Health care's last stand

When it came to income trusts, the Liberals avoided dealing with a legislative loophole for ages, then ended up with such widespread use of that loophole that they claimed it would be impossible to fix it.

Now, the exact same process is taking place with respect to health care:

One of the pioneers of private medicine in Canada said yesterday he plans to open a for-profit surgical hospital in Ontario by 2007 and called the spread of such private health care a necessary and "unstoppable" force.

The announcement by Dr. Brian Day of Vancouver's Cambie Surgical Centre comes after all four major party leaders have spoken out against allowing a parallel tier of private health care. Dr. Day's plan also appeared to set the stage for a lively political and legal battle in Ontario, where the Liberal government has said it is deeply committed to protecting the medicare system from private incursions.

The response of each federal leader to Day and other announced private clinics should put to rest any doubt as to who's interested in protecting public delivery of health care. Harper has already indicated that he not only wouldn't shut Day down, but would be willing to jump the queue. And of course, PMPM precipitated the election by refusing to do anything to prevent Day and his ilk from expanding their presence.

The article notes that at the very least, Dalton McGuinty plans to fight Day's clinic as best he can. And unlike PMPM and company, he's backed that position up with legislation to prevent private service delivery. But without a federal government willing to ensure that the Canada Health Act is actually applied across the country, there'll be little chance of showing Day that credit card health care is neither desirable nor unstoppable.

Well said

From The Amazing Wonderdog:

This is how the Liberals lead social change these days: they wait until something has already happened, and then pretend that they were leading the parade -- rather than blundering around in the street in a state of abject confusion.

And of course, the Conservative reaction has been, as we have seen, not to bother attending the parade. Afterwards, they pretend that there was no parade, and try to pass laws declaring that the parade never happened.

Give it a read.

Fun comparison

May 7, 2004: Stephen Harper rightly slams Paul Martin for claiming to defend public health care while making use of a doctor who offers private services:

We have a Prime Minister who denounces the practice of chequebook medicine and it turns out that he is actually practising it himself, queue-jumping at private clinics. I have a simple question: How is the government ever going to explain its hypocrisy on health care?

December 3, 2005: Stephen Harper, fresh off a declaration that his party won't encourage a parallel private system, indicates his willingness to not only use a dual clinic, but pay for private services:

On Vancouver's CKNW Radio open-line show Warren on the Weekend, host Peter Warren asked Harper and Layton at different times on Saturday if they would use a private clinic if their wife needed a hip replacement and were in pain...

Warren: You would have gone private?
Harper: If that's what I had to do.

Which leads to the obvious question: How is Stephen Harper ever going to explain his hypocrisy on health care?

As a bonus, note that one party leader not only backs the public system with words, but cares enough about public delivery that he plans to continue using it himself:

Layton said he and his wife Olivia Chow, a candidate in Toronto's downtown Trinity-Spadina riding, would rather suffer than go private.

"We would work for the public, for the system, because we believe in it," he said.

And better yet, here's the Layton quote from a more thorough version of the story:

"I can understand the choices people are having to make here," Layton said in Burnaby, B.C.

"My dad had Parkinson's, my wife (Olivia Chow) was diagnosed with cancer, I ended up in the emergency ward with appendix (problems). These are real human decisions.

"Olivia and I have talked a lot about this. We would not support the idea, personally, of buying our way to the front of a line."

And that's the right answer from anybody truly committed to health care. Which obviously doesn't include the leaders of the Libs or the Cons.

(Edited to add new quote.)

Crowd displeaser

Harper's drug strategy was the big election news today...but surely it has to be a bad sign that it fell flat when presented to those most affected by drugs:

On Saturday, Harper met with local residents at the Burnaby recreation centre and heard some of their horrifying experiences with drugs.

Lori, a recovering crystal meth addict who does not want her last name used, said she doesn't vote and was contacted by his staff to attend the event.

But she wasn't very positive on Harper's plan...

Lori hadn't been shown the details of Harper's drug crime platform and wondered if it contained anything about recovery programs. It did not.

"If it's not in there, that's really going to make me angry," she said, after offering her advice and sharing her story with Harper's team.

"I'd really like to know why he'd not say anything."

The Con response was to claim that recovery funding will be dealt with later...which sounds like a useful way of claiming to be interested in the issue to try to save some face. But surely it speaks volumes that the Cons not only didn't give the issue a single thought in planning out their drug strategy, but also wrongly assumed that sentencing alone would make the platform a popular one with the people with the best knowledge of the problem.

For all his raised profile this week, Harper has succeeded in doing nothing more than proving that he's a master at unveiling policies which people don't support. And that plays nicely into the "not scary, just wrong" line of attack from Layton...while making Martin look silly for considering Harper a serious threat to anything.

Prairie offensive

Most of the polls this week haven't looked great for the NDP, but the latest EKOS poll has the NDP on the rise with the dichotomy in decline:

In terms of party support, the Liberals' frontrunner position has slipped almost five points from last week to 34.1 per cent, according to the poll conducted by EKOS Research...

Support also slipped away from Stephen Harper's Conservatives in the first days of the campaign. They dropped two points from last week to stand at 27.4 per cent...

The NDP stands at 18.4 per cent nationally, up from 16.9 per cent last week and the NDP outpaced the Conservatives in both the Prairies (34 per cent versus 27 per cent) and in British Columbia (30 per cent versus 26 per cent.)...

Nightly polling found a gradual decline in Tory support as the week went on, with support dropping from about 34 per cent on Tuesday to 24 per cent on Thursday.

What's more, there doesn't seem to be any artificial advantage to the NDP which would have swayed the numbers in their favour. In fact, Harper went westward a day earlier than Layton to stump for support, though I suppose that could be seen as more a detriment than a benefit to the Cons.

In any event, Harper's PR offensive doesn't seem to have done him anything but harm so far. And if these numbers can hold up, particularly in Western Canada, that'll work wonders to counteract any Ontario fears about a Con government. We can only hope the Cons will keep trending downward and opening the door for the NDP.

Canada in the crosshairs

Following the well-documented takeover of several Con nominations by Focus on the Family, another all-too-well-known U.S. pressure group is making its presence felt in the Canadian election:

The National Rifle Association, arguably the most powerful lobby group in the United States, has been enlisted to help shore up the influence of the Canadian gun lobby during the federal election campaign — something opponents say smacks of foreign interference and is indicative of the NRA's widening influence around the globe.

Glen Caroline, director of the NRA's grassroots division, is a keynote speaker and is giving a seminar today in Scarborough at the general meeting of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, an umbrella organization of recreational firearms groups...

While the association hasn't officially endorsed a party, it likely will this weekend.

And anybody in doubt as to which party will win that endorsement really hasn't been paying enough attention. But like the Focus on the Family story, the NRA's effort to push its position in Canada could well lead to a backlash - particularly if, as expected, its endorsement results in even more obvious U.S. influence over a party pretending to want to "Stand Up for Canada".

Lest that be taken as reason to favour the Liberals, not so - particularly given the Libs' ineffectiveness in dealing with gun violence. The only way to cut back on the influence of U.S. pressure groups is to make sure that the Cons know that foreign involvement will be seen as a liability. And that means not only leaving the Cons short of power this time out, but also replacing them with a genuine Canadian opposition.

Peace, order and goodwill among men

Sure, Harper can make promises directly out of the 1993 Red Book, and Martin can promise...well, to not be Harper. But only Jack Layton is fighting to take back Christmas:

Perhaps with his heart warmed by the Christmas spirit, NDP leader Jack Layton is hoping the parties will agree to a campaign truce this December. But so far, the other parties seem reluctant to agree.

"I'm hopeful that the stories that we're hearing back from those discussions don't turn out to be true," Layton told reporters in Regina.

The NDP leader had wanted to avoid a Christmas election altogether back in early November, proposing a motion to ensure a mid-February election day.

Now, it's tough to be too optimistic when both Harper and Martin have already refused opportunities to avoid a holiday campaign. But at the very least Jack seems to be onside with most Canadians when it comes to giving the campaign a rest around Christmas. And that'll leave Harper and PMPM the choice of either highlighting Layton's unique ability to broker deals, or being responsible for once again missing the chance for relative peace during the holidays.

Buzz cuts

In a sense, it's a plus for the NDP's image to be linked to more than just large unions...but that doesn't mean there's any benefit for the party or the union in Buzz Hargrove's willingness to side with PMPM...even if Hargrove's words weren't quite as harmful as his actions:

Earlier, Martin received a ringing endorsement from CAW boss Buzz Hargrove, who said the record of the minority Liberal government in just 17 months shows they should be returned to Ottawa with even more seats, even though the CAW has officially endorsed the New Democrats.

