Monday Morning Labour Day Links

Assorted content for your Labour Day reading.

- The Star comments on the place of the union movement in the face of a determined push to silence workers:

Given the challenges ahead, and all the ground that’s been lost so far, it remains to be seen if the new union will succeed in building “a powerful social movement fighting for all working people.” But the takeaway is that on this Labour Day, unions still have the vision to imagine a better life for working people, and the will to try to bring it about. The long march continues.

 - Meanwhile, Craig McInnes recognizes how bleak a future where the corporate right manages to trash the labour movement would look:

Whether the decline in union membership is seen as a benefit or simply inevitable, what's often lost in the economic debate is the value of unions to the communities in which they operate.

There are the historical benefits that we take largely for granted that were achieved for everyone through long and difficult struggles - the weekend, for example.

But there is also the ongoing benefit of higher wages. Using data from the 2011 Census, the Canadian Labour Congress calculates unionized workers in Vancouver make an average hourly wage that is, at $27.09, almost $5 an hour higher than non-unionized workers. That benefit - seen as a negative by the Fraser Institute and other commentators who view life only through the business pages - makes life easier for unionized workers and their families.

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If the demise of unions means ordinary working people can't aspire to be consumers, to achieve a reasonable standard of living, it's hard to imagine the communities we have built on that expectation can continue to thrive.

- And Judy Halven observes that what we need is to focus on creating good jobs for Canadian workers, rather than unstable, low-paying jobs for the benefit of multinational employers:

Thinking about Labour Day 2012, we need to turn our attention to limiting “bad” jobs and increasing “good” jobs. “Good” jobs have good pay, full-time hours, benefits, pensions and more. We can remind ourselves about the $260-million forgivable loan the Nova Scotia government gave to Irving Shipbuilding for the federal shipbuilding contract. While some “good” jobs will no doubt be created, they will go to semi-skilled and skilled tradespeople — mainly men. Though some women will get jobs on site, the majority of new jobs for women will be created in the restaurant, bar and service sector. These jobs usually pay minimum wage, plus tips, and could be considered “bad” jobs.

Wealthy people seem to know all about “good” jobs, as they tend to have them. The average income for the richest one per cent of Canadians was $405,000 in 2007. Between 1997 and 2007, the richest one per cent (246,000 people) took almost one-third (32 per cent) of all growth in incomes. In addition, the tax system is making them richer. In 1948, the top marginal tax rate on incomes over $250,000 was 80 per cent. In 2009, that rate was cut almost in half to 42.9 per cent for incomes above $126,264.

This Labour Day, we need to work to eliminate the obstacles for the 99 per cent who want to make a decent living in this province, obstacles such as low wages, part-time work and large handouts to corporations. The Occupy movement’s message — “We are the 99 per cent” — is as true for us today as it was a year ago.

- But on the bright side, Dean Baker notes that Canada can still serve as a positive example of the value of organized labour - at least, compared to our neighbour to the south:

When the Employee Free Choice Act was debated in 2008, the anti-union groups argued that majority sign-up (which was a major provision) would lead to workers being stuck with unions they didn't want. Their story was union thugs would intimidate workers into signing union cards against their will. 

The differing experience in Canadian provinces over time gives us a simple way to test this claim. If workers were intimidated into signing cards, then we would expect to see a higher rate of de-certifications in provinces after they have put in place laws allowing for majority sign-up. 

In fact, there is no evidence at all that there was a rise in de-certifications after majority sign-up was adopted. In several provinces the de-certification rate fell after majority sign-up was allowed. This would seem like pretty solid evidence against the "union thug" story. 

All of this matters because if we chose, we could make US labour law closer to Canada's. That might over time bring us somewhat close to Canadian unionisation rates. 

People who care about inequality should have this at the top of their agenda. In our bag of tricks to reverse the upward redistribution of the last three decades, higher unionisation rates should rank near the top.

Monday Morning 'Rider Blogging

Yes, that will do quite nicely.

Which isn't to say the Saskatchewan Roughriders can rest on their laurels. Yesterday's 52-0 win wasn't based so much on a dominant offensive performance as on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers finding all kinds of creative ways to give away points. All the 'Riders then had to be was opportunistic enough to take advantage and smart enough to avoid returning the favour - and the team had no trouble reaching those standards.

But it's a huge plus to see the 'Riders keep their edge throughout a victory, rather than letting an opponent get back into the game. And the final score showed that if every 'Rider unit simply does its job, the result can be a rout on the scoreboard.

Moreover, the 'Riders also got to see plenty of new talent emerge. Drew Willy was as effective running the team's full offence in the second half as he's been on short yardage throughout the season, making it clear that the 'Riders can get by even without their starting quarterback. Jock Sanders had an effective game as a utility player, making it all the more bizarre that he was omitted from the previous game's roster. Joe Lobendahn took no time at all to start disrupting the Bombers' offence in his first 'Rider start. And perhaps most significantly, Brooks Foster made two superb catches to offer another much-needed target for Saskatchewan's quarterbacks.

