Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Toby Sanger discusses how wealthy Canadians - especially in the financial sector - are making more and more use of offshore tax havens to avoid paying their fair share:

The latest Statistics Canada figures  show 24% of Canadian direct investment overseas in 2011 went to the top twelve tax havens, up from 10% in 1987.   In fact, tax havens of the Barbados, Cayman Islands, Ireland, Luxembourg and Bermuda were five of the top eight national destinations of total Canadian investment abroad, with the US, UK and Australia the only countries not considered tax havens in this group.
...

These totals would be even higher if they included figures for other tax havens such as Monaco, Liechtenstein and many others where the figures either aren’t available or weren’t made available for confidentiality reasons.  They also don’t include money going to tax havens associated with the UK and the US, such as Channel Islands, or through banks in those countries.

The finance and insurance sector now accounts for over 51% of Canada’s total direct investment overseas, more than double its share from 1987, more evidence that a large share of this money is going overseas to avoid taxes.   The Harper government has lauded Canada’s growing investment overseas, claiming it shows looser foreign investment rules (which allowed numerous takeovers of Canadian industry) have been beneficial, but the actual figures show the reality is quite different.  A large and growing share of this money isn’t going into real capital investments that could ultimately benefit people overseas or in Canada; it’s going into tax avoidance that benefits a wealthy few at the expense of the large majority in Canada and around the world.

 - Meanwhile, Art Eggleton is learning that the best way to make the case to help Canadians living in poverty is to advocate for greater equality at all levels of income.

- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report on the Cons' response to polling data on the effect of Robocon. But it's most noteworthy that a shotgun approach may have shot the Cons' own case in the foot since so many of the Cons' attacks have been pre-refuted for the court's convenience:

In her 35-page affidavit, Corbin says Graves’ results cannot be relied on because the survey was conducted so long after the fact.

“It is implausible that consumers would remember not only getting a call a year after it occurred, but specific details of the call.”

Graves had said in his affidavit that he dealt with the possibility of “over-remembering” by comparing his results in the seven ridings with a control group of 1,500 people in other ridings.

Corbin suggests Graves didn’t make his raw data available for others to review. However, the poll results have been posted on ekospolitics.com since shortly after his affidavit was filed.

- And pogge offers up another election fraud roundup, with Con MP Peter Penashue apparently joining the list of Con MPs who manage to stand out in the cover-up department even by his party's pathetic standards.

- Finally, Susan Delacourt follows up on the idea of mandatory voting with an apt observation as to how it would change the complexion of election day:

In Australia, voting is mandatory. In Canada, it’s not. Muttart told me earlier this year that he was struck by how quiet things are there on election day — all the frenzied get-out-the-vote efforts by parties in Canada simply don’t exist in Australia.

Ask any Canadian political volunteer, of any stripe, about that big E-day push, known by the acronym GOTV. It can be a circus. And in the midst of that melee in the 2011 federal election, someone got the idea that the tools of GOTV, the databases and the phone contacts, could be used just as easily to keep voters away from the polls.

Musical interlude

Garbage - You Look So Fine (Acoustic)

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Andrew Jackson thoroughly demolishes the argument that after three decades of wage stagnation and soaring corporate profits, Canada's economy somehow needs to see workers suffer even more:

The reality is that the pay of most workers has stagnated in real terms over the past thirty years as the profit share of  GDP has increased at the expense of wages, and as wages have become much more unequal with more and more of the total wage and salary bill going to the top 1% made up mainly of senior executives. As the OECD recently reported, since 1990, 6% of total national income has been shifted from wages to profits and the pay of the top 1% combined.

And a recent Statistics Canada study documents the stagnation of real hourly wages of the majority of Canadian workers between 1981 and 2011. Over that entire thirty year period, the average hourly wage of full-time workers rose by just 14% (and that includes the top 1%.) . This compares to growth of over 50% in real GDP per person over the same period.

The view that wages are “too high” boils down to saying that workers have no right to share in rising national income, all of which should go to profits and senior managers. That is, to say the least, a curious basis on which to sell the proposition that workers have any kind of stake in our current economic arrangements.

- Following up on yesterday's column, Mark Lemstra also sees plenty of reason for optimism in the Canadian Medical Association's focus on the social determinants of health.

- Althia Raj writes about the electoral boundary revision process in B.C. (featuring a commissioner's remarkable declaration that public input will be ignored) and Alberta (where there's reason for optimism in a shift toward better urban representation similar to that proposed in Saskatchewan).

- Sixth Estate is far too kind in responding to David Akin's pointless criticism of one of the most useful tools for accountability we've seen in Canadian politics.

- Finally, I'll give Michael Fougere this much: he's absolutely right that at the moment, the City of Regina's core business isn't so much land development or public administration as catering to private land developers. But this fall's election would seem like a rather important opportunity to change that focus.

A convenient reminder

No, we shouldn't be surprised that Vic Toews is pioneering exactly the type of reality check that's most needed when reporting on the Cons' own PR efforts. But since Toews has helpfully supplied the idea and the template, here's a handy checklist for any churnalist otherwise tempted to merely take a Con announcement and run with it...

Conservative (MP)/(Senator)/(spokesflack) _(name)_ is expected to hold a press conference at _(location)_ on _(date)_.

It is important for you to be aware of the need to respond to any misinformation which might be presented.

_(name)_'s presentation is expected to consist primarily of (talking points pulled directly from Conservative advertising)/(fabricated "facts")/(baseless smears of opposition parties). Before reporting on the press conference, please (apply basic common sense)/(talk to an expert on the subject)/(spend five minutes on teh Google)/(consult government documents which contradict the public statement) to ensure that the most glaring inaccuracies are corrected.

Of course, the above assumes it's actually worth the media's time to report on the Cons' spin in the first place - which is itself highly doubtful. But at the very least, such a filter should go a long way in making sure the truth gets its shoes on and starts catching up to Con misinformation as soon as possible.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Sum Of Us deserves plenty of credit for highlighting Enbridge's attempt to delete a thousand square kilometers of treacherous and sensitive islands in order to sugar-coat the dangers of shipping oil out of Kitimat. But it's also worth noting that the issue goes beyond the precise site chosen as the first and cheapest option: as Enbridge itself has claimed in its attempt to assuage people who stand to be affected by the pipeline inland, there's far more risk involved in shipping oil products by tanker than by pipeline wherever they choose to place the port. And that means the greater outrage is the Cons' utter negligence in doing everything they can to encourage tanker traffic.

- Meanwhile, John O'Connor points out the difference between the Cons' refusal to study or regulate  the genuine dangers of reckless oil production and use, and their determination to find fault with cleaner and safer wind power alternatives.