Hargrove explained he'd like to see a Liberal minority with a strong NDP opposition, and said CAW members should vote Liberal if the local New Democrat candidate doesn't stand a good chance of winning.

Harper "doesn't deserve a chance" to undo Liberal initiatives such as same-sex marriage legislation, Hargrove said.

Now, it's hard to see Hargrove's comments as a particularly strong endorsement in any event. After all, his best-case scenario would essentially be the same as the NDP's, but would be a slightly disappointing result for Libs who presumably have their eyes on a majority. Those semantics aside, Hargrove's action is still problematic on many levels.

Part of the problem comes in Hargrove's apparent failure to mention the flip side to his anti-Harper argument: i.e. that to produce his desired end result, voters in weak Liberal ridings would similarly have a strong motivation to vote NDP. More important than Hargrove's words, however, is his willingness to appear at Martin's side and tacitly endorse a wrongheaded Martin speech - particularly in light of the union's official endorsement of the NDP.

I'm not entirely sure how the body which made that endorsement relates to those who decided to invite Martin to the meeting. But it seems fairly contradictory for a union which has endorsed the NDP to now be used as a platform for a Martin attempt to pretend the left side of the political spectrum doesn't exist. And if Hargrove's action was contrary to the will of the bulk of his members, then PMPM is now a contributor to a democratic deficit within the CAW as well as to the one in Canada at large.

Of course, maybe the union has outright turned toward the Liberals, as the article does suggest that PMPM got a standing ovation. If so, then Layton may be forced to turn far more attention than he'd like toward Ontario in an effort to bring the unions back in the fold. But if that's true, then it'll simply direct NDP attention away from ridings across the country where they'd otherwise have been able to challenge the Cons, and thereby help the Cons' chance of getting toward government. Needless to say, it's tough to see that as a win for the CAW either.

We'll find out shortly whether Buzz has pushed the NDP light-years behind their planned standing in the campaign. But either way, it looks like his willingness to help the Libs may be a loss for both his traditional allies and his members.

Rally cap

A slightly belated commentary on the NDP's Saskatchewan campaign launch this morning:

The big news was Layton's response to Harper's GST cut as being expensive and inefficient, and I have to like the NDP's angle. Harper's proposal is obviously less targeted toward the needs of most Canadians than the NDP's proposal to eliminate the tax altogether on necessary goods...and the mere fact that both involve GST reductions doesn't make Harper's idea a desirable one for the NDP.

Moreover, even if there was reason to think that an across-the-board GST cut could be as effective as a targeted one, there's still ample reason not to give Harper a free pass on anything at this point. The worst-case scenario for the NDP is for the Cons to pick up steam now so as to cause an anti-Harper swing late in the election. Layton thus needs to keep firing at both other parties - and he kept the guns blazing toward both this morning.

Not too much else was different from the NDP's usual message - lots of talk of equalization, failure to stand up to the U.S. on trade, health care, and "Harper is wrong rather than scary", all of which makes plenty of sense given the crowd. There was still no mention of any goal aside from "more seats in Parliament", though that was understandable given the regional nature of the rally. And the local Cons took a well-deserved beating for their failure to get anything accomplished.

In sum, the Saskatchewan campaign is off to a good start, and the national message is still very much on course. Hopefully that'll continue, and will be enough to take advantage of the NDP's obvious potential to connect with a large number of voters this time out.

(Edit: typo.)

A receptive public

While the Globe and Mail focuses on the Tory message in the latest Strategic Counsel poll, the news looks even better for the NDP (even if the party's number is slightly lower):

According to the survey, 66 per cent believed the Conservative notion that "the election is about the need for change."

By contrast, 44 per cent of those surveyed said they accepted Paul Martin's message that only the Liberals can ensure the right "kind of economic management to keep the economy strong."

The NDP message — that the election is about finding a strong voice for Canadians in Parliament and that neither the Tories nor the Liberals can provide it — was found believable by 60 per cent of those polled.

What the Globe and Mail's reporting ignored was that the stated Conservative message is essentially contained within the NDP message, which is itself driven by a need for change. The real question is who can answer that need...and from the survey results, 60% of those surveyed don't trust either the Libs or the Cons to provide it.

Mind you, the NDP still has to make its case over the course of the campaign that it can take the role as the voice of the public. But if a strong majority of all Canadians already believes that neither the Libs nor the Cons can speak for Canadians generally, then there's a huge opportunity waiting for the NDP.

On the importance of direction

The Globe and Mail points out that CIBC is taking a cue from the recall election concept in its corporate affairs:

Under CIBC's new rule, a director who does not receive majority support from shareholders must submit his or her resignation to the corporate governance committee of the CIBC board of directors. The committee will decide whether to recommend that the board accept the resignation, and the board will make a decision within 90 days of the annual meeting and issue a press release either way.

CIBC said that in the absence of extenuating circumstances, the committee “would be expected” to recommended that the resignation be accepted...

(Two shareholder rights activists) predicted that there will be a more substantial change in the future. The CCGG and others have been lobbying the federal government to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act to change the rules around shareholder voting.

Presumably the measure itself is in some part a means to deflect attention away from CIBC's rough year in terms of both profits and jobs. (Though that fact is one readily explained by the aftermath of Enron.)

The problem is that while it seems a popular choice among the people interviewed for the article, it's not an idea that deserves attention. In fact, the recall model may be even worse suited to corporate direction than to politics (and I'm no fan of it there either).

At least in politics it's possible to justify the recall process by the fact that the duty of a representative must be to his or her constituents. Indeed, the representative's power is derived purely from the voters' intentions. (Again, I present that simply as a theoretical justification; the practical experience with recall elections isn't one that I'd want to see replicated.)

Directors, on the other hand, owe their duties to the corporation generally, including some duties to all stakeholders within the corporation, rather than to the immediate interests of a majority of shareholders alone. The changed policy would either place the directors in completely unworkable conflicts between the desires of the shareholders and their other obligations, or would be used as justification to narrow the directors' focus further to nothing but immediate share value. And that's a recipe for even more of the kind of shortsighted corporate direction that got CIBC in trouble in the first place.

What's worse, from the sound of the article the standard applied by CIBC will be a particularly hazardous one. As best I can tell (and I hope it's just a matter of either me or the article having this wrong), directors will essentially be removed by default if there isn't demonstrated majority support, rather than removed only if there's a demonstrated majority against. I'm not sure what proportion of shareholders normally exercise their voting rights, but it sounds like it could only take an unusually apathetic group of shareholders to leave a corporation completely directionless. And that would be so even if the inactive shareholders had no desire to see the directors removed.

Even if that potential flaw isn't ultimately in play, the idea is still a dubious one. Hopefully the trial balloon will be allowed to float by once it's done the job of distracting investors from CIBC's job cuts. If not, it seems likely to eventually blow up in the face of all involved.

Learning from past mistakes

It hasn't taken Jack Layton long to point out the folly of strategic Liberal votes:

(I)n Oshawa – and in more ridings than you’d think across Canada – (some Canadians) voted Liberal thinking they’d get a Liberal MP. And in Oshawa – and across Canada – they got a Stephen Harper Conservative instead.

Make no mistake about it. In places like Oshawa, where the Liberals run third. A vote for the Liberals helps elect Stephen Harper Conservatives. Conservatives who don’t reflect your values. Conservatives who are just plain wrong on the issues I was just talking about, and who were ineffective in parliament.

I'd still love to see this supplemented with the question of whether Canada can ever be safe from a Harper-type government as long as the Cons are seen as the top government-in-waiting. And we can never be sure that even Layton's toned-down message now will be remembered by January 23.

But at the very least, the Libs' main strategy from 2004 isn't going unchallenged. And with the Libs' guns so far trained almost entirely on the Cons and the Bloc (not to mention each other with regard to Ignatieff), that has to have the NDP headed in the right direction.

Bigger stakes, bigger money

The Star reports on one of the unusual effects of a campaign that spans two calendar years, as the time frame may allow for twice the usual fund-raising:

Federal candidates and parties will be able to double the money they're permitted to raise during this current election campaign because it falls in two calendar years, circumventing the goal of new campaign financing rules...

All parties pay for their election spending by fundraising before, during and after a campaign. But historically, the most effective time to raise funds is during the campaign period, which may make this technicality more important...