Of course, the 'Riders can't count on seeing too many opponents in as much disarray as the Bombers yesterday - and indeed should expect a much tougher test next week as the Bombers look to avenge the loss. But it's still a huge plus to be able to combine a big win with plenty of room for improvement. And hopefully a long-awaited return to the victory column will prove the start of yet another streak for a team that's been up and down throughout the 2012 season.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Plenty of commentators are using the Labour Day weekend to discuss the place of workers in Canadian society. Sid Ryan notes that depressed wages are bad news for Canada's economy generally. And Morna Ballantyne and Steven Staples point out the need for unions to reach out beyond their membership - particularly to highlight how collective bargaining helps workers throughout the workforce.

- Meanwhile, Lorne Gunter longs for a future in which there's no such thing as a good job.

- Tonda MacCharles offers an Ontario perspective on the Cons' gutting of environmental assessments. But it's worth wondering whether the Cons' decision to decree that regulators have no business actually evaluating environmental impacts from a policy perspective will allow outside parties to play a greater role in shaping public opinion - such as, say, the experts who have concluded that tanker traffic off the B.C. coast poses unacceptable environmental risks. (Handy hint: I wouldn't want to be the one trying to justify allowing tankers to operate based on the claim that there's only a 73% chance of a major spill.)

- Finally, David Roberts raises some issues for journalists trying to cover parties who are outright hostile toward the idea that truth matters (among other norms which are normally required for a democracy to function):

The right term is “post-truth politics.” What Kevin is struggling to describe is that Romney’s campaign is not contesting the truth value of its assertions so much as contesting whether truth value itself is relevant.

One effect of the radicalization of the right over the last few decades has been the discovery of just how much our politics is held together by norms rather than rules. There’s no rule you can’t filibuster every bill in the Senate by default; there’s no rule you can’t interrupt a president’s State of the Union; there’s no rule you can’t hold the routine debt-ceiling vote hostage. It simply wasn’t done. But if you shrug off the norm and do it anyway, there’s nothing to stop you.

Similarly, it seems that the lip service given to truth in politics is but a norm itself, one with increasingly tenuous hold. Political campaigns have always lied and stretched the truth, but when caught in a lie, would typically defend themselves (claim it was actually true), retract, or at the very least stop repeating the lie. Either way, the presumption was that truth-telling had some moral force; one ought to tell the truth, even if that commandment was often honored in the breach.

What’s creepy about the Romney crew is that they don’t do any of those things. They don’t deny, they don’t stop, they just don’t care at all. What they’ve realized is that, given today’s hyper-polarization and fragmented media, there’s no practical risk to lying. It doesn’t hurt them, in terms of getting votes, so why shouldn’t they do it?

And lest there be any doubt, the combination of systematic fabrication and dishonesty and planned interference with democratic processes is just as much the modus operandi of the Harper Cons as the Romney Republicans.

Saturday Afternoon 'Rider Blogging

Yes, last week's loss to Calgary was downright ugly to watch at times. But it may also signal some positive changes for the Saskatchewan Roughriders - and we should find out soon whether the 'Riders can find their way into the playoffs with the players and plans they have now, or whether it's time to leave aside a 3-0 start and focus on multi-year player development.

On the downside last week, the 'Riders defence was helpless when it counted most: on the first two possessions of the game when the Stamps took a lead they'd never relinquish, at the end of the game when Saskatchewan needed a stop to have a chance to pull even, and all too frequently when Jon Cornish touched the ball throughout the game. But it surely can't escape notice that  the Stamps' usually-fearsome offence didn't accomplish much on the scoreboard - and there's at least a plausible reason to think the 'Riders' run defence can improve in a hurry.

Meanwhile, the 'Riders' offence suffered more from a failure to group positive plays together than an inability to design and execute them. A much more consistent two-pronged rushing attack proved highly effective throughout the game (with each of Kory Sheets and Darian Durant piling up 70+ yards), while the 'Riders' passing attack was at least respectable despite the higher degree of difficulty resulting from windy conditions.

Which is to say that there's reason for hope that the 'Riders can build off what worked last week - particularly with two games coming up against a team in even greater disarray. And that's why a couple of roster moves which would normally look problematic may prove very well-timed.

In general (and in contrast to Brendan Taman's usual proclivities), I prefer to see the 'Riders focus on developing new talent rather than picking up CFL retreads whose previous teams have already found them wanting. And that goes doubly at positions like linebacker where new players seem to be relatively easily incorporated into existing schemes: some of the best CFL personnel moves involve shifting defensive backs to linebacker spots, and the 'Riders aren't lacking for candidates for such a transition.

But with the 'Riders' defence struggling against the run, Joe Lobendahn and Diamond Ferri may make for extremely valuable additions. And now isn't the time to take the risk involved in letting somebody new to the position or the league carry the load in a couple of games which could either put Saskatchewan solidly on the path to the playoffs or leave the 'Riders at the bottom of the CFL's standings.

Of course, the flip side is that if the 'Riders' losing streak continues past the upcoming matchups with Winnipeg, then it will be time to start dropping veteran imports and using the rest of the season to audition NFL castoffs and see if some of the team's current players can be put to better use. But for now, the 'Riders have an obvious opportunity to get their season back on track - and hopefully a combination of development game plans and new faces will help in the effort.

Saturday Morning Links

This and that to start your long weekend.