- Erin catches Don Morgan in a whopper of a lie about the state of Saskatchewan manufacturing since his government took power:

Saskatchewan newspapers report:

“Certainly in professional, scientific and technical areas and in the mining and the manufacturing sector (the job numbers) are very strong,” Don Morgan, minister of advanced education and labour relations, told reporters at news conference Friday.

On Friday, Statistics Canada reported that Saskatchewan manufacturing employment dropped by 900 last month and declined by 600 over the past year. Since Morgan’s Sask. Party government took office, our province has lost 5,100 manufacturing jobs. By what measure is manufacturing employment “very strong”?

...

It’s easy to understand why Sask. Party politicians would like to claim strong manufacturing employment. They are trying to characterize “Dutch disease” as an eastern Canadian preoccupation. In reality, manufacturing job losses have afflicted all regions of Canada, including Saskatchewan.

- Finally, Bill Curry reports on the radical anti-worker advice that looks to form the basis for the Cons' next budget. But it's worth noting that even the Cons' corporate allies are using inequality language as both a goal and an excuse to attack labour just as brutally as their Republican counterparts:

Labour issues surface in several discussion categories, with the general view that Canadian workers are overpriced. “Need to address wage differentials in labor market among countries; we are losing jobs to other countries,” the memo reads. “Right to Work legislation should be pondered as it creates inequities in productivity; US example was provided.”

In the United States, about two dozen state governments have passed right-to-work legislation, which allows workers to opt out of paying union dues. Critics call the measures a form of union busting.

New column day

Here, on how the Canadian Medical Association's new focus on inequality and the social determinants of health may be nicely timed to shape Canada's political future.

For further reading...
- Some of the CMA's history of advocating for increased privatization can be found here, here and here.
- By way of comparison, more recent documents like the CMA's principles for health-care transformation and its federal budget consultation submission (PDF) take a rather more productive position. And new president Anna Reid looks to be continuing that trend.
- And as an added contrast, compare the issues voted on by the CMA five years ago to those considered and approved this week.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Tobi Cohen picks up on the possibility of a provincial NDP in Quebec, and notes that the federal party is considering what can be done before the next election after that set for September:

NDP national director Chantale Vallerand told Postmedia News talks are preliminary. “There’s been so many things thrown at us in the past year that we’ve been busy making sure that we were on top of everything at the federal level so we didn’t have any time, resources or energy to devote at a provincial level,” she noted.

“Having said that, we are exploring options and possibilities on how that can be done at the provincial level but it’s not short-term . . . It’s not something we are saying no to.”

- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report that the RCMP has been involved in the search for the fraudsters behind Robocon. 

- Peter O'Neil notes that the National Energy Board looks to be engaged in a Keystone Kops routine of its own: having declared last week that it wouldn't consider the scathing U.S. National Transportation Safety Board report on Enbridge's Kalamazoo oil spill, it's now decided to demand that Enbridge file the report in its Gateway pipeline review. Which means that Stephen Harper would have yet more reason to hedge his bets on the pipeline - if he hadn't been the one to rig the game in the first place.

- Finally, Malcolm weighs in on Saskatchewan's proposed riding boundaries.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Cats reaching out.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- While a misleading "wealth equals health" headline seems to have been the main take-away from the CMA's health polling, Iglika Ivanova frames the issue more accurately in pointing out that the non-wealth determinants of health are the areas where Canada has far more room for improvement:

(L)ifestyle choices are a relatively small factor in shaping health outcomes, much less important than our living and working conditions. In fact, living and working conditions often constrain our choices to a very large extent. The health research is very clear (p. ix):

“Chronic disease can no longer be explained only as an outcome based on engaging in the ‘wrong’ health behaviours. There is a need to look beyond individual responsibility to understand the ways in which the social environment shapes the decisions we make and the behaviours we engage in.”

In other words, the income-related health inequalities the CMA report documents represent unfair and avoidable ill health, and it causes enormous human suffering, costs years of the life of our fellow citizens. As one of the Canadian members of the World Health Organization Commission on Social Determinants of Health, Monique Bégin points out:

The truth is that Canada – the ninth richest country in the world – is so wealthy that it manages to mask the reality of poverty, social exclusion and discrimination, the erosion of employment quality, its adverse mental health outcomes, and youth suicides. While one of the world’s biggest spenders in health care, we have one of the worst records in providing an effective social safety net. What good does it do to treat people’s illnesses, to then send them back to the conditions that made them sick?

This is a national embarrassment and we all have a responsibility to ensure that every Canadian has the opportunity to lead a healthy life.

- And fortunately, the CMA's new president recognizes the distinction:

“We need equitable distribution of health care resources and services so that – within reasonable restrictions such as geography and population [density] – everyone has equal access to important health-care services,” Dr. Reid said.

Beyond pushing for universal access to essential medical care, she said she will use the CMA presidency to raise awareness about the role of the socio-economic determinants of health, and the need to focus on marginalized groups like aboriginal people, those with mental illness and the isolated elderly.

“That’s a huge passion of mine,” she said. “I see the impact of social determinants every day in my work.”

- Carol Goar reviews Joseph Stiglitz' The Price of Inequality,  including this optimistic set of future outcomes:

Looking ahead, the economist sees two possible scenarios.

One is that the mega-rich 1 per cent of the population will realize it is in their own interest to reverse today’s extreme polarization of income. No one benefits from a less productive, less dynamic and less efficient economy.

The other is that the 99 per cent will realize they’ve been sold a bill of goods by their leaders and demand change in ways governments, political parties and employers cannot brush off.

People intuitively get it, he says. They just have to muster the political will to act.

- But then, some people are going out of their way to avoid noticing the corrosive effects of inequality - with Benjamin Hale coining the phrase "veil of opulence" to describe the mindset shared by the Republicans south of the border (among other right-wing parties around the world).

- Finally, Adam Kovac wonders whether we'll see a provincial NDP develop in Quebec. And I'd have to see the prospect as far more likely now than at the start of the current election campaign, as Quebec Solidaire's gleefully hard line on sovereignty strikes me as likely to severely limit the growth potential for the main party which would otherwise have a chance to fill a left-wing vacuum.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Pamela Palmater discusses how the Cons' push to monetize First Nations reserves ultimately looks to be little more than another giveaway to the oil industry:

By now most of you have heard about the Harper government's intention to introduce legislation that will turn reserve lands into individual holdings called fee simple. The legislation has been referred to as the First Nation Property Ownership Act (FNPOA). Some media outlets have referred to it as "privatization" but what the legislation would really do is turn the collective ownership of reserve lands into small pieces of land owned by individuals who could then sell it to non-First Nations peoples, land-holding companies and corporations, like Enbridge for example.