The new rules, which came into effect at the beginning of 2004, limited the amount a corporation or union can give to a political party to $1,000 each year. Individuals can now give a maximum of $5,000 to a political party each year. But the year-long period defined in the law is a calendar year, stretching from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31.

And since the current election period straddles 2005 and 2006, the parties can raise up to $10,000 from individuals and up to $2,000 from corporate and labour interests.

The article speculates, and not without some justification, that it'll be the Liberals who gain the most from the ability to double up on fund-raising. But neither the NDP and the Cons seems likely to benefit much based on their representatives quoted in the article, and it's anybody's guess as to which of the two opposition parties has the most to gain from the added money.

While I'd like to think the NDP will be able to make up some of last year's fund-raising gap during the campaign, the effect could well be to instead double the Cons' current lead in funding. And if the two main parties win an unexpected advantage from the timing of the election, that would be an unfortunate side effect to a set of campaign finance rules which otherwise seem helpful in cutting down on the role of cash within a campaign.

Settling for nothing

Given how much ground there is yet to cover on the issue of climate change, all parties should be embarrassed that the best that's come of the Montreal convention is an agreement to follow already-negotiated rules. But predictably, the Liberals seem entirely satisfied with that result:

The United Nations conference on climate change today adopted most of the rulebook for the Kyoto Protocol...

“With this (the meeting) has made a landmark achievement,” Environment Minister Stéphane Dion, the conference president, told delegates.

“This is a historic day; a great day for the citizens of the world,” said Pierre Pettigrew, head of the Canadian delegation. It will “breath (sic) life” into the Protocol.

The rules – known as the Marrakesh Accords, because the groundwork for them was laid in the Moroccan city in 2001 – details how measures in the Protocol are put into effect. They include how greenhouse gas emissions are measured, targets for cuts are set, and how the system for trading emissions works.

Obviously expectations had to be lowered once the U.S. put an end to any doubt as to whether they'd consider trying to accomplish anything. But the countries who have already shown their willingness to deal with the reality of climate change should be looking to do far more than keep their current position. And with Dion and Pettigrew declaring victory based merely on not losing ground, it's tough to be optimistic that they're looking to get anything more done.

A chance for civilized debates

The parties and networks have agreed to a debate format, and it sounds like we'll have some debates worth looking forward to:

There will be a pair of debates before Christmas, Dec. 15 in French and Dec. 16 in English, and another pair after Christmas, Jan. 9 in English and Jan. 10 in French. Each debate will last two hours.

The first set will be staged in Vancouver, the second set in either Montreal or Gatineau, Que. All four will be conducted in closed studios, without audiences to egg on their favoured leader...

The leaders will respond, one at a time, to each question. As one leader is speaking, the microphones for the other three will be cut off.

In another novel twist, panels of journalists will no longer pose the questions. The Vancouver debates will employ videotaped questions from ordinary Canadians, with the moderator authorized to ask follow-up questions if necessary. For the Quebec debates, all questions will be posed by the moderator.

I suppose the downside of the format is that the lack of confrontation between the leaders will mean less opportunity for one leader to respond instantly to another's remarks, however deserving of criticism those may be.

But then, there's always a chance for the leaders to do that later, not to mention for bloggers to do the job in real time. And that delay should be a small price to pay for the leaders to have a chance to talk policy rather than spending the entire time trying to shout each other down.

Norquist North

Murray Dobbin reminds us of PMPM's real legacy:

While Martin's (1995) budget has gone down in history as the "deficit slaying" budget, this is not how Martin himself described it in the House of Commons on February 27, 1995. He proclaimed that he intended to "redesign the very role and structure of government itself. Indeed, as far as we are concerned, it is … the very redefinition of government itself that is the main achievement of this budget.… This budget overhauls what government does." Announcing over $25 billion in spending cuts over three years, he boasted: "Relative to the size of our economy, program spending will be lower in 1996-97 than at any time since 1951."

The deficit was gone in two years. If Martin had simply frozen spending, the deficit would have disappeared just two years after that...

In slashing Medicare funding and eliminating the EPF, Martin created what neocon strategists call a "useful crisis," weaknesses in the system that critics can use to promote for-profit as the solution. The evidence that the "crisis" was deliberate is irrefutable. Mr. Martin could have easily reversed the cuts if he had chosen to. Between the years 1999 and 2002, Martin, again deliberately, underestimated the accumulated surpluses by over $36 billion. I say deliberately because others were consistently making more accurate estimates, including the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives whose estimates were out by less than one billion.

The surpluses were so enormous that by 2000, Martin could no longer simply hide them. So he cut taxes by $100-billion over five years (77 percent of the personal benefits going to the wealthiest 8 percent of the population). Billions also went to Canada's largest corporations. Paul Martin gained the reputation as someone who dealt decisively with the deficit crisis. But that lasted just three years of his term. He should be known as the man who solved the surplus crisis, because for a politician who wants to take government programs back to 1951 levels, a chronic surplus really is a crisis.

No wonder there's plenty of surplus money to be promised around election time. Though it hasn't hurt matters any that PMPM and company could also be secure in the knowledge that their recent spending promises wouldn't stand a chance of making it through Parliament anyway.

Of course, the past cuts and inflated estimates have been election issues before. But voters should still keep Martin's past refusal to acknowledge the real state of Canada's finances in mind before buying into any claim that the Liberals are particularly competent as money managers. And any Liberal claim to want to fix our ailing social programs should be met with the reality that it was PMPM who eagerly broke the programs in the first place.

Higher learning experience

With the winter campaign resulting in both challenges and opportunities not normally present during campaign season, all parties are having to adapt their strategies...and one has to like the NDP's early focus:

University students will be a new factor that could influence the upcoming election, predicts NDP leader Jack Layton, who notes that previous early summer elections have not allowed for campuses to get out the student vote.

Speaking to a small gathering of students at the University of Toronto campus, NDP leader Jack Layton said his party would restore what he estimates was $4-billion in cuts to post-secondary education made by the Liberals in the 1990s.

Mr. Layton said the new spending would be paid for by scrapping the corporate tax cuts the Liberals announced in this fall's fiscal update.

The combination of one of the best NDP issues and a ready pool of potential voters is one that could do wonders for the party in university ridings. An NDP forum at the University of Saskatchewan last month has already received some media attention, and it's great to see the strategy now being applied nationally.

Rebuilding FNUC

The Leader-Post reports on the final recommendations from the FNUC task force:

The 32-member board of the First Nations University of Canada (FNUC) should be reduced to 13 people by April 1, with far fewer chiefs and no provincial or federal government representation, says an eagerly awaited task force report on the university's future...

Other recommendations include:
- Develop a plan to promote healing within the university and to improve relationships with outside groups such as government, the media and other First Nations communities;
- Develop a strategy to make FNUC an autonomous degree-granting institution. The U of R grants degrees for FNUC;
- Improve internal audit controls;
- Have more open hiring and recruitment policies;
- Clarify the "congruence" between indigenous knowledge and academic freedom.

Most of the recommendations listed in the article seem fairly obvious, but apparently they needed to come from the task force before being acted upon. Hopefully the current stakeholders, especially those who stand to lose seats on the board under the task force's plan, will realize that it's better to have a less formal role in a successful FNUC than a seat on the board of an institution paralyzed by politics.

Looking for old blood

Canadian political parties aren't the only groups trying to muster all available troops, as the U.S. Army's lack of recruits has pushed the Army into targeting past military members:

The U.S. Army, fresh off missing its latest annual recruiting goal, has launched an unprecedented effort to coax former troops to sign up again for active-duty military service, officials said on Tuesday.

The Army this month began contacting 78,000 people who previously served in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps to pitch them on the idea of leaving behind their civilian lives and returning for another stint in uniform, said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon...

Fiscal 2005 was one of the most difficult recruiting years since the birth of the all-volunteer U.S. military in 1973, with the active-duty Army, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard all missing their goals.

I have to wonder how long it'll take the Army to notice that some of those recently-active troops may be in no condition to return to the battlefield thanks to the lack of funding for Veterans Affairs. It's bad enough for Bushco to have dishonoured the returned troops by ignoring their needs...but all the worse if that was only an effort to make another stint in Iraq look good in comparison.

Stonewall

Can we be sure that this headline...

Silent out of loyalty

...doesn't belong on this story?

Former Liberal cabinet minister David Dingwall ran out the clock on Parliament this morning, remaining out of sight and out of reach of a special summons ordering him to appear before a House committee to answer questions about his lobbying activities.