- Antonia Zerbisias and Thomas Walkom both discuss the connection between organized labour and the very existence of a substantial middle class. And Janice Kennedy worries about the all-too-prevalent trend toward worker-bashing.

- But Andrew Jackson nicely points out why attempts to undermine unions have nothing at all to do with general economic development, and everything to do with distancing a small elite from the rest of the population:

Further to my earlier post on the “own goal” scored by the Fraser Institute report on North American labour markets, the Table below shows the rankings of the Canadian provinces – out of 60 states and provinces – for (1) labour market performance, 2007-11 and (2) the unionization rate. (I have reversed the Fraser ranking for the latter indicator so that a rank of 1 rather than 60 is given to the jurisdiction with the highest unionization rate.)

The provinces all score relatively well in terms of labour market performance, with 4 in the top 10, and only Nova Scotia not in the top 20. (This indicator is based on job creation, unemployment and productivity growth.)

Provinces make up 9 of the top 10 jurisdictions by unionization. (New York and Alaska have higher unionization rates than Alberta which ranks 12 in North America.)

Obviously a lot of factors are at play in terms of job creation- but, if the data show anything, it is that high unionization is associated with better rather than worse labour market performance.

- Of course, that type of readily-available example might have something to do with the right's desire to ensure we don't have access to facts about where we stand as a society. And Statistics Canada is rightly challenging the most egregious Canadian example by pushing the Cons to reverse at least part of their choice to undermine Canada's census.

- Pat Atkinson notes that Saskatchewan's children stand to lose out from the loss of full-day kindergarten and other forms of early childhood development in the province.

- Finally, George Monbiot highlights the increasingly alarming connection between climate change which far exceeds even the estimates which should have driven us to global action decades ago, and policy-makers either denying or neglecting the problem.

Musical interlude

Matthew Good - Weapon

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Linda McQuaig highlights how attacks on workers are used to distract attention from the systematic transfer of wealth to those who need it least:

As long as the right can keep workers envious and suspicious of each other, the focus won't be on those at the top, where the benefits have actually gone. As Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney noted last week, corporations are sitting on $500 billion in cash, reflecting the growing share of business revenue in recent years that has gone to profits, not wages.

(Labour's share of Canada's national income has fallen from 65 to 60 per cent since 1990, partly because of policies like privatization and deregulation, the OECD's Employment Outlook reported last month.)
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(W)hile public sector workers are bullied these days, business leaders are treated as semi-gods.

Since the Conservatives took power, business leaders have enjoyed a two-day private retreat with the finance minister each summer, just in case they hadn't already managed to communicate their views to him at other private functions, not to mention through the pages of the newspapers they own.

The business leaders used their retreat last summer to urge Jim Flaherty to adopt measures to reduce workers' pay and to implement U.S.-style right-to-work laws aimed at limiting union power, according to government documents reported in the Globe and Mail earlier this month.

So while the economy remains stalled with business leaders declining to invest their surplus $500 billion, we're encouraged to vent our anger by firing city garbage workers and making sure we catch every one of those napping TTC collectors.

- And Mike Lofgren comments on how the new plutocracy is using the distraction to try to insulate itself entirely from society at large:

Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety is of no concern; if one owns a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause less apprehension—and viable public transportation doesn’t even show up on the radar screen. With private doctors on call and a chartered plane to get to the Mayo Clinic, why worry about Medicare?

Being in the country but not of it is what gives the contemporary American super-rich their quality of being abstracted and clueless. Perhaps that explains why Mitt Romney’s regular-guy anecdotes always seem a bit strained. I discussed this with a radio host who recounted a story about Robert Rubin, former secretary of the Treasury as well as an executive at Goldman Sachs and CitiGroup. Rubin was being chauffeured through Manhattan to reach some event whose attendees consisted of the Great and the Good such as himself. Along the way he encountered a traffic jam, and on arriving to his event—late—he complained to a city functionary with the power to look into it. “Where was the jam?” asked the functionary. Rubin, who had lived most of his life in Manhattan, a place of east-west numbered streets and north-south avenues, couldn’t tell him. The super-rich who determine our political arrangements apparently inhabit another, more refined dimension.

To some degree the rich have always secluded themselves from the gaze of the common herd; their habit for centuries has been to send their offspring to private schools. But now this habit is exacerbated by the plutocracy’s palpable animosity towards public education and public educators, as Michael Bloomberg has demonstrated. To the extent public education “reform” is popular among billionaires and their tax-exempt foundations, one suspects it is as a lever to divert the more than $500 billion dollars in annual federal, state, and local education funding into private hands—meaning themselves and their friends. What Halliburton did for U.S. Army logistics, school privatizers will do for public education. A century ago, at least we got some attractive public libraries out of Andrew Carnegie. Noblesse oblige like Carnegie’s is presently lacking among our seceding plutocracy. 