The idea is not a new one. Hernando de Soto has been trying to sell the same idea to Indigenous populations all over the world. The evidence seems to show that the Indigenous peoples are far worse off for it. Prior to de Soto's destructive world tour, the Indigenous Nations in the United States suffered the sting of fee simple legislation in the Dawes Act. Once the lands were given to individuals, the lands were subject to state laws. The same would happen in Canada where the lands would be subject to provincial instead of federal law.

The primary purpose of the Dawes Act was to assimilate Indigenous peoples in the U.S. by breaking up their Indigenous governments. The legislation allowed the government to divide up communal lands into small parcels to be held by individuals. It has been described by historians as:"the culmination of American attempts to destroy tribes and their governments and to open Indian lands to settlement by non-Indians and to development by railroads" (Oklahoma Historical Society). In the Canadian context, similar legislation will open up "Indian lands" for big oil, gas and mineral extraction.

- Meanwhile, Les Whittington reports that the Cons retaliated against Attawapiskat for rightly challenging their own improper actions by then denying federal support for a desperately-needed housing plan.

- Dan Leger notes that the Cons have set themselves up to wear full political responsibility for pushing the Gateway and other pipelines, but recognizes that they have plenty to lose in having made it so.

- Finally, Mia Rabson comments on mandatory voting - including this from one former PM who sees some merit in the idea:

Former Prime Minister Joe Clark told the Free Press in June he was slowly changing his mind about the idea of mandatory voting.

"I used to dismiss it because it seemed to be ordering people to do something they wouldn't do by their will," Clark said, following a forum on youth voting hosted by Elections Canada. "But I think the analogy with speeding laws, with other rules holds. It is a national interest that the public have more participation in the political process and perhaps a requirement to vote would lead to that."

Clark said he hasn't studied the issue much himself, nor has he looked at the experience of mandatory voting in Australia, "but I think we're in a sufficiently serious situation now that we need to look at other alternatives. I don't think we should exclude anything."

Monday Morning 'Rider Blogging

Most of the commentary on Friday's loss to Edmonton has focused on the common traits between the Saskatchewan Roughriders' last three losses. But the more important developments may have been some new weaknesses which figure to make it much tougher for the 'Riders to get back in the win column.

To start with the points which might serve as a distraction, let's note that Friday's game offered a prime opportunity to confuse cause and effect when it comes to late-game turnovers. Yes, Darian Durant was intercepted twice - but only with the 'Riders already well behind in the game, and at a point where playing it safe wasn't an option.

Which isn't to say Durant had a great game overall. While his numbers looked much better for a few big plays (Taj Smith's circus catch and a couple of brilliant runs by Kory Sheets), Durant was once again somewhat off target with many of his throws and decisions (with a completion thrown from across the line of scrimmage serving as a particularly ugly drive-killer). And aside from Sheets, the rest of the offence was equally inconsistent.

But the 'Riders' have shown they can win with a modest offence if the team's other units play well. And that's where Friday's result raised some real cause for concern.

On special teams, Tristan Jackson had by far his worst game of the season. In some cases, that could be traced to obvious missed blocks; in others, it simply looked like Jackson wasn't finding the seams which he normally exploits as well as any returner in the CFL. But it's not an accident that the 'Riders were able to pile up large yardage totals without scoring a lot of points - and much of the problem has to do with the team starting with far worse field position than it has in most games this season.

Likewise, a defence which throttled the Eskimos just a few weeks earlier suddenly looked helpless against Steven Jyles' offence. And while most of the commentary so far has focused on the secondary, it wasn't only the Eskimos' passing attack that was unrecognizable compared to week 2: Hugh Charles also had a strong game thanks in large part to poor tackling by the 'Riders' run-stoppers.

Which is to say that rather than merely focusing on their late-game weaknesses, the 'Riders also look to have some work to do in rebuilding what seemed to be their strengths. And with nearly every team in the CFL clustered around the .500 mark, the 'Riders can't count on making the playoffs if they aren't able to regain at least part of their early-season form.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Carol Goar comments on the CEP/CAW plan to merge and work toward a far more active type of unionism:

Both the CAW and the CEP — of which I am a member — gobbled up smaller unions to reach their current size. But neither achieved the critical mass to keep growing or to revitalize the labour movement.

This time they’ve come up with a more ambitious — but much riskier — formula. They aim to create a new union unlike anything labour activists or the public have seen in the past.
 • It would be “a fighting force for all workers,” not just its own members.
 • Its reach would extend beyond traditional workplaces. It would organize temp workers, contract employees, immigrants in precarious jobs, the self-employed and the unemployed.
 • It would be open to all “who share the vision of a stronger, larger Canadian social union,” including artists, entrepreneurs, homemakers, community activists and seniors.
 • It would offer support and services to non-members engaged in disputes with their employers.
 • It would inspire — embarrass if necessary — umbrella bodies such as the Canadian Labour Congress and the Ontario Federation of Labour to be bolder, more active and more forceful.

For those curious, I tend to agree with Goar that a more ambitious, higher-stakes push is a necessary step in ensuring the relevance and effectiveness of the labour movement. With the basic social contract which allowed unions to focus more narrowly on securing their positions within large unionized workplaces now under vigorous attacks from the Cons, their cronies and the corporate sector, it looks to me to be a losing strategy to cling to shrinking fiefdoms rather than engaging a greater range of workers to again shape a broader social agenda. And it's by showing the benefit of collective action for its members that unions can help make the case to apply similar principles in society at large.

- Meanwhile, George Lakoff sounds a warning against using frustration with "low-information voters" as an excuse for failing to effectively frame and promote progressive values.

- Janyce McGregor discusses the conflicting pressures on the Cons in deciding whether or not to force through the Gateway pipeline. Meanwhile, Calvin Sandborn asks whether the Cons plan to learn anything from Enbridge's track records of major spills and pathetic responses, while Iain Hunter highlights the steps they've taken to avoid doing anything of the sort.

- Finally, Peter Wilby comments on how strict intellectual property laws (which of course the Cons only want to make worse) are creating perverse incentives for businesses to innovate only in the field of contrived rent-seeking schemes rather than actual product improvement:

The US drugs industry, say Light and Lexchin, spends only 1.3% of revenues (excluding taxpayer subsidies) on basic research to discover molecules that could lead to genuinely new medicines. It spends far more on maintaining profits – among the highest of any industry, after tax – and on PR, marketing and lobbying. There is an innovation crisis, but largely of the companies' own making.