Mr. Dingwall, who in one case charged lobbying contingency fees in violation of government guidelines and in another failed to register as a lobbyist, refused to show up for a scheduled appearance Monday afternoon to testify before the government operations committee.

I'm somewhat surprised that Dingwall wasn't willing to make another appearance, given that he seemed to have pretty solid answers to the charges against him last time he testified. And his failure to appear now has to lead to speculation about what he doesn't want to talk about in another round of questioning. But for the Liberals at large, it's almost certainly a plus to limit discussion of a scandal (even if a relatively trivial one) to Dingwall's absence rather than to any new testimony before the party goes to the polls.

Mind you, it has to be a worse sitution for voters generally to go to the polls with less information than they should have. But it shouldn't be much of a surprise that that's not the top priority of a Liberal loyalist.

Requiem for a DJ

Farewell Gurmant. Your entertainment value will be missed.

Thank you, Mr. Harper

So much for the theory that Harper would need 8 weeks to really damage his party, as he's already dedicating his media attention to publicly fighting lost battles:

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper would try to reinstate the traditional definition of marriage if Parliament supported the move in a free vote.

Harper says he would not rein in cabinet ministers as Paul Martin did last summer when Parliament legalized same-sex weddings.

The Tories would restore the traditional definition of marriage - between one man and one woman - if that's what MPs decide.

This is great news for the NDP. While Harper's speech yesterday already seemed more aimed at the Con base than at swing voters, the decision to make this the Cons' first message of the campaign makes it all the more clear that there's no risk of the Cons getting their strategy together sufficiently to win anything close to a majority. And with the Cons firmly entrenched in second place with no upward momentum, the NDP/Lib swing vote has no reason to panic its way into Martin's camp as it did in 2004.

(Via Babble.)

Staying visible

Maclean's kicks off the campaign with John Geddes' interesting piece on Jack Layton. And Geddes' analysis of Layton's job at this point seems entirely accurate:

It's a highly unusual position for an opposition leader entering a campaign: Layton is running on his record. Yet it might be his knack for courting media attention -- not the concrete budget measures he now has under his belt -- that ends up mattering most. In what's shaping up as a nasty, negative-ad-fuelled struggle between the Liberals and Conservatives, the NDP's biggest worry is getting muscled off the main stage. Already in last week's clash between Martin and Harper over the Tory leader's charge that the sponsorship affair linked Liberals to organized crime, Layton was on the sidelines. He'll need all his wiles to claim a share of the spotlight over the next few weeks.

All too true. Hopefully Layton got the NDP campaign off to a good start with the press yesterday by being the sole national leader willing to face questions in the immediate aftermath of the non-confidence vote. But there's only going to be so much limelight to go around for the next couple of months...and it'll take every trick in Layton's book (and every contact on his BlackBerry) to make sure that the NDP is able to get anything close to its share.

Clean hands

Another useful point of comparison between the Libs and the NDP, as the Saskatchewan NDP government goes out of its way to avoid using public money to influence voters during the election campaign:

The flags could soon be coming down at Premier Lorne Calvert's "raise a flag for fairness" campaign.

The provincial government launched the broadcast, print and internet campaign earlier this month to pressure Ottawa to give Saskatchewan a better deal on equalization payments...

Calvert said if the no-confidence vote passes, the public campaign for a "Saskatchewan energy accord" will be shut down.

"I want no perception that we're using public dollars to engage in what might be construed to be some kind of a political effort in the election campaign," he said.

Well done on Calvert's part: while the Raise a Flag campaign may have been all the more likely to produce results when election promises were being handed out, Calvert has helped to highlight the fact that one party actually makes a genuine effort to run an immaculate campaign. At the very least, voters will hopefully recognize that fact when they go to the polls...and it'll only be a bonus if the Raise a Flag message has sunk in enough keep the equalization issue alive even without continued advertising.

Responsible government indeed

And now comes the flip side of an appointment from on high, as Michael Ignatieff tries to claim that the anger of Liberal riding association members is merely a trick to hurt the Liberals:

Author and scholar Michael Ignatieff pledged his affinity Monday to Canada's Ukrainian community and branded efforts to discredit him on the eve of the federal election campaign a “transparent attempt” to twist his writing and sow dissent within the Liberal Party...

He also branded the criticism as an attempt to sow dissent in the riding in a “transparent attempt” to create division and strife ahead of an expected January vote.

“I am satisfied that tactics of this sort tend to rebound heavily on their perpetrators when weighed against the truth,” said Mr. Ignatieff who also said he shares a “deep, personal affinity with the suffering of the Ukrainian people at the hands of Soviet Russia.”

Never mind the NDP trying to paint PMPM and company as being no better than Harper's conservatives. Between the chosen heir to Martin claiming that dissent within his own party is nothing more than a political trick and the finance minister invoking the "I saw nothing wrong, so nothing is wrong" defence to what was at best a glaring miscommunication within his office, maybe it's within reach to portray the Liberals as little more than Bushco North in the degree to which they value patronage over common sense.

No wonder Martin seems to want to extend the campaign as long as possible. Not only will that give Harper more time to shoot himself in the foot, but the Liberals need the time for their own self-inflicted bullet holes to heal.

Blame where blame is due

It figures that now that climate change is in the headlines due to the Montreal convention, Glen Murray has started pulling punches against PMPM:

The increased warming of our planet as a result of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) poses a huge threat to the delicate ecology of our land and water and creates an unprecedented challenge to Canada's economy. Our commitment under the Kyoto Protocol is to reduce GHG emissions by 6 per cent below their 1990 levels by 2012. We are now 26 per cent above 1990 levels. But the Kyoto targets are just the start — scientific consensus suggests that to avoid a climate crisis, Canadians will have to reduce GHG emissions by approximately 60 per cent by the middle of this century.

Canada will require changes in industrial, environmental, natural resources, finance and foreign affairs policy. Our national response also requires an unprecedented level of intergovernmental co-operation, as energy is a provincial responsibility and municipalities manage transportation systems, land-use policy and landfills, all of which are critical pieces of the solution to reducing GHG emissions...

This is not a criticism of our government, but rather an endorsement of the approach taken by our Prime Minister to integrated policy delivery and the need to extend this approach to this national priority.

Contrast the above web comment against the commentary surrounding the NRTEE's draft report, which rightly pointed fingers at current governments (both federal and provincial) for failing to recognize the importance of the issue or take meaningful action. While Murray's political affiliation makes it obvious why today's comment wasn't quite so scathing, it's unfortunate that he isn't willing to highlight the desperate need for change.

After all, if there is as much to be done as Murray points out, then surely those responsible for a decade's worth of inaction deserve to bear some criticism. And I have to figure that the chair of the national body charged with investigating climate change can tell the difference between the current plan to rely mostly on hope to barely meet Canada's Kyoto commitments, and a plan with a chance of decreasing emissions by 60% in any time frame.

Murray deserves credit for turning attention to some of the necessary solutions on global warming. But any discussion of solutions also has to involve some recognition of the current problems. And whether or not Murray is willing to say so publicly with an election campaign about to start, the Liberals' track record falls squarely into the latter category.

Duke takes the fall

U.S. Rep. Duke Cunningham has pled guilty to taking $2.4 million in bribes, as well as tax evasion, mail fraud and wire fraud. I can't wait to hear how this is a politically motivated guilty plea that really amounts to criminalizing conservatism.

Consciousness-raising techniques

My biggest worry after hearing about this strategy is the thought that it might change more Canadian minds on global warming than anything that's been done yet:

Many Canadians go to their local outdoor hockey rink to skate and live the dream of scoring that winning Stanley Cup goal.

But this quintessential slice of Canadian life in wintertime is slowly melting away because of global warming, says a collection of young environmentalists...

(T)he campaign, launched over the weekend, has been joined by about a dozen environmental groups, including the heavy-hitting World Wildlife Fund.

Hudema said volunteers "frustrated with having to play hockey games on slush" have already started to hand out postcards at NHL games across the country urging people to pressure Ottawa to take action.

They are also organizing a series of protest outdoor hockey games. One game scheduled for Whitehorse was cancelled last week because of warm weather.

It's certainly an innovative focus for the environmental movement, and to the extent that the campaign may change some minds I'll have to give due credit to those involved. But I'd hate to think that anybody could genuinely be more willing to act based on concerns about outdoor hockey than based on the combination of extreme weather, melting icecaps and rising water levels that's already well within the public consciousness.