- Meanwhile, Purple Library Guy aptly points out that an increasingly complex economy provides nothing but opportunities for the unscrupulous to ensure that what we don't know benefits them at our expense:

My suspicion is that every increase in social complexity provides greater opportunity for corruption--for elements of that society to extract wealth without making a contribution, and without it being generally recognized. For parasitism, if you will. Furthermore, in any hierarchical society, whatever the general impacts of complexity, a point will be reached at which increased complexity loses more than it gains in terms of general prosperity or productivity. Past this point each addition of complexity allows more siphoning of wealth by parasites than it allows of wealth creation. In fact, I would suggest that as complexity increases the chance becomes larger and larger that any given new complexity increase will be introduced precisely for the purpose of more effective parasitism rather than for any improvement in wealth creation. Not that this will be admitted.
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The world crisis we hit in 2007-ish and which in my opinion is only in temporary delay at the moment ultimately is a systemic one which goes beyond specifics of globalized production, offshored jobs, or even financialization of the economy. Ultimately, what we have is a hierarchical system which has been allowed to grow in complexity until parasitism is so easy to do (far easier than wealth creation) and so difficult to interfere with, that the system has begun to collapse. Measures to fix it, at least those introduced from above, will generally be some sort of increase in complexity; under the circumstances, the chances that despite all rhetoric the real results and even aims of such measures will be to increase the scope of parasitism still further are extremely high. So we're hooped, and any "solutions" they introduce will almost certainly just make things worse. In this sense I think the internationalist slogan that we're not against globalization we just want a different kind is probably misguided, or at least drastically overstated. I really am against globalization, and instead of trying to create one big worldwide struggle to try to compete with the globalizers' worldwide movement of money and production, I'd rather just stop them from moving the production in the first place and for that matter, keep the money and ownership out of their paws in the first place. No worker-owned factory is going to decide to put themselves out of a job by moving production to Indonesia.

- Finally, both Gareth Perry and Paul Dechene make the case for Saskatchewan citizens to speak up about the glaring need for federal boundary revisions.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- While Thomas Walkom's latest has faced some justified criticism from a couple of angles, this part at least looks to be right on the money:

The assumption here was that if businesses were allowed to keep more of their profits they would invest them productively.

But in the real world, corporations don’t invest when the economic outlook looks gloomy. Why hire workers if you’re not sure you can sell what they produce?

Instead, corporations took the extra profits provided by government and sat on them — either in the form of cash or short-term cash equivalents.
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Hence the hectoring. Flaherty and Carney are trying to convince corporations to act against the short-term interest of their stockholders by investing without the prospect of return. Good luck with that.

In truth, Flaherty’s faith in the private sector is badly misplaced. In some situations, only government can stimulate the economy. At some times, the market doesn’t work.

This remains one of those times.

 - Meanwhile, Larry Hubich and Erin Weir argue that Saskatchewan should shift from the shameful position of having the lowest minimum wage in Canada, to setting the pace in ensuring that workers have a reasonable standard of living:

Claims that minimum wages reduce employment have no empirical support. Economics professors from the universities of Massachusetts (Amherst), North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and California (Berkeley) recently compared adjacent U.S. counties in states with different minimum wages. They found "strong earnings effects and no employment effects of minimum wage increases." In other words, boosting the minimum wage succeeded in raising pay without reducing employment, even when neighbouring jurisdictions kept a lower minimum.
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Opponents of a higher minimum wage cannot get away with simply suggesting it might somehow slightly reduce demand for labour at the margin. They would have to prove that paid hours would fall by a larger percentage than the increase in wages. And that is not what the evidence indicates.

While bragging about the relative strength of our labour market, the government is letting every other Canadian province and territory surpass our minimum wage. Restoring Saskatchewan to a position of leadership would benefit those who most need a raise and strengthen the wider provincial economy.

- Jason takes a preliminary look at some potential candidates in the Saskatchewan NDP leadership campaign set to begin this fall.

- And finally, the Cons are pushing the already-compromised Gateway joint review panel to treat such trifling issues as "diluted bitumen" and "environmental assessment criteria" as irrelevant to its environmental assessment of a pipeline designed to transport diluted bitumen. I'm only surprised that the Cons haven't yet publicly admonished us that the lone permissible subject of discussion for Canadians (within the review panel and elsewhere) is "Stephen Harper: actual god, or merely superior to all other humans?".

New column day

Here, expanding on my previous post as to why we should be wary of Brad Wall's plans for potash royalties.

For further reading, I'll again recommend Mitchell Anderson's Tyee series contrasting how Norway has handled its natural resources with Canada's laissez-faire system. (And the lesson seems all the more applicable in the case of potash, where the limited alternative sources of production make it even more obvious that we should be able to make sure Saskatchewan's interests are protected.)

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Kady points out that despite the Cons' best efforts to stonewall, the Robocon investigation in Guelph looks to have locked in on the source of their fraudulent robocalls. And while it's indeed somewhat concerning that Elections Canada hasn't reached anywhere near the same depth of investigation when it comes to the other 234 ridings where voters have reported questionable calls, a solid case aimed at an individual who took steps to cover his tracks may be just the opening needed to get at the party's wider scheme.

- pogge duly slams Jim Flaherty's economic inaction plan:

You can be sure that the fragility of the recovery will continue to be invoked to justify all manner of government actions. For public consumption, the Harper Government™ will still be focusing like a laser on the economy. But as Flaherty acknowledges here, the main thrust of the government's economic policy will continue to be to give our corporate overlords what they ask for. If things take a turn for the worse, don't look for much help from the Conservatives. If you're a corporation the government is here to help you. If you're a citizen, you're on your own.