For years nearly all original drugs brought to market have been based on research either at taxpayer-funded institutions, mainly universities, or in small biotechnology companies. Big companies, such as Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (recently fined $3bn by US regulators for aggressive and misleading marketing), are essentially rent-seekers. They do not create wealth and add social benefit, but enrich themselves through control of resources, as landowners have done for generations. And what has happened in "big pharma" – long marked down by the left, and some on the right, as an unacceptable face of capitalism – mirrors what has happened across the British and US economies. The innovation crisis is not confined to the drugs industry.
...
Technologists tweak vegetables and fruits to make them last longer, look better and travel more easily, without regard to flavour. Bankers develop new trading "products" that, however you cut it, are still about borrowing and lending. We have digital radio and high-definition TV, though not everybody thinks either improves on what existed before. For many companies, skilful marketing of products that aren't significantly different from what preceded them has replaced innovation. It's cheaper and less risky to convince customers that something is ground-breaking, even when it isn't, than develop something truly innovatory.

In short, rent-seeking is now far more lucrative than innovation that delivers social benefits. The big rewards go to directors and executives of large companies – and financial traders, the ultimate rent-seekers who impose an unproductive tax on invention, investment and hard work across the world.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher keep up their reporting on Robocon by noting that Elections Canada's trail seems to have gone cold with the use of an unsecured wifi connection to hide the identity of Pierre Poutine. But as Susan Delacourt points out, that fact only confirms that the Cons' election fraud seems to have been rather deliberately planned to escape detection.

- Meanwhile, Delacourt also laments the effect of "churnalism" in which the media serves largely as a conduit for government or business talking points:

Harper has not held a news conference around Parliament Hill since 2009 and has succeeded in drawing strict limits around media access to his government. “It’s not that he hates the media,” one Conservative MP said to me earlier this year. “It’s more that he has no respect for them.”

Why has this worked so well for Harper? Probably because the public buys the idea, frequently put forward by the Conservatives and their allies, that the media is little more than a delivery system for the “spin” the politicians like to spout.

Watching most of those MP panels on TV, or wading into the daily scrums in the foyer of the Commons, it’s hard to disagree with that assessment. That’s not debate we’re seeing — it’s just people reciting well-rehearsed lines, speaking past each other, and certainly not answering any questions.

In the print realm, meanwhile, politicians and their handlers are now fond of replying to media questions with sparse, fact-free emails, timed to arrive just before deadline, so there is no opportunity for follow-up or subsequent queries.

All of this has been rightly dubbed “churnalism” — the practice in which journalists simply take the PR material handed to them and churn it out to their readers or viewers.
...
Any solution, though, is going to have to address this issue of the “churn” and the spin. It won’t be easy. By any rough count, the growing number of communications professionals on Parliament Hill (about 1,500 in government alone, according to a Hill Times tally) vastly outpaces the ranks of the media (around 400 in the press gallery, and shrinking, it seems, monthly.)

The number that should focus the collective media mind, however, is that 78 per cent figure south of the border — all those people who now view political reporting in the same, dim light as they view the politicians.

And that may not be because the media is the enemy of politicians, but because it’s grown too accommodating to the spin and talking points.

- And on a related note, Peter O'Neil learns not to take the self-serving statements of dirty oil advocates at face value.

- Irene Mathyssen discusses why the Cons' push for privatized pensions doesn't figure to provide retirement security for Canadians:

The regulations surrounding the administration of PRPPs are yet to be established; but unless the cost of administration is low, and unless the pooled amount of investment is high -- which is unlikely given the non-mandatory nature of the plan -- PRPPs will not be any more relevant as a retirement savings option to Canadian workers than RRSPs. In other words, the banks will profit and workers will continue to struggle to make ends meet before and after retirement.

The voluntary nature of this savings plan is not the only drawback. PRPPs as a retirement savings vehicle function like RRSPs. They are taxed on withdrawal and affect net eligibility for Old Age Security (OAS). PRPPs and RRSPs only serve middle- to high-income earners (those averaging wages of $50,000 or more) at retirement. Workers making less actually run the risk having their income drop to below poverty levels at retirement because of the fact that their PRPP income is taxed and clawed back from OAS eligibility.

- Finally, Bob Hepburn documents the remarkable story of the McGuinty Libs releasing outdated and inaccurate data as an excuse to close Ontario Place just as it was in danger of proving a smashing success.

Musical interlude

Deadmau5 - Faxing Berlin

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- pogge offers up the definitive response to the Cons' attempt to encourage a sell-off of First Nations reserve land:

When you look past the paternalistic argument that the only way First Nations communities can possibly thrive is to be more like us, this is what's left:

...businesses that want to unlock the economic potential of reserves, from real estate development to forestry and mining, need the legal certainty that a property regime makes possible.

In this context, "unlock the economic potential" looks very much like a euphemism for "streamline the regulatory and tax regime to make it as easy as possible for us to suck all the wealth out." We've been unlocking our own economic potential since around the time Reagan was elected president south of the border. We've unlocked so much economic potential that we now live in the Age of Austerity because all the money is stashed in offshore accounts. If the First Nations have any sense, they'll tell us to get stuffed.

- Meanwhile, FSIN notes that the Cons are slashing funding for First Nations housing.

- If we haven't yet turned every public service into a Con crony's profit stream, it isn't for a lack of trying - with the administration of public benefits programs looming as the next area to be handed over to the corporate sector. But there are some pieces of the Cons' work that are too dirty for even the most anti-social corporation to take on.

- The Victoria Times Colonist and Graham Thomson are duly skeptical about Stephen Harper's claim to be the slightest bit interested in science in determining whether or not to force the Gateway pipeline on B.C. And if we needed another reminder of how distant science is from the Cons' spin on the environment, Marc Lee highlights a few of the more glaring holes in the Cons' latest report on greenhouse gas emissions:

The report creates an alternative “do nothing” scenario that leads to surging emissions of 850 Mt in 2020, then subtracts estimates of federal and provincial actions taken to date, which gets us to 720 Mt. That is a lot of spin on the numbers, perhaps hoping few people will bother to read the actual report and just report the government’s line.

But even the 720 Mt number is suspect for a variety of reasons. First, the economic downturn lowers the baseline, with 2010 emissions coming in lower than previously expected. Next, the feds have included land use changes in the calculations for the first time. The decline in forestry activity means more carbon will remain sequestered in Canada’s forests, and this will lower emissions by 26 Mt. Take these out and the 2020 target jumps back to 745 Mt, slightly more than 2005 levels. Then report also arbitrarily lowers emissions from BC’s natural gas sector, relative to National Energy Board projections. And it assumes that proposed regulations yet to be ratified contribute to decreased transportation emissions. And that Saskatchewan implements carbon capture and storage for four new coal-fired power plants.

The other matter is to what extent the feds can take credit for any reductions in various sectors of the Canadian economy. Much of the heavy lifting appears to have been done at the provincial level, including BC’s carbon tax, Quebec’s cap-and-trade regime and Ontario’s phase-out of coal-fired electricity. In transportation, new vehicle regulations are touted but these just copy the new regulations established by the United States. The report makes repeated reference to new regulations being developed for the oil and gas sector, too, but these have been promised for a long time and no draft regulations have yet seen the light of day.