Faster response

Gordon Brown proposes an international fund to respond to natural disasters and other shocks:

Gordon Brown is pushing for a shake-up of the international response to natural disasters amid growing concern about the plight of earthquake victims in Pakistan.

As the first snowstorms of what has been predicted will be a particularly hard winter were forecast for the region this weekend, the Chancellor and Hilary Benn, the international development secretary, are concerned that while charities can deploy at a moment's notice to get emergency aid to a crisis, international institutions such as the UN are much slower at grinding into action...

Brown flew to Saudi Arabia this month for talks on his plan for a new 'shocks facility' at the International Monetary Fund, which would allow countries to borrow money quickly for reconstruction after natural disasters which demand rebuilding on a massive scale - as well as to cushion themselves against other kinds of shock, such as a sharp rise in oil prices...

The Chancellor has also been discussing plans for a new UN humanitarian fund to kick into action immediately in a crisis. The existing emergency response fund is worth only $50 million and can only be used to loan money to UN agencies which have received pledges from donors - designed to fill in the gap between donors offering help and actually transferring cash.

While anti-UN commentators are always quick to try to blame the institution for responding slowly when it's needed, Brown's call highlights the reason why immediate response isn't even possible under the current funding model. And the problem is a policy which can be easily redesigned, rather than a fundamental disagreement among the member states or an inherent flaw in the institution.

But then, it will take some effort to change the policy, especially if the U.S. once again insists on forcing concessions on unrelated issues before signing onto common-sense reforms. Hopefully the memory of this past year's disasters will push the U.S. and the rest of the world to ensure that both the UN and the IMF are better able to react next time the need arises.

Another chosen one

The democratic deficit gets a little bit deeper:

Toronto residents with Ukrainian roots are protesting Michael Ignatieff's bid to run for the Liberals in their riding.

The Etobicoke-Lakeshore riding is held by Liberal MP Jean Augustine but she has reportedly resigned so Mr. Ignatieff can run for election...

Members of the Etobicoke Lakeshore Federal Liberal Riding Association claim the Liberals are trying to make it easy on Mr. Ignatieff at the expense of other contenders.

Unfortunately, last time Martin and company imposed their will on a local riding association they weren't quite punished with a loss at the polls. And as Etobicoke-Lakeshore won't have an incumbent pushing back, it doesn't look like Martin's lack of respect for the locals will cost him anything within the riding.

That said, hopefully the rest of the country is paying attention to the fact that PMPM remains more than willing to impose edicts from on high if it'll push another high-profile supporter into Parliament. And that's a far more clear statement on his true views about democracy than the number of cabinet ministers supposedly charged with reforming or renewing it.

Equal treatment

It's already been noted elsewhere, but kudos to the British Columbia NDP for moving to a one-member, one-vote system. In particular, I have to agree with Jim Sinclair's comment:

"I support this resolution because it's not about loosening ties with the labour movement, it's about reaffirming ties with working people and making sure that this is the party that represents ordinary British Columbians," said Jim Sinclair, B.C. Federation of Labour president.

The action won't put an end to opponents' complaints that the party is too tight with labour. But it will ensure that the decisions made by the NDP truly express the will of the party's members. And whether or not party policy changes significantly, that policy will have more legitimacy as a result.

A show of unity

I'd wondered earlier whether the Commonwealth countries would be able to agree on the direction which the WTO should take in its upcoming round of negotiations. It turns out that they didn't have much trouble at all:

The leaders of the 53 Commonwealth countries, who have been meeting in Malta, called for more flexibility at the World Trade Organization negotiations in December in Hong Kong.

"We call on all developed countries to demonstrate the political courage and will to give more than they receive ... particularly in the negotiations on agriculture and market access, as their own longer term prosperity and security depends on such an approach," the leaders said in a group statement issued after a day of meetings on Saturday.

Obviously the tougher task will be to get similar agreement at the WTO meeting. But at the very least, the Commonwealth's message should help to push negotiations in the right direction.

Perverse incentives

While the auto industry is willing to move toward hybrid vehicles, a study commissioned by the U.S Chamber of Commerce has proposed trying to reverse any movement in that direction:

Less than four months after President Bush signed a six-year, $286.4 billion highway and public transit act, a report commissioned by the US Chamber of Commerce said that the federal Highway Trust Fund is running out of money and that Congress needs to think about new revenue sources...

Proposals for the longer term could be more controversial. One is that owners of hybrids and other alternative fuel vehicles pay a vehicle fee, the argument being that drivers should bear their fair share to fill potholes and fix bridges, regardless of how much or what kind of fuel they use.

Note that the proposal is being made in response to Bush's threat to veto any bill which would raise fuel taxes - even though the fuel tax (unlike all other major U.S. taxes) isn't indexed to inflation, and hasn't been raised since 1993. Which means that the fuel tax already favours less efficient vehicles than it would if the most basic of adjustments had been made.

And given how few hybrid vehicles are on the road so far, there isn't any reasonable argument to be made that hybrids are themselves responsible for any decline in fuel tax receipts.

But apparently a deck already stacked in favour of gas guzzlers isn't enough for the drafters of the proposal. Their suggestion would place an added cost up front to dissuade buyers looking at more efficient vehicles...and that in turn could put a large dent in any effort by the auto industry to offer more efficient vehicles for sale.

It's bad enough that the U.S. is one of the key countries trying to undermine any global agreement on climate change. But it would be all the more ridiculous for the U.S to actively place barriers in the way of cleaner technology. Hopefully the study won't lead to any policy results...but it's still worth pointing out that such damaging suggestions are actually receiving serious attention.

(Edit: typo.)

(via Suburban Guerrilla.)

Once privacy is lost...

If anybody actually believed that added surveillance powers in the name of fighting terrorism would be limited to terrorism concerns, this should put to rest any doubt about how much the scope may expand:

The music and film industries are demanding that the European parliament extends (sic) the scope of proposed anti-terror laws to help them prosecute illegal downloaders. In an open letter to MEPs, companies including Sony BMG, Disney and EMI have asked to be given access to communications data - records of phone calls, emails and internet surfing - in order to take legal action against pirates and filesharers. Current proposals restrict use of such information to cases of terrorism and organised crime...

If the demands were met by European legislators, it would open use of such private information across any number of criminal cases. "Even the Bush administration is not proposing such a ludicrous policy, despite lobbying from Hollywood," said Gus Hosein, a senior fellow at Privacy International.

Fortunately, it doesn't look like the governments involved have been overly receptive to the argument yet. But the industry groups' claim highlights that any added surveillance is bound to have many more uses than originally anticipated.

Once the equipment is in place, it only takes one misguided policy decision to eviscerate privacy in ways that protect only corporate interests rather than national security. And even if there's a genuine basis for added surveillance (which itself is far from clear), that risk has to be part of the discussion of whether that surveillance is a good idea.

The welcome mat

While some groups want to set immigration policy back 100 years, saner heads are finding innovative ways to make immigrants feel at home:

At first glance, the idea of settling refugees from equatorial African (sic) among the white farmers of conservative Altona (population 3,800), in one of the coldest regions in Canada, might seem uninspired...

But if the experiment seems ambitious, it appears to be paying handsome dividends, offering a safe and close-knit environment for more than 20 vulnerable refugees, some of whom are still struggling to adapt to life outside Africa despite having lived in places like Winnipeg and Toronto...

Mr. Loewen said part of the problem is the failure of provincial authorities to give newly arrived refugees enough support, and that making smaller, less glamorous communities attractive to refugees might be part of the solution.

"The provincial government sponsored 700 refugees last year and that's great. But then, in many cases they drop the ball. There need to be more support systems in place," he said.

"In large centres it's easier for refugee families to fall through the cracks. In a smaller community that doesn't happen."

To the extent that the Altona model can work, it seems to provide ample benefits for all parties involved. For the immigrants, it ensures a more natural support system than can realistically be put together in an urban seeting. And for any given community, an influx of new Canadians (along with their positive impressions of the area) could be part of the answer to help reverse declines in population.

Kudos to those who have made the Altona project work so far, and hopefully the same principle will start to gain wider application across the Prairies.

Building is only the first step

The Star reports on an investigation into the Kashechewan water crisis. And it looks like the crisis was caused by a view that once the new water treatment plant was built in 1996, everything else would take care of itself:

(Ontario's chief drinking water inspector) said providing clean water would have been "doable" at the plant, if not for a number of critical issues outlined in his report. They include:
- Use of sub-standard chemicals to disinfect water that are barred from use in Ontario-run facilities.
- Cross-connections between pipes carrying clean water and raw sewage.
- No mandatory facility inspections.
- No manuals on site to help under-trained water operators understand how to do their jobs.