- Meanwhile, Jim Stanford follows up on Mark Carney's address to the CAW by pointing out some common ground as to how to improve Canada industrial productivity. And Dan Gardner discusses how the give-business-everything-it-asks-for strategy has proven a miserable failure for the past decade:

If we don’t close that gap, our prosperity will slip away when the commodity boom goes. And the commodity boom will go. They all do.

So how do we improve productivity? “Twenty years ago we created a laundry list of the things we needed to change in the policy front and productivity would blossom,” says Don Drummond, one of the country’s leading economists. “And you know, we changed most of them but productivity didn’t blossom.”

Canadian corporations got lower taxes and all sorts of incentives to invest. But they didn’t, and they aren’t, at least not at anything like the rate that’s needed.  According to the C.D. Howe Institute, investment per worker has risen from $10,100 in 2009 to $11,600 in 2011. But in 2011, American companies invested $13,200 per worker.

“We are heavily underinvested in machinery and equipment, particularly high technology stuff, relative to the U.S.,” notes Don Drummond. “We have roughly half the stock of machinery and equipment per hour worked in Canada that the U.S. does.” The figures for research and development are even worse: Canadian business spends about one per cent of GDP on it, compared to two per cent in the U.S. and 2.5 per cent in Japan, the Scandinavian countries, and others in the OECD.

- Finally, as Thomas Walkom notes, there isn't any real distinction between the Harper Cons and the McGuinty Libs when it comes to squeezing the middle class for corporate gain:

(T)his government wants public-sector workers to get less than nothing. Even the unions’ offer for a zero increase isn’t enough. The Liberal bill would arbitrarily strip away benefits that were previously bargained and keep all but the newest teachers at journeyman wage rates.

And if teachers don’t like it, there is little they can do. The bill would not let them withdraw their labour in protest.

If teachers were deemed essential workers, such a strike ban might make sense. Police officers, for instance, can’t go on strike.

But if teachers were defined as essential workers, the government would have to treat them fairly. It wouldn’t be able to impose a settlement. It would have to let an impartial arbitrator decide.

And my guess is that no impartial arbitrator would give teachers less than nothing.

Tim Hudak’s Conservatives are at least up front on this issue. Hudak seems to believe that unions are evil. He is an honest troglodyte.

The Liberals are more duplicitous. They work to cripple trade unionism while protesting that they are friends to the middle class that such unions protect.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Cats reaching out.

On common viewpoints

I haven't yet blogged about Angus Reid's poll on how respondents see the economic issue ads released earlier this year by the NDP and Cons. But I'll take a moment to point out both the most significant conclusion so far, and the next steps for the NDP in building toward government.

Here's Angus Reid's analysis of the partisan breakdown of the responses:

The ads definitely serve to both keep the supporters of the two main parties engaged, and irk their counterparts. New Democrats believe the Tory ad is unfair, and Conservatives feel the same way about the NDP ad.

Still, it’s important to look at how other past voters react to these advertisements. The views of supporters of the Liberal Party and the Green Party are similar to those of New Democrats, particularly on the deficit and on the low confidence expressed in Stephen Harper’s leadership.

Green voters hold the same level of confidence in Thomas Mulcair (63%) that New Democrats give their current leader.

And that analysis itself leaves out plenty more examples of Lib and Green supporters reacting even more strongly than NDP supporters in the direction one might expect.

In evaluating the Cons' attacks on Tom Mulcair, a slightly higher proportion of Lib supporters classified the Cons' spin as "unfair", "offensive" and "untrue" compared to their NDP counterparts; likewise Green respondents were more likely to rate the Cons' attacks as "untrue", while having an even lower inclination to consider it "informative", "fair" or "true" than current NDP supporters.

Likewise, the NDP's economic ad struck a chord as "informative" with slightly more Lib respondents than NDP supporters, while Greens were the most likely to see it as "true" and the least likely to rate it as "untrue" or "unfair".

Now, Angus Reid's results do highlight one area for future improvement on geographic lines. Even though Ontario and B.C. respondents are broadly more in agreement with the NDP's ad than the Cons', they still rate Stephen Harper somewhat more highly on a separate "confidence in leadership" question. Which shouldn't be surprising in matching an incumbent Prime Minister against a relatively new leader - but does signal that Harper himself isn't yet wearing the distrust those respondents have for his party's spin.

But the good news is that there's plenty of time and opportunity to tie the two together. And with Libs and Greens seeming no less receptive to the NDP's message than core supporters, the main task for the NDP looks to be reaching out to enough of the large Con-skeptical audience which finds its economic message informative.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Jessica Bruno reports on Tom Mulcair's first six months as leader of the NDP. But while it's certainly a plus for pundits to recognize the NDP as a viable government in waiting, perhaps the most significant development is Mulcair's ability to persuade Canadians in what looks to be the country's defining policy debate over the next few years:

Some pundits thought that the honeymoon was over when Mr. Mulcair warned that unfettered development of Alberta’s oilsands would lead to a hollowing out of Canada’s manufacturing sector this spring, a stance Mr. MacLachlan said is a “defining issue for Mr. Mulcair and the NDP.”