- Finally, Brent Rathgeber makes the case for sitting MPs to stay out of the boundary revision process. Needless to say, his Saskatchewan caucus-mates don't seem interested in listening.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Mitchell Anderson discusses the Ten Commandments that have ensured that Norway's oil wealth is preserved for the benefit of citizens. But it's particularly worth contrasting Norway's philosophy surrounding non-renewable resources against the frenzy to extract everything today at any price (which of course currently dominates western Canadian politics):

Norway was in no rush to develop their oil resources, and determined that it would only be on their own terms with a clear benefit to Norwegians. So strong was this sentiment that an all-party parliamentary white paper itemized "10 commandments" (see sidebar) for oil development, later enshrined into the Norwegian Petroleum Act.
...
When global oil prices shot up in 1974 after the Middle East oil embargo, the Norwegian government decided that a major tax increase was needed to ensure that oil companies would not realize windfall profits at the expense of the Norwegian taxpayer.

Professor Einar Lie at the University of Oslo researched the history of this period and describes how the government used the newly formed Statoil to gather intelligence on how far they could push foreign companies.

"The Norwegian civil servants wanted to squeeze this lemon to the maximum but they did not want to foreign oil companies to leave. So they talked extensively with Statoil, which had a lot of informed contacts with the other oil companies to find out just how much they would be able to take without the foreign companies leaving Norway. They were extremely pragmatic on how to get the maximum taxation."

- Karen Foster points out the gap between the reasonable expectations of younger workers about their ability to retire after putting in several decades of hard work, and the public policy direction set by the Cons and others to ensure that retirement is delayed and rendered less secure.

- Common Dreams documents how workers in the UK have been placed on a private employment blacklist based on suspicions of citizen activism.

- And finally, neither Thomas Walkom nor Craig McInnes buys the Cons' spin that a decision on the Northern Gateway pipeline will be anything but a political calculation by an oil-soaked government.

New column day

Here, on how the mixed-riding proposal of Saskatchewan's federal electoral boundaries commission offers at least some improvement over the current all-rurban mess when it comes to recogizing communities of interest.

For further reading...
- Joe Couture covers both the initial proposal, and reactions from parties and academics.
- Kelly Block's acknowledgment that rural voters in Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar would represent her margin of victory can be found here.
- And again, anybody interested in participating in next month's public hearings should sign up here.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- John Conway discusses the Cons' project of destroying Canada's social safety net.

- But the good news is that Stephen Harper is running into a few roadblocks along the way. For example, the rule of law - as a Federal Court judge has concluded that the Cons' attempt to impose an arbitrator with connections to both their own party and Air Canada to rule on a collective agreement for Air Canada's workers.

- And Thomas Walkom writes that there are limits to what the Cons can impose on the general public in trying to push the Gateway pipeline:

Harper’s hope was that this combination of toughness, smear and crass ideology — particularly if repeated endlessly in the right-wing media — would convince a big chunk of the broad Canadian middle. The strategy does, after all, work in the U.S.
But it hasn’t here. Public opposition to the scheme is so intense in B.C. that even the avowedly pro-business, governing Liberals have joined in.

Add to this the nightmare of aboriginal politics. First Nations along the pipeline route are threatening to tie up the project for years in court — which they can do.

And the broad public? My guess is that, Joe Oliver notwithstanding, most Canadians don’t regard environmentalist David Suzuki, or even B.C. Liberal premier Christy Clark, as dangerous radicals funded by foreign gold.

What they do see is an increasingly shrill federal government whose bully-boy tactics aren’t working.

- Finally, Jordon Cooper comments on the costs of ignoring mental health as a public policy issue:

Across the country we have seen what happens when we underfund mental-health programs. It leads to an increase of people on the streets, it forces police into becoming mental-health workers, and in some situations it leads to deaths. Mental health is a complicated field but until we start to publicly address how we doing, how is it going to get better?

The bar to get help is too high, takes too long, and people end up too close to the edge. We deal a lot with the symptoms in our society - why not tackle the problem directly?

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Crashing cats.

On provisional boundaries

Volkov has already summed up the likely effect of the preliminary Saskatchewan federal riding boundaries released today.

But before we start planning the Regina Lewvan victory party, the most important part of the boundary revision process has yet to play out. So I'll encourage Saskatchewan readers to sign up for next month's public hearings and make clear that the preliminary move away from the current rurban mess makes for a step in the right direction.

On unscientific methods

Scott is absolutely right to be skeptical of the claim that the Cons will let science play any role in their attempt to force a pipeline through northern B.C. - particularly given their general distaste for the subject.

But there's a more direct response worth pointing out to Stephen Harper's ludicrous spin, as it's his government that's decided to make sure that environmental assessment of the Gateway pipeline will be a purely political decision:

The Governor in Council will make the decision on the environmental assessment (whether the project is likely to cause significant adverse effects and if so, whether such effects are justified in the circumstances).

That's right: it was just last week that Harper publicly announced his purely political decision to make sure that nobody associated with either scientific inquiry or public consultation will get any say in determining whether the pipeline will cause "significant adverse effects". And while that doesn't mean anybody can afford not to point out the environmental issues raised by the pipeline (if nothing else for ease of mitigation once the Cons have been safely toppled from office), nobody should be fooled into thinking science is to blame for Harper's poor choices.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The Star-Phoenix editorial board comments on the need to crack down on tax havens:

(T)he scale of the avoidance Mr. Henry detailed in his report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, drives home just how immoral is the practice of tax avoidance, particularly at a time when even rich countries such as Spain and the United States are staggering under their debt loads and deficits because they can't raise enough tax revenue.

As Gwynne Dyer, a Canadian journalist based in Britain, notes in a recent column published in Embassy magazine, despite efforts by some governments to recoup tax revenues lost offshore, the problem has more than doubled over the last five years just as debt crises and resulting austerity measures have thrown millions out work.

The fact there are relatively few people hiding so much in a relatively few places such as Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Cayman Islands, and Jersey should make it simple for the international community to exert pressure to collect the taxes that governments are owed.

Since the tax revenue and corrupt funds come from all countries - from small developing nations to outlaw states to the largest economies in the world - a global agreement not only should be possible but imperative.

- But lest anybody think it'll be easy to get the 1% to live up to social obligations, the same Canadian corporate sector that's hoarding giant piles of unused cash is demanding approval not to use its reserves to properly fund employee pensions.

- Even as they claim to have no resources to provide for basic social needs, the Cons have set up a secret torture committee and plan to burn $1 billion on drone warfare. Which means it's no wonder they're so determined to silence anybody who might point out a principled need for action.