And how did all that happen?

The results of their three-day investigation of the $3.6 million plant were presented to band members and federal Indian Affairs officials in a closed session earlier this week. (Chief Leo) Friday said he wasn't surprised by the results.

"We couldn't do everything we were supposed to have done because we never had enough money, including for sending the guys for training," he said in an interview yesterday. Friday would be happy to have the recommendations in the report implemented "if they can do it with the amount of money they can get."

While it's well and good for the federal government to have promised added money to First Nations, the bigger issue lies in the details which have yet to be negotiated. All the capital funding in the world won't help if First Nations lack both sufficient operational funds and sufficiently-trained employees to keep facilities running properly.

Unfortunately, that's both the part of the equation that requires constant attention, and the one that seems most easily forgotten. And even in the wake of both a public crisis and the promises made at this week's summit, it doesn't look like that issue has been dealt with seriously either for Kashechewan itself (where repairs to the water system are again on hold for lack of funding) or for First Nations generally.

Democracy delayed, democracy denied

As if there weren't enough problems surrounding the upcoming Haitian election, today we find out that the election will be pushed back yet again:

The nine-member Provisional Electoral Council set a new date of Jan. 8 for presidential and legislative elections, followed by a Feb. 15 runoff.

Council members said they would be unable to set up polling sites by Dec. 27 — the election date announced last week by interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue — because of crumbling infrastructure and a lack of trained election workers in the poorest nation in the Americas...

(T)he latest postponement means Haiti will now miss an important deadline.

Under the constitution, the five-year term of the president is supposed to begin and end on Feb. 7, to mark the anniversary of the 1986 demise of the 29-year father-and-son Duvalier dictatorship. The new election date makes it impossible to have a new government installed by then, election officials said.

Once again, the countries involved in Haiti at the moment (including Canada) deserve nothing but criticism for failing to provide enough resources to allow Haitians to vote. And the delay will be all the worse if it allows for more anti-democratic planning to take hold in the interim.

Mainstream exposure

It's not clear yet whether the Canadian blogosphere will have as much impact on the upcoming election as the American one has had in the past. But if not, it at least won't be for a lack of opportunity. Kudos to whichever major media outlet is making the effort to include blogs as part of its coverage...and I'll look forward to seeing the results.

The downside of income trusts

Tom McFeat discusses the less-reported side of income trusts:

Some investor advocates are worried that many holders of income trusts aren’t fully aware of the risks. Income trusts, after all, are all about the income. Their unit prices rise and fall on the health of that distribution. And when they fall, they can fall hard.

Take the case of FMF Capital. It generates sub-prime residential mortgages in the U.S. and then sells them to institutional loan buyers. But interest rates have been rising in the U.S. lately. That has reduced the premiums it receives. The cash available to distribute has shrunk. So on Nov. 15, the company suspended its distributions indefinitely. The price of FMF Capital units plunged 77 per cent. In one day.

And there are other concerns. Just hours before Goodale put an end to the income trust review, a group of forensic accountants came out with a report that questioned the financial reporting, the valuations and the aggressive marketing of many trusts.

Accountability Research Corp.’s main targets were not resource or real estate trusts – many of which have been around for decades. Their biggest concern lies with the newer business trusts. They looked at the 50 biggest business trusts and found that, on average, a significant portion of their cash distributions (more than a third) were not actual income from the business, but were simply a return of the investors’ own money.

The public debate about income trusts has thus far been framed by the people who have thus far made plenty of money off of those trusts, and who surely want that success to continue. And it's tough to fault the investor groups for succeeding in shutting out the opposing viewpoint. But the one-sided debate has left some important considerations out of the public sphere.

For all the talk about how retirees desperately need the higher rate of return associated with income trusts, little attention has been paid to the associated risk. And that risk looks all the worse if many income trusts are viable in large part only due to continued investment. If indeed more than a third of cash distributions are based purely on investors' money, that suggests that the projected rate of return should be slashed significantly to compensate for the purchase rate stabilizing in the future.

Of course, this will all likely be ignored now that Goodale has rendered his verdict. In the meantime, all investors now relying on income trusts should keep in mind what they say about things that seem too good to be true.

The blueprint

The results of the review committee on corporate taxes in Saskatchewan are in:

(T)he committee recommends the province:
- Eliminate (the) corporation capital tax (CCT) (of .6%)...
- Reduce the general corporation income tax (CIT) rate from 17 to 12 per cent...
- Increase the small business limit to $500,000 by 2008...

Vicq believes the province can afford the business tax cuts, estimated at $180 million annually in 2009-10, which includes the recovery of $45 million a year in tax "leakage" to other jurisdictions.

The NDP government deserves plenty of credit for taking a measured approach to the cuts, rather than following the Sask Party angle of cutting taxes first and hoping the money could be made up for later. But the committee's recommendations do make sense in the long term, particularly since they come at a reasonable cost. Hopefully Vicq's recommendations will find their way into the next budget alongside the NDP's other priorities.

On recognizing opportunity

It figures that the same Health Minister who can't be bothered to even try to rein in private delivery of medical services is now introducing legislation to restrain one of the areas where market forces currently work to Canada's advantage:

Federal Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh is set to table legislation Friday to ban the bulk export of prescription drugs to the United States and set up an early warning system to detect drug shortages caused by the cross-border trade...

The minister decided to go ahead with the bill because he told stakeholders and members of the Commons Health Committee earlier this month he would take action before the end of November, a federal source told The Canadian Press...

The Internet pharmacy industry was founded in Manitoba and the province remains home to the majority of the estimated 6,000 jobs and overall trade of about $1 billion a year.

I'll agree that the early warning system makes some sense to ensure that exports don't result in limited availability in Canada. But the proposed plan doesn't sound likely to dissuade the export of drugs to any meaningful extent - and it's far more likely to result in shortages than another readily available policy option.

Which is to say: given the massive U.S. demand for Canadian drugs, wouldn't it make a world of sense to to encourage an increase in the supply instead?

Surely it has to be a plus to ultimately reduce prescription prices on both sides of the border while further developing the Canadian drug manufacturing industry. And what's the downside supposed to be - forcing the U.S. to regulate drug prices more in keeping with the rest of the world when its own politicians are eager to make use of those same prices? If the worst that could happen is the market equilibrium that Dosanjh is trying to instead impose by statute, that doesn't strike me as a particularly dangerous downside risk.

Fortunately, Dosanjh's bill will join the others set to die on the parliamentary order paper. And hopefully by the next time Parliament gets together, somebody with a bit more foresight will be in charge of the health file.

(Edit: typo.)

False dichotomies run amok

If Decima's latest poll results are to be believed, 92% of all people planning to vote for the Liberals have absolutely no reason not to vote NDP:

The poll suggests Harper's personal unpopularity helps sustain the Liberal party; almost 40 per cent of people who said they would vote Liberal cited Harper as their main motivation.

Another 52 per cent said they favoured the Liberals because they disagreed generally with Conservative policies.

Mind you, it would have helped if the poll included any criteria which could have helped sort out voters among the various reasons to vote (or not vote) NDP as compared to Liberal. And in keeping with that lack of options, both stated reasons to vote out the Liberals were based more on Liberal action than anything related to the opposition parties:

The Decima survey turns conventional wisdom on its head by suggesting voters' inclination for a change in government dwarfs their anger over sponsorship. Only 35 per cent of respondents who said they wanted to replace the government cited the scandal as their prime motivation.

A far greater number - 57 per cent - said it was because the Liberals have been in power too long and they wanted a turnover after 12 years.

What's even more odd is that the wording of these options suggests that any scandal on issues other than sponsorship itself should be placed in the latter column rather than the former. As a result, even the most-publicized finding from the poll could be based more on the wording of the question than on any genuine measure of the public's views.

Polls are probably overused and overanalyzed as a means of measuring public opinion anyway. But if they're going to be commissioned, it helps if they at least try to approximate the range of options actually available to respondents.

Poor policy

Campaign 2000 reports on the woeful lack of progress in combating child poverty in Canada:

The group's annual report says 1.2 million children in Canada – one out of six – continue to live in poverty; a rate that hasn't changed in almost 30 years.

Food banks across the country continue to do a bustling business.

In Toronto alone, 175,000 people use them every month – and it's not just the unemployed.

According to the study nearly half of all poor children, 48 per cent, live in families with working parents.