Mr. MacLachlan said that while his remarks initially were scoffed at, people seem to be coming around to Mr. Mulcair’s position.

“Now it seems that every political leader, particularly in B.C. from Premier [Christy] Clark to James Moore are trying to align themselves with his position on the development of the oilsands, on pipelines, and more generally on the economy,” he said.

Prof. Wiseman agreed. “His position on the oil sands, what’s striking there is at first I thought, ‘Uh oh, this is impolitic, he’s going to drop in the polls.’ But they didn’t drop and the more you got to hear what he said … his position is that polluter pays. If you put that to people, they’re in favour of that,” he said.

 - But of course, the case against the Northern Gateway pipeline in particular has been made as much by Enbridge itself as by any other party. And the revelation that Enbridge isn't interested in figuring out whether diluted bitumen might behave differently than conventional crude oil if spilled certainly can't be reassuring for anybody counting on it to clean up its own messes.

- Carol Goar writes about the desperate need for Ontario (among other provinces) to provide protection for workers.

- Finally, Alice pieces together the background behind the questions about convention contributions which led to the NDP reimbursing paid advertisers this week - while also offering an important perspective on how election law should be made:

How we got to the point where election law is being made through a series of gotchas is the sadder part. The Chretien government tolerated almost no amendments from the Reform Party to its overhaul of the Elections Act in 2000, so the Conservatives got them back with punitive retroactive amendments to the Act in 2006, which led the Liberals to exploit a slip of John Baird's at a Senate committee to launch a complaint about their convention fees, which led the Conservatives to counter-complain about the Liberals convention fees, and now the NDP's. Meanwhile, civil society groups are trying to get in on the action themselves.

Basic misapprehensions abound, such as the belief that Elections Canada can just make up its own rules (it has to implement and enforce the Elections Act as passed by Parliament, warts and all), that party activists know or could be expected to know everything that's going on in their party across the country, and/or know every nuance of our complex and always-evolving electoral legislation.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'd like to see election law made on the basis of what's good for our electoral system as a whole, and without people on either side of the issue deciding what their position is based on who they want to win, rather than a consideration of the facts and the outcome for the electoral system as a whole.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Jason Warick reports on how the Cons' decison to gut federal environmental assessments will have a particularly acute effect on Saskatchewan:

The federal government has cancelled nearly 700 environmental assessments in Saskatchewan for oil wells and pipelines, sewage lagoons, hydro projects, a major uranium tailings facility and other operations.

Saskatchewan is by far the province most affected by the cancellation of nearly 3,000 assessments nationwide.

“It’s extremely significant,” said Bram Noble, a University of Saskatchewan geography professor who has years of experience teaching and conducting national environmental assessments.

“It’s a lot to be concerned about. It’s the only tool we have.”

Noble called the decision to scrap the assessments “unprecedented” and “a step backward.”

- Meanwhile, Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob duly call out the Cons for a dumb-on-crime mindset that's focused solely on marketing rather than public safety or crime reduction. 

- In the wake of Neil Armstrong's passing this weekend, David Atkins contrasts the mindset behind the moon landing against today's utter lack of a sense of greater common purpose:

His walk on the moon was the result of thousands of individuals working tirelessly to bring the impossible to fruition, and the result of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars (in today's money) to make one of humanity's oldest dreams come true. For that reason, we can all share in Neil's accomplishment even if only by proxy. Or at least, those of us who were alive at the time can do so. Of my generation I'm not so certain, though I would state emphatically the blame does not lie with us.

Neil's was an accomplishment undertaken at a time when we still believed we were capable of great things. A time when the common good and furtherance of the human spirit were more important than personal greed. A time when a President could utter the phrase "Ask not what your Country can do for you, but what you can do for your Country" and not be mocked for his optimism.

It was a time before Reagan. Before "Greed is Good." It was a time when a President could truly declare a "War on Poverty" without ridicule. Before the drabness of "Welfare Reform" became the sort of meager and churlish thing the press would hail as forward-thinking and bold.

It was a time when the health and wealth of the nation was seen as bound up in the heights to which our science, learning, and social justice could aspire. It was a time before we allowed our collective health and wealth to be measured by as meaningless, lackluster and empty a symbol as the the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

...
My generational cohorts and I know nothing but this. This all too petty, all too drab, all too villainous smallness of being. It is time for moral and spiritual rebirth.

So rest in peace, Neil Armstrong. And may my generation begin the process of rebuilding the greatness that took you to such exalted heights, and repairing the damage wrought by the Reagan Devolution. 

- Finally, Ta-Nehisi Coates' commentary on the state of race relations in the U.S. is well worth the (relatively lengthy) read.

On political legacies

Ready the fainting couch for Warren Kinsella, because I've got a scoop that he'll find shocking and appalling.

The NDP has been fund-raising for years based on appeals to Jack Layton's public image.

In fact, Layton's face and signature regularly appeared on financial appeals to his party's supporters not just in the year since his death, but in the entire time since he became the leader of the federal NDP. And one might even speculate that Layton and the NDP made a concerted effort to build his public profile, then to maximize its effectiveness as a means of raising money and otherwise encouraging NDP supporters to participate in electoral campaigns.