- Speaking of which, Don Lenihan and Graham Fox discuss how the Cons have inverted Canadian federalism by refusing to take any responsibility for the public policy areas Canadians care about most:

(T)he federal government seems to have opted for a more transactional approach to governance, concentrating on issues like border security, crime and natural resources. The Harper government seems uncomfortable with complex processes and relationships, so its guiding principle is to keep things as simple as possible.

By contrast, the Council of the Federation (COF) is emerging as a new kind of collaborative forum. The provinces are using it to build and test the strategies and coalitions they think governments need to solve complex issues...

...The provinces, recall, have responsibility for many of the issues that register the least confidence (and highest complexity), such as health, education and other social services.
As a result, the pressure on them to experiment and collaborate is growing exponentially.

This, in turn, is pushing them toward more pan-Canadian approaches, while the federal government, which views its responsibilities as more transactional, is returning to watertight compartments and bilateral relationships.
...
(I)f the provincial effort is even modestly successful, we don’t think the federal government can avoid engaging for long. We believe it has a natural leadership role in this new, pan-Canadian environment. Its networks, infrastructure, resources, and legislative authority would make an essential contribution to solving issues around energy, healthcare and innovation. Eventually, the federal government will have to come back to the table — whether it be this government or some future one.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Moira Herbst is the latest to comment on the connection between the lack of good jobs and an excess of corporate cash hoarding:

(I)t would be refreshing if the pundit-political class considered a radical but obvious idea: tapping the multitrillion-dollar stockpiles of corporate cash currently sitting on the sidelines and benefiting no one. Compulsive hoarding is unhealthy for individuals. It's even worse for whole economies.

The sorry facts are these: job growth is still half of what is needed to keep up with population growth. Meanwhile, more than 14% of the US workforce is unemployed, underemployed or discouraged from looking for work. The numbers for July aren't expected to budge much. Absent a massive inflow of tax dollars, jobs aren't going to come from the public sector. State and local governments are broke, and the fight over federal deficits has turned into an all-out war in Congress.
...
It turns out that US-based mega-corporations are hoarding cash. How much cash? Record sums. It's about $1.73tn in US assets, according to the Federal Reserve – 50% more than they held in 2007. When you count worldwide holdings of US companies, the figure is a staggering $5.1tn, estimates Reuters' David Cay Johnston. Apple alone has $117bn.

Banks are also stockpiling cash; they're sitting on more than $1.5tn in excess reserves in the US.

Not only are mega-companies not creating enough decent jobs with this cash, they continue to offshore work and underpay workers. Many are not even rewarding investors or accelerating their growth with the money, thereby causing harm to themselves, according to a recent survey by Ernst & Young. Economists also say that cash hoarding is blocking a recovery in Europe.

- But sadly, Tom Tomorrow makes it clear that nothing can be done:


- It's actually somewhat of a pleasant surprise that at least as of last year, the Cons hadn't yet excised all references to renewable energy from internal briefing notes. But it's all the more shameful that they continue to push a short-term reliance on high-speed, low-safety oil extraction when they can't plead ignorance as an excuse for their neglect.

- And lest there be any doubt, Alberta's drinking water sources and B.C.'s coast aren't the only sensitive areas due for a coating of petrochemical sludge if the Cons get their way.

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for a sunny Sunday.

 - Mitchell Anderson's second article on Norway's success in converting oil resources into a massive source of public wealth focuses on the country's history of resistance to outside ownership. But I wouldn't see much reason why Canada couldn't turn its own sense of hard-earned independence from the world's dominant powers (which has always defined our relationships to the U.K. and U.S.) toward our corporate overlords.

- And in a guest post at Progressive Economic Forum, Tony Clark highlights why there's reason to be skeptical of the demands of our oil barons - as a "labour shortage" being used as an excuse for importing disposable foreign labour in fact reflects nothing more than a refusal to share the benefits of a profitable industry with Canadian workers.

- Bruce Johnstone rightly criticizes Stephen Harper's pardons to Customs Act violators for valuing nebulous economic rights far more than the real rights and freedoms his government has attacked while in power.

- Finally, I'm not sure how much circulation Yvonne Marton's profile of Thomas Mulcair's car ownership will receive. But it looks like a neat example of Mulcair fitting into the NDP's set of priorities - focusing on function and value in comparison to the Cons' preference for shiny trinkets.

On connections

Tuesday, July 31 was the deadline for submissions to the Wall government's consultation process on employment and labour law. Like hundreds of other interested individuals and groups, I took the time to put together a submission - based on the underlying view that however biased the process was from the beginning, and however unlikely a bought-and-paid-for government was to listen to anybody who offered ideas to provide a more secure future for Saskatchewan workers rather than seeking to grind them to dust, there's always some value to be found in fostering discussion between citizens and legislators as to how we should be governed.

And many others with positions starkly opposed to the Saskatchewan Party did the same - criticizing Wall for failing to provide a more thorough consultation process, but consistently expressing the view that a responsible government should seek to connect more with its citizens.

Tuesday, July 31 also marked the unveiling of an NDP effort to build on the limited consultation permitted by Wall. So how did Wall's base react to an open channel of communication?

"One of our main activities ... is identifying polls and Twitter feeds that need to go horribly wrong," [Kate McMillan] said in an interview this week. "It's all in good fun, but there's also a political statement being made."

One post the NDP flagged as offensive - "Tommy Douglas, not dead enough" - is a line that has been used for years on her blog, McMillan noted.

"This is all fair in love and war on the Internet ... Anything that's open to the Internet inviting opinions is subject for high traffic, from the left and the right," she added.

"Politicians and parties should stay very clear of social media," she opined. "The only people on Twitter for politics are people who want to hurt you."

Which offers about as clear a contrast as one could imagine. The NDP and its allies responded to a limited consultation exercise with two main messages: a principled argument as to the policy choices involved, and a concern that the government should do more to hear from affected parties.

In contrast, the Saskatchewan Party's authoritarian base considers it an important activity to ensure that any effort to build communication between policy-makers and citizens goes "horribly wrong". Which presumably helps to ensure that policy is designed by and for the few who already enjoy privileged access to a thoroughly-insulated premier, while limiting our political options to shallow personality choices developed within easily-captured top-down party structures.

Unfortunately, the right in Saskatchewan thinks it can get away with more and more extreme attacks on democratic participation based on the province's 2011 election result. And the NDP - having governed largely as a "we're not them" choice for four terms while having few spare resources to dedicate to citizen engagement - still has a long way to go in rebuilding its historic capacity to bring together Saskatchewan voters.

Indeed, relatively modest steps with the Were You Asked? site (such as a simple filter before content submitted to the site was published) would have avoided the easy manipulation by vandals and saboteurs that proved embarrassing last week. And presumably that's a lesson the NDP will need to keep in mind as it decides how to reach out to citizens.