It's bad enough how little progress has been made over the past three decades. But it should be all the more shocking that this is one of the few issues where even the impending election campaign can't induce the Liberals to inject any money:

Minister of Social Development Ken Dryden says he's reviewing the problem.

"Everybody is really ready to come up with a really workable definition, a definition that the public understands and accepts, and then out of that there's a much better chance ot setting targets," he said.

The answers listed in the report itself are rather obvious, including policies such as improving access to EI and providing better funding for social housing. Not coincidentally, those are precisely the issues that have been ignored or undone throughout the Libs' term of office.

That leaves voters interested in reducing poverty with a choice between a Liberal party still interested more in arguing about definitions than taking action, or the NDP which has already forced more action in one budget than the Liberals have ever been willing to take. Hopefully after another election that gives enough added clout to the NDP, the numbers actually will change for the better.

(Deleted double post.)

Income distrust

Apparently Goodale's office managed to mess up the income trust issue in message as well as in substance:

The haste of this decision was readily apparent. Mr. Goodale's parliamentary secretary, John McKay, gave a television interview shortly before Ottawa formally announced the dividend tax cut, and mistakenly suggested the government also planned to levy a modest tax on income trusts.

Mr. Goodale denied that Ottawa was seriously considering a tax on trusts and suggested Mr. McKay was mistaken.

Meanwhile, one tax expert who was planning on preparing a submission to the supposedly-going consultation process noted that his submission was never heard - and that the problem underlying income trusts wasn't addressed either:

"It was absolutely rushed. You realize they haven't dealt with the issue," (Jack Mintz) said. He pointed out that pension funds, non-residents, and RRSP holders will continue to "prefer income trusts automatically," and said the government may very well have to revisit the issue if its moves yesterday do not slow down the pace of trust conversions and initial public offerings.

So what we have now is a decision that was made without full consultion, and in such a hurry that Goodale's own parliamentary secretary went public with what proved to be wrong information. And predictably, that rush may lead to a need to revisit the same issue later on.

I've said many times that there was no reason for the income trust issue to be ignored as long as it was - but it's doubly harmful to then make a snap decision after ignoring the issue, rather than at least getting it right once it is dealt with. We'll find out before too long just what surprises await. But it should be clear that the income trust issue is a prime counterexample to any claim that the Liberals deserve credit for good management.

Making the IRS look good

It's always fun to see ideology trump sanity and common sense, especially when it isn't one's own country on the hook for the bill. For today's example, look no further than the interaction between the IRS and the U.S. Congress:

The government began this month to accept bids from debt-collection agencies that it hopes to begin using as early as next summer to go after billions of dollars in unpaid taxes...

The government decided to turn to the private sector when it became clear that Congress was unlikely to increase the agency's budget to allow it to hire enough workers to go after all the outstanding debts...

And it turns out the government is due a lot. According to the GAO report, Americans owed $120 billion in collectible taxes, including interest and penalties, in 2003. That was up from $112 billion the year before...

"These are cases that the IRS doesn't have the resources to get to right now in terms of staffing or funding. It's basically uncollected tax revenue just sitting out there that the IRS cannot get to," Lipold said.

In soliciting bids, the IRS said private collectors would earn from 21% to 24% of what is collected, depending on the size of the debt.

In sum: Congress is utterly unwilling to provide the necessary resources to allow the IRS to collect the amounts owing on its own. Instead, the IRS will outsource the job to the private sector. As a result, the IRS will lose a quarter of the value of the initial debt...which it could have collected in full if Congress was willing to fund the IRS in achieving the task.

Incidentally, lest anybody think this is an entirely new idea:

Use of the private sector is a major turn for the IRS, which tried the strategy a decade ago and abandoned it for lack of revenue. The idea was resurrected as the size of the agency began to shrink and the debt to mount.

Somewhere, Grover Norquist is smiling. But American taxpayers who'll now be paying Congress-approved firms to do the job that the IRS used to do for itself should be doing something else entirely.

Scratching the surface

Just wondering...but if the revelation that the U.S. wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera is merely the start of the embarrassing leaks that Blair needs to suppress, just what else is lurking below the surface and waiting to emerge? And why is Blair so eager to protect a relationship that's led to nothing but an illegitimate war and the scorn of most of the world?

The clear choice

As if the difference between Canada's political parties wasn't stark enough already, nobody should be surprised by the affiliation of the provincial government which just announced its refusal to be a party to private health care:

A showdown over private health care is looming in Manitoba, where the NDP government is threatening to impose sanctions against the Maples Surgical Centre over its plans for a private magnetic resonance imaging machine.

Health Minister Tim Sale, who said Tuesday he would wait for federal direction on the issue, changed his mind Wednesday and said the clinic will contravene the Canada Health Act if it charges patients for medically necessary diagnostic scans...

Sale said the province is willing to enforce the Canada Health Act with fines of up to $5,000 and more serious sanctions for subsequent offences.

Now, nobody should be unsympathetic to the people currently on Manitoba's waiting lists - and hopefully the government will back up today's action with added resources to put a dent in those. But Sale's action helps to emphasize that the NDP is the sole party standing up to fix the public system, rather than encouraging people to buy their way around it or simply refusing to take a meaningful stand in either direction. And that's exactly the contrast that Layton and company need to highlight when the writ drops.

Wrong answer

Goodale announces the verdict on income trusts - and it's hard to see how the matter could have been bungled much worse:

Income trusts are poised to rise Thursday after Ottawa decided not to hit the sector with a new tax regime, but instead level the playing field by cutting taxes on corporate dividends...

Just last week, Mr. Goodale said the government's new policy on the sector would not be ready until January. The news was likely fast-tracked because of the imminent federal election.

Keep in mind that the income trust sector was built on a long-standing tax loophole which should have been closed back when PMPM was still FMPM. Now, after years of inaction, Goodale's plan is to not only reward the sector built on that loophole, but to make sure that the corporate sector essentially receives a tax break equal to the loophole - even though recent public consultation was only with respect to income trusts, and not corporate taxes generally.

Today's decision is only a recipe for more loopholes - and more consequential tax cuts - down the road, rather than a system that creates incentives to play by the existing rules. And that means a comparatively greater share of taxes for those Canadians who don't have sufficient resources to develop the new loopholes.

A push in the right direction

If the upcoming Commonwealth meeting can live up to its advance billing, then maybe the upcoming WTO talks aren't doomed after all:

Commonwealth leaders will present a united front and demand progress on global trade negotiations when they gather in Malta this week, the 53-country group's Secretary-General said Wednesday...

“Commonwealth leaders are all in agreement that this must be a successful round,” Mr. McKinnon told the Associated Press in a telephone interview from Malta. “There must be benefits for developing countries. ... I believe we can present a united front on what are the great expectations from this round.”...

Commonwealth countries' priorities in the trade talks vary widely. Australia is demanding further cuts to European farming subsidies, while Britain, as current president of EU, wants India to open up market access for industrial goods and services.

Meanwhile countries such as Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad – the Caribbean's leading sugar producers who enjoy special access to the European Union – fear that reform of the EU's sugar-aid scheme will damage their economies.

If the Commonwealth can put forward a united front based on a genuine free flow of trade (rather than the demand of free trade except where it would affect politically powerful industries), that could work wonders in highlighting the common interests of developed and developing states. But it won't be easy, as reaching such an agreement now will require the Commonwealth states to stand up to those internal industries now in the knowledge that there's another huge hurdle in the way of the ultimate goal.

Hopefully McKinnon's optimistic take on the Commonwealth meeting will help to generate some positive momentum, both within the Commonwealth and in the wider WTO. If so, then one of the most important ingredients in both third-world development and wider economic stability may yet become the norm at the Hong Kong meeting.

Sage commentary

Maclean's features Kenneth Whyte's Q and A with Ed Broadbent:

Virtually all the proposals that I've made on behalf of my party have been put in place in western European governments. We're one of the few places that still have these political appointees. It goes hand in glove with this culture of entitlement that we think is normal. It wasn't that long ago, in a certain province, where a premier who shall go nameless would sit down in a church basement and put $10 bills in envelopes for people coming to see him. Well, we've progressed beyond that...(B)y cleaning up the rules you won't affect the number of people who will work for political parties, but you will deter a number of the people who are in it for their own benefit.

Amen to that. Give the interview a read.

Compare and contrast

Bushco claims that allegation contained in the U.K. memo which stated that the U.S. planned to bomb Al-Jazeera's headquarters is "outlandish".