I can only assume this comes as an out-of-the-blue revelation to a political naif like Kinsella in light of his latest column. Because otherwise, one might have to ask some rather awkward questions.

For example, who could possibly think it surprising that a political leader - and indeed one who put ample personal effort into his own party's succession planning - would be pointed to as an example of that party's ideals after his passing?

And who could possibly look at one of the most unabashedly political lives in recent Canadian history, and conclude that it must be drained of political meaning? (Particularly when that order comes from somebody who fought tooth and nail against nearly everything Layton stood for during his lifetime, rather than anybody with even a vaguely plausible claim to speak to his wishes?)

I do hope that the above will prove enlightening for Kinsella and anybody else spending time demanding that NDP supporters erase his legacy from the historical record in order to honour it. And Warren, when you come to, you might be even more horrified at what you'll discover in your own party.

Saturday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- Gerald Caplan weighs in on Jack Layton's legacy:

It seems to me that Jack Layton’s enduring legacy is twofold. First, he set a standard of doing politics that, if followed by others, would change the entire tone of public life for the country. You could see his influence in the decorum that characterized the leadership contest to choose his successor. The media saw only tedium. The party understood it was Jack’s insistence on civility that was at work.

Jack regarded those he disagreed with as democratic opponents, not as dishonorable, even treasonous enemies to be destroyed. For him politics was not the brutal, no-holds-barred permanent war being waged against all comers by the governing party. He rarely attacked motives or personalities. He treated his opponents with respect and civility. He stuck to the issues, about which he felt passionately and which he pursued forcefully.
...
Until May 2, (2011), I saw the party’s role as being the conscience of the nation, an influencer of those with power, not a government-in-waiting. That’s how I interpreted election results from the 1930s all the way through to the 2008 elections, during which time the CCF/NDP only once polled as high as 20 per cent of the votes; often it was considerably lower. This was even true of the 3 elections Mr. Layton had fought before his last one. The message from the party’s beloved “ordinary Canadians” seemed to me self-evident.

Jack rejected this destiny as the NDP’s permanent fate, and at the last minute he was vindicated.

- Andrew Nikiforuk comments on the Cons' attempts to make Canadian democracy subordinate to the will of Enbridge and other oil interests:

To get a million barrels of bitumen a day to the Gulf of Mexico at Port Arthur, Texas, the Harper government strenuously lobbied politicians in Washington on behalf of the Keystone XL pipeline. When that project became bogged down in public protests and regulatory delays, Harper abandoned a 2008 policy that restricted bitumen shipments to China and became an outspoken cheerleader for Enbridge and Northern Gateway. Putting bitumen on supertankers bound for Asia "will require some significant infrastructure projects to go forward," Harper said recently in Bangkok. "And we’re obviously…looking at taking steps necessary to ensure we can get timely regulatory decisions."

There is nothing subtle about Harper or the "necessary steps" he has taken. His government has been characterized by the Economist as "intolerant of criticism and dissent," with a penchant for rule-breaking. Early in 2012 it branded First Nations and environmental groups opposed to Northern Gateway, including the Canadian office of the U.S.-based nonprofit ForestEthics and the David Suzuki Foundation, as foreign-funded "radicals" opposed to economic prosperity. Environmental groups with charitable status that have challenged bitumen mining have been subjected to federal investigation. And to make sure that Enbridge’s pipeline experiences none of the delays that have beset Keystone XL, the Harper government launched a concerted attack in March and April on most of Canada’s main environmental laws.

"The debate is no longer about a pipeline," says Robyn Allan, an economist and former CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. "It’s about an energy strategy designed in the boardrooms of Big Oil that’s being forced on the Canadian public."

- One might hope that the Libs' fine for robocalls in Guelph would help push the Robocon investigation along. But I have to wonder whether the story featuring both full cooperation from the Libs and a political price will simply reinforce the Cons' apparent conclusion that the cost-benefit calculation favours continuing to stonewall against any attempt to figure out who's responsible for their own misleading robocalls.

- Finally, Scott Stelmaschuk and Bruce Johnstone both offer rather more generous interpretations of Brad Wall's talk of royalty revisions than my take. But I'm still inclined to be skeptical until there's some evidence to suggest a Sask Party-led review would actually serve to increase revenue, rather than operating as yet another handout to the corporate sector.

Musical interlude

Arcade Fire - City With No Children

Friday Morning 'Rider Blogging

No, this isn't 2011 all over again. But Saskatchewan Roughriders fans could be forgiven for flashing back to the previous season throughout the team's loss to the B.C. Lions.

Once again, the 'Riders' defence was relatively effective through most of the game against a strong opponent, making some big plays (notably a brilliant third-and-short stand deep in 'Rider territory at the end of the first half). But it got progressively more tired and less effective making tackles as the game went on, and ended up allowing the opponent to pull away.


And once again, the 'Riders' offence wasn't up to the task of putting points on the board. Darian Durant and company moved the chains just often enough to keep the game respectable, but the offence stalled every time there was an opportunity to convert drives into touchdowns and fell into the all-too-familiar pattern of turning the ball over late as time ran short.

Which leaves the question: what can the 'Riders do now to make sure the rest of this season doesn't play out like the end of the previous one?