But the more important point is that vandalism and sabotage are indeed part of the value structure of a government and its base looking to keep Saskatchewan's citizens as silent and inactive as possible. And that radical difference in how we value public participation should be one of the NDP's overarching messages as we work on developing more effective forms of engagement.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Jonathan Chait points out how the gap between the citizens hardest hit by a weak economy and a political class which faces virtually none of its effects explains the lack of urgency in dealing with mass unemployment:

The political scientist Larry Bartels has found (and measured) that members of Congress respond much more strongly to the preferences of their affluent constituents than their poor ones. And for affluent people, there is essentially no recession. Unemployment for workers with a bachelors degree is 4 percent — boom times. Unemployment is also unusually low in the Washington, D.C., area, owing to our economy’s reliance on federal spending, which has not had to impose the punishing austerity of so many state and local governments.

I live in a Washington neighborhood almost entirely filled with college-educated professionals, and it occurred to me not long ago that, when my children grow up, they’ll have no personal memory of having lived through the greatest economic crisis in eighty years. It is more akin to a famine in Africa. For millions and millions of Americans, the economic crisis is the worst event of their lives. They have lost jobs, homes, health insurance, opportunities for their children, seen their skills deteriorate, and lost their sense of self-worth. But from the perspective of those in a position to alleviate their suffering, the crisis is merely a sad and distant tragedy. 

- David Atkins follows up on digby's analysis as to how a push for additional handouts to the rich is aimed at insulated today's upper class from the vagaries of luck which helped it to win a privileged position in the first place. But as thwap points out, there are some wealthier citizens who are looking to improve matters for all rather than closing off the path behind them - and we should be happy to encourage that sentiment.

- Meanwhile, Sid Ryan discusses one of the obvious elements of that effort: a focus on "flexible" labour which ensures that ensures most workers have neither reasonable wages nor any job security. (And lest there be any doubt, there's plenty of desire for the latter.) But sadly, far too many anti-worker governments - including Dalton McGuinty's Libs - seem to prefer picking fights with workers to keep them as insecure as possible.

- Finally, Ken MacQueen neatly sums up the Cons' Olympic spirit.

Musical interlude

Way Out West - The Gift (2010 Remix)

Friday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to end your week.

- Tim Harper suggests that the Cons are running out of options to try to push the Gateway pipeline on a thoroughly-opposed public in British Columbia. But in keeping with the Cons' general view of the world as nothing but a public relations problem to be shouted down for financial gain, James Moore and Gwyn Morgan are sure they have the answer: more high-priced spin from Enbridge and other tar-sands operators. And pogge rightly notes that part of the anti-environment strategy figures to include an effort to paint all environmental activism and advocacy as "terrorism".

- Carol Goar comments on the continuing efforts of Canadian doctors to save health care for refugees from the Cons' cuts:

Rashid, a family physician, is one of the founders of Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care, which has vowed to track and report cases of death or serious harm resulting from Kenney’s $20-million-a-year cutback.

It took effect a month ago. But reports already are coming in: a 7-year-old epileptic boy in Hamilton was hospitalized for a severe seizure because he could not get medicine; a woman who had endured multiple rapes after she was sold into the sex trade couldn’t get an ultrasound for the fetus she was carrying; a Colombian man is desperately fundraising to pay Toronto General Hospital for life-saving abdominal surgery; two refugee claimants in Ottawa — one Peruvian, the other El Salvadoran — have stopped taking their post-traumatic stress medications.

By fall, the doctors hope to have a compendium of cases from across the country. A local delegation of medical workers will show up every time a cabinet minister makes an announcement, the government calls a news conference or Parliament holds public hearings to highlight specific cases. “None of us wants to disrupt meetings, but we really feel we have no choice,” said Tim O’Shea of McMaster University, who works as a medical consultant at the Shelter Health Network in Hamilton.

Since April, the doctors have been asking Kenney for a meeting on this issue. So far he has refused.

- Meanwhile, the Star rightly points out that the Cons' thoroughly-discredited finger-pointing over Attawapiskat did nothing to help the underlying housing crisis.

- Finally, the Star-Phoenix weighs in on the need for some answers about Robocon:

It is rare for Elections Canada officials to speak out about investigations before they are concluded, and the agency receives dozens of complaints after every election. Often it takes years to clear these files.

But the allegations that voters in some ridings received socalled robocalls misdirecting them to wrong voter stations, or calls from people alleging to be from particular parties who acted in an obnoxious or insulting manner in an apparent attempt to discourage their votes, is a little more serious than candidates complaining their signs have been defaced.

If these allegations are true, it strikes to the heart of Canada's electoral system. For a democratic system to function properly the electoral process must be considered trustworthy. And for a democratic government to rule with authority, the public must have confidence it legitimately came to power.

Juxtaposition

Jim Flaherty...

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Monday new rule changes to define "suitable employment'' and "reasonable'' efforts at finding work have yet to come down, but as far as he's concerned people should be prepared to take pretty well any available job.

"There is no bad job, the only bad job is not having a job,'' he told reporters.

...meet reality:

By 2011, results from a longitudinal study of over 7000 people were being reported, enabling assessment of the effects of moving in and out of jobs of high or low quality. Poor jobs were defined by a suite of characteristics including high demands, low control, unfair pay, and insecurity. The results showed that when people moved from unemployment to a good job there were beneficial effects on their health, but that moving from unemployment to poor jobs was actually detrimental on some health measures. “We find that jobs with poor psychosocial attributes are no better,” wrote the team, “and may have even more adverse effects on mental health, than unemployment.”

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Mitchell Anderson reports on how Norway has assured itself of long-term fiscal security by saving a fair share of its oil resources:

Norway produces 40 per cent less petroleum than Canada and has one-seventh our population, but has saved more than $600 billion in oil revenue and counting. This is equivalent to about 140 per cent of Norwegian GDP, or about $120,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. In contrast, every Canadian is in the red about $16,000 due to our $566-billion national debt.
 
While Canada is eliminating 19,000 public sector jobs in an effort to balance the budget, Norway is debt-free, enjoys full employment and has fourth highest per capita GDP in the world. Canada is twelfth.

Beyond economics, Norway is an obviously fortunate place to live. It is routinely ranked number one in the world on the Human Development Index, is the world's best-governed nation according to the Democracy Index, and is the best country in the world to be a mother.

And in spite of being the world's third largest exporter of crude oil, Norway is ranked number three in the world on the Environmental Performance Index. Canada is thirty-seventh (behind Nicaragua, Albania and Columbia).
...
How is all this paid for? Since the 1970s, Norway as a matter of policy has collected between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of the resource wealth generated from their oil industry through corporate taxes twice as high as Canada, and a special tax on oil profits. In Alberta, royalties collected on all oil sands production in 2010 were 10 per cent of industry revenues.

