone reports on the latest economic forecasts (including updated housing numbers). And Simon Falush discusses on the factors behind the global drop in oil prices which figure to last for some time to come.
- Finally, the Leader-Post's editorial board offers its own view about the missed opportunity to set up a heritage fund - even after the Wall government supposedly planned to develop one.