On the downside, the 'Riders look to be getting periously thin at some key positions. With Jordan Sisco joining Rob Bagg on the injured list, it's hard to see where the 'Riders will get any production from non-import receivers other than Chris Getzlaf (who continues to be inconsistent for a primary option). Meanwhile, the non-import offensive linemen pressed into duty by injuries and ratio considerations haven't been able to keep pass rushers away from Durant. And once again, the offence hasn't adapted by giving Durant more opportunities to turn that aggressiveness against 'Rider opponents.

But that failing so far points to at least one opportunity to improve. Another may come from Taj Smith, who looks more and more like a sorely-needed impact receiver in the making. And the defence has shown at least enough hints of being able to control games (rather than merely hanging on for dear life) to offer the hope that the 'Riders can get by with a less-than-stellar offence.

That may not make for the team fans would most like to see - and which seemed possible at the start of the season when a healthy offensive line showed what it could do. But it's probably Saskatchewan's best chance to be anything more than cannon fodder for the rest of 2012.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Yes, it's alarming that the Cons are eliminating environmental assessments on a huge number of projects. But even more worrisome is the complete lack of a connection between the basis for the exclusion and the possible environmental impacts:

Ottawa is also walking away from conducting assessments on various agricultural and municipal drainage works, log-handling facilities, small-craft harbour and marina development and expansion, the sinking of ex-warships as artificial reefs, the disposal of dredged material, and a 73-hectare mixed-use development on Tsawwassen First Nation lands.

Under the new legislation, BC Hydro also no longer requires a federal assessment for replacement of its John Hart Generating Station near Campbell River on Vancouver Island because the project won’t increase the generating capacity by more than 50 per cent or 200 megawatts. No provincial assessment applies, either.

Now, it would seem obvious enough that the number of megawatts added by a project won't necessarily correlate to its environmental impact. Which means that the Cons' move to limit assessment based on project size rather than actual need will only encourage the development of a large number of dirty, small-scale projects.

- Barbara Yaffe is right to note that the NDP is doing just fine consolidating its national strength under Tom Mulcair. But she's far too willing to buy the Cons' spin about Mulcair's environmental message - which is in fact far closer to the views of Canadians than the Cons' determination to put the oil industry's profits over public health and safety.

- The CLC highlights the positive effect of unions on wages in Saskatchewan:

On average, unionized workers earned $5.28 per hour more than non-union employees. That union advantage translated into more than $26 million more every week paid into the provincial economy to support businesses and community services.

- Meanwhile, Tom Graham notes that the Sask Party's focus on privatization and corporate development only looks to increase costs to the province.

- And finally, Erin Weir suggests expanding the Bank of Canada's mandate to maximize employment and bolster economic stability, rather than being limited solely to addressing inflation targets.

The great giveaway

No, Brad Wall's new musings about changing Saskatchewan's resource royalty structure won't pass without comment from this corner. But it's worth noting that the reason for concern lies not a mere flip-flop from the Sask Party's 2011 election platform, but what's all too consistent in its behaviour since taking power.

At the outset, let's remember that Wall's position while in power has never been that the tax structure surrounding royalties is set in stone; instead, it's been that any change has to result in greater returns for corporate conglomerates at the expense of the province in order to be acceptable. So the Sask Party has been perfectly happy to hand out freebies such as head office tax credits on top of the system that was working perfectly well before it took power.

It's only when the NDP suggested that the province should benefit more from high prices and increased development that the Sask Party decided all existing arrangements were sacrosanct. Which leads to the foundation Wall is setting up for the mother of all resource giveaways:

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall is musing about adjusting the way the province collects money from companies that extract natural resources.

Wall says companies should have royalty stability especially after they've spent billions investing in the economy.

But the premier also says it's important that taxpayers are properly compensated if in 20 years potash production has doubled.

The current complex system is based on price rather than volume and Wall says it needs to change.

So let's compare what we have now to what Wall seems to be proposing.

At the moment, Saskatchewan's royalty structure results in our province sharing in the value of our resources. If prices rise - reflecting no particular merit on the part of either developer or province, but an increase in value in the resources which we're allowing to be removed from our common wealth - then so too does the province's revenue. And it's that structure which allows for the prospect of a Bright Futures Fund which ensures that money is invested for the province's benefit when times are good, and available to meet our needs when prices drop.

In contrast, Wall apparently sees it as unacceptable that Saskatchewan, as the owner of the resources being extracted, should share at all in the gains when those resources increase in price. Instead, he's setting out to establish "royalty stability" based strictly on the volume of resources removed from our province. And if prices happen to rise - well, as far as Wall is concerned, that windfall belongs solely to his corporate benefactors.

Needless to say, his resource-sector puppeteers will have every reason to be happy with that outcome. But once again, it's the people of Saskatchewan who stand to lose out from a system designed to eliminate the benefit we'd otherwise enjoy from our own resources. And if Wall is indeed planning to force through changes during the course of this term in office, then the resource question may be the most important fight we face over the next few years.

[Edit: fixed formatting.]

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- I'll follow up with one extra note from Mark Carney's address to the CAW - as the headlines seem to have missed a rather important point about the relative effect of the