Norway also required that foreign companies train Norwegian workers, transfer proprietary technologies to their state-owned oil company Statoil, and in some cases even hand over producing oil platforms free of charge after a predetermined period.

This insistence on national participation has paid off. Companies controlled by the Norwegian taxpayer now directly own about 30 per cent of the nation's oil production, providing another significant source of income as well as technical input on how their resource is developed.

 - Michael Harris questions the RCMP's move into environmental politics:

What a remarkable coincidence. The Mounties are worried about those very same radical environmentalists that Natural Resources minister Joe Oliver says want to use foreign money to hijack hearings on the Northern Gateway Pipeline. The same ones that the man who is cornering the market on Fossil Awards, Environment Minister Peter Kent, said might be “laundering offshore foreign funds.” No really, David Suzuki is Meyer Lansky with an electron microscope.

And here I thought the RCMP was about enforcing the criminal code in federal matters, not the government’s energy policies. I wonder if this transforms Christy Clark from a poker-playing politician into a radical environmentalist? I wonder if farmers who opposed ditching the Canadian Wheat Board will show up in some future de-classified RCMP threat assessment for opposing government policy? (Never forget, they have combines.) Or maybe there will even be a thick file on poor scribes critical of corporate wars, sleazy politics, suppressing public information, ministerial mendacity and forbidding Canadian public servants and scientists from speaking?

- Meanwhile, the Cons have made clear that they feel entitled to proclaim their supporters free of any law they don't like. And apparently the rules surrounding honesty and transparency in government advertising are on that list.

- Finally, CTV reports on the latest steps in the New Union Project which could see a merger between the CAW and CEP.

New column day

Here, on how the Gateway pipeline serves as a prime example as to why governments shouldn't be too quick to minimize environmental assessment processes.

For further reading...
- Robyn Allan's latest discussion of the Gateway pipeline is here.
- Kevin Logan documents Christy Clark's position prior to her latest desperate call for attention.
- And David Anderson delivers his view of Enbridge and the Gateway pipeline.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- The presidents of Canada's provincial Federations of Labour highlight how the provinces need to respond to the Harper Cons' efforts to push down wages and trample on workers' rightst:

Canadians need our country’s premiers to denounce this low-wage agenda and stand up for what is in the best interest of working people.

When the premiers meet this fall to discuss the economy, we believe the labour market ought to be front and centre in that discussion. They must denounce the exploitive expansion of the (temporary foreign worker program). They must collectively demand that Ottawa invest more in training to bridge the skills gap, so that unemployed Canadians can fill available jobs.

Premiers should also call for improvements to Canada’s EI program, as fewer than 40 per cent of unemployed Canadians are currently eligible for benefits. We need our premiers to challenge the notion that Canada must increase its retirement age to 67. What’s really needed is pension reform that will allow all Canadians to retire in dignity, such as improving and enhancing CPP. And finally, the premiers should recognize and defend the important role unions play in our society and our economy.

- Meanwhile, following up on yesterday's post, SGEU, CUPE, SUN, the Saskatchewan Building Trades and Rosalee Longmoore all provide their take on the employment and labour law review. And the Saskatchewan NDP plans to carry out real consultations where the Sask Party has fallen short.

- Pat Atkinson notes that Stephen Harper's absentee federalism is producing unintended consequences when it comes to the Gateway pipeline:

A common-sense approach would have had our PM meet with the 13 premiers to hammer out a Canadian energy strategy. And while Harper was at it, he also could have discussed the preservation and reform of medicare and equalization. Instead the premiers were left to grapple with these issues without federal input.

The "my way or the highway" attitude exhibited by Harper on these files, especially health care, underlines the weakness of his government's approach to federalism - attempting to govern Canada by strict adherence to the division of federal and provincial powers. This hasn't worked in the past. It promotes unilateralism, as witnessed by Clark's actions, and it ignores the reality of governing a modern day nation that's dealing with complex and important issues.

B.C.'s move should spur Harper to begin the dialogue of strengthening the unity of this nation through co-operative federalism - an old fashioned but still relevant idea.

The premiers, in the most diplomatic of terms, have invited the prime minister to their next meeting in November. Their message is clear: There are important public issues that will take both the federal and provincial governments to resolve.

- Finally, Heather Mallick reminds us that we should celebrate our legacy of universal health care.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Decked-out cats.

Tuesday Evening Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- George Monbiot discusses the effect of inegalitarian and austerian policies imposed by the UK Conservatives:

(T)he neoliberal programme has closed down political choice. If the market, as the doctrine insists, is the only valid determinant of how societies evolve, and the market is dominated by giant corporations, then what big business wants is what society gets. You can see this squalid reality at work in Cameron's speech last week. "We have listened to what business wants and we are delivering on it. Business said, 'We want competitive tax rates,' so we are creating the most competitive corporate tax regime in the G20 and the lowest rates of corporation tax in the G7 …". What about the rest of us? Don't we get a say?

The neoliberal hypothesis has been disproved spectacularly. Far from regulating themselves, untrammelled markets were saved from collapse only by government intervention and massive injections of public money. Far from delivering universal prosperity, government cuts have pushed us further into crisis. Yet this very crisis is now being used as an excuse to apply the doctrine more fiercely than before.

So where is the economic elite? Counting the money it has stashed in unregulated tax havens. Thirty years of neoliberalism have allowed the super-rich to detach themselves from the lives of others to such an extent that economic crises scarcely touch them. You could see this as yet another market failure. Even if they are affected, the rich are doubtless prepared to pay an economic price for the political benefits – freedom from democratic restraint – that the doctrine offers.

- Meanwhile, Andrew Jackson points out the Canadian Tax Journal's feature on tax-free savings accounts as a gratuitous giveaway to the wealthy.

- Alice takes a look at the fund-raising trends for Canada's political parties, with perhaps the most interesting development coming in some of the names showing up on the NDP's donor list:

(A) quick scan of the party donor lists hints at another part of the explanation. With names like Louise Arbour (if it's the same person, once touted as a potential Liberal leader), and that of a former national campaign director for the Green Party showing up on the NDP's return, it suggests the strategic voting / contributing card is being played by the NDP for a change.

- Linda McQuaig laments the fact that climate change is apparently being treated as something less than newsworthy even in the midst of a summer loaded with extreme weather.

- Finally, Jason Kenney and his staff are coming up with news ways to try to silence anybody who actually cares about the well-being of refugees in Canada. But thankfully the Law Society of Upper Canada wasn't willing to play along with a frivolous complaint which could have served as a precedent to silence professionals across the country.