The U.K considers the content of the memo a sufficiently serious issue that it's gagging the media under the Official Secrets Act on the basis that it's been damaged by the release of the information.

Is there any doubt as to who's giving a more accurate impression about the significance of the memo?

(Edit: typo.)

Junk science and junk politics

Not that we needed more reminders of the problems we're already having in implementing Kyoto - but Ralph Klein has officially decided to throw a wrench in the works:

Alberta will not be bound by federal regulations on greenhouse emissions, says a spokesman for the province's Environment Department.

Robert Moyles said Tuesday that Alberta will introduce its own regulations to govern greenhouse emissions - and they will take precedence over federal rules...

He said Ottawa has committed itself to emissions-reduction targets that Alberta considers unrealistic.

Alberta has repeatedly said it does not accept the targets of the Kyoto protocol, which calls on Canada to cut emissions six per cent from 1990 levels by 2012.

As if that wasn't bad enough, it appears that Alberta's supposed justification for the action is its continued reliance on a principle so far removed from reality that even Bushco stopped trying to push it years ago:

The province has set a target of cutting in half the so-called "greenhouse intensity" of its industry by 2020 - that refers to the amount of greenhouse emissions for each unit of economic output.

In short, Canada's wealthiest province utterly refuses to use any of its wealth to actually try to deal with climate change, and plans instead to implement a standard where any economic growth is taken to be an environmental improvement even if emissions don't change at all.

If Canadians are paying any attention, this combined with Klein's privatization fixation should more than undo any positive perception arising out of the Alberta centennial scholarship program. But the more important question is whether the next federal government will fight back - and with actions to enforce the federal standards, not mere words which will then be ignored by the provinces.

Klein's recent actions show only that he thinks Canadians will willingly sell out their environment and their health for a pittance. And no federal party willing to accept those terms should get anywhere near the government side of the Commons.

On credible leadership

The David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute release a report on what all too many people seem to want to wilfully ignore:

A new report says industrial countries must commit themselves to far deeper emissions cuts than those in the Kyoto Treaty if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Emissions should be cut 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050, says the report by the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute...

The report says Canada should adopt the deep-reduction targets to show leadership at a UN conference on climate change which opens in Montreal next week.

It would be great in a sense to see Canada take the lead as proposed in the report - particularly since it should be clear that the developed world would have to cut even more deeply than the stated numbers to make up for development elsewhere. But that type of promise wouldn't have much meaning given the complete lack of action toward our existing obligations.

Moreover, there would also be costs to promising to meet the Suzuki/Pembina targets. Any commitment to such large-sounding numbers could easily backfire, with talk of the projected cost of making the emisson cuts leading to a counterattack of "we can't afford to do that much, so let's keep doing nothing".

For now, the focus needs to be on getting some momentum in the right direction to begin with, rather than on promises to be dealt with decades down the road. And if the result is effective enough action now, then maybe we'll be able to realistically and credibly commit to the Suzuki/Pembina targets before too long.

The chosen priorities

As expected, four bills were approved by the House of Commons yesterday and should make it into law before Monday based on streamlined Senate procedures:

The four bills that were passed earlier yesterday include a home-heating rebate, stiffer laws relating to drugs and organized crime, new options for natives to manage oil-and-gas revenues and a bill protecting a maximum of $3,000 in wages per employee in the event of a company bankruptcy.

Due credit to all four parties for ensuring that these initiatives were approved quickly. Hopefully the example of these four bills will help to point out the difference between genuine (and worthy) government priorities, and the pre-election grab bag which nobody expected to pass.

Unhealthy alliance

Good news: the traditional Ralph Klein Undermines Stephen Harper At Every Turn election tour is underway:

“We're at point right now where we've hired a firm, a controversial firm undoubtedly, to do an assessment of whether people — as to whether there would be an insurance agency willing to accommodate people who wish to buy insurance for non-essential non-emergency services. That's where we are right now," Mr. Klein said.

He says he discussed the matter, and health care in general, in a meeting with Opposition Leader Stephen Harper Monday and that Mr. Harper gave the idea the thumbs-up. "His response is that's fine."

Of course, Harper had already given up any hope of challenging the Liberals on health care. But now he'll face the ever-pleasant choice of either alienating core voters in Alberta by calling Klein a liar, or facing the same "supporter of private health care" claim that has long dogged the Cons (even as the Libs allow the system to move in the same direction by omission).

Mind you, there is one party that's neither wilfully ignoring privatization, nor actively encouraging it - either on the provincial or federal level. Ideally, Klein's attention to the issue will also call attention to the privatization within two parties, rather than merely allowing the Libs to paint themselves as the saviours of health care again.

On cleaning up one's messes

The Globe and Mail reports on the environmental disaster that is the former Winisk air force base - and the complete lack of any action beyond finger-pointing:

The abandoned buildings are still standing but the windows have long been smashed. In the frigid cavernous interiors, the wind scatters pads of deadly asbestos lying on the chipped concrete floor.

Outside, lie rusting hulks that were once diggers and trucks, their paint peeling and toxic chemicals from their batteries and ancient radiators seeping into the fragile permafrost.

Nearby, stands a small mountain of rusted metal drums. Locals say there are as many as 10,000 of them scattered throughout the area and hundreds more lie at the bottom of a small pond nearby...

And Winisk isn't the only area still left with severe environmental damage left over from several decades ago:

Winisk is not the only former radar base in Northern Ontario with severe ecological problems. Base 415 at Cape Henrietta Maria, deep in the Polar Bear Provincial Park, was also part of the Mid Canada Line.

An environmental study commissioned in the 1990s by the Mushkegowuk Council, an umbrella group for many of the native groups in the area, found asbestos, PCBs and other pollutants at the site. The study also found evidence that a large above-ground storage tank was still leaking diesel fuel into the tundra.

Another study shows that a third former site, known as 06 and located between Moosonee and Cochrane, is also badly contaminated.

The article indicates that the federal government's reason for inaction is a claim that the bases were built on provincial land. But that's something less than a compelling explanation when the damage is solely the result of a federal project. And even if the explanation is technically correct, the sole result should be to make all provinces wary about cooperating with federal efforts in the future...since they've apparently been left to deal with all the consequences of abandoned federal projects to date.

What little credit should be given goes to the Ontario provincial government, which has cleaned up one former base site due to a particularly urgent need. But that's small consolation to those still in the path of toxic substances whose effects won't stay buried.

Lowered expectations

It has to be a bad sign when this is the operating mindset going into a round of negotiations:

A deal on a new global trade treaty is unlikely to come out of next month's World Trade Organization meeting, but the Hong Kong summit won't collapse like the previous meeting, India's trade minister said Monday...

While members at one point expected to reach a new deal in Hong Kong, "divergent and contentious issues" mean an agreement "will not be possible," Indian Commerce Minster Kamal Nath said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Unless there's a strong respose to this from other states involved - particularly those trying to defend farm and manufacturing subsidies - it looks like the WTO (like the summit of the Americas) will at best be an exercise in damage control. And that makes it all too likely that last summer's promise to pair third-world debt relief with meaningful market access will be long forgotten by the time the issue is seriously discussed again.

Still up in the air

Will they? Won't they? Will they after all? The latest report has the federal government once again planning to go ahead with the purchase of military aircraft, albeit only a part of the original plan that was apparently undermined by heavy lobbying from Bombardier.

It's not a terrible political move to split the difference between Bombardier's needs and the military's requests for more aircraft, but it still leaves serious questions both as to whether a two-bidder process is really an open tender, and as to how Bill Graham went from publicly stating that no procurement decisions would be made before an election, to strong-arming his party into the purchases.

No light issue

The AP reports on a plan to use mirrors to bring light to a town which normally faces three months of darkness each year:

The sun has stopped shining in Rattenberg. But with the aid of a few mirrors, the winter darkness that grips this small town could soon be brightened up with pockets of sunshine.

That's because sun is plentiful less than 10 minutes' walk from the town and from Rat Mountain, the 915-metre hill that blocks its sunlight between November and February each year.

The solution: 30 heliostats, essentially rotating mirrors, mounted on a hillside to grab sunshine off reflectors from the neighbouring village of Kramsach...

In the Tyrol region of the Alps alone, about 60 communities suffer the same fate in winter as Rattenberg. Peskoller says about six other towns in Austria and neighbouring Switzerland have expressed interest.

Obviously ideas like this can only be used in limited circumstances. But Rattenberg's example shows that there are still significant areas of developed countries where the simplest of technology can still be used to improve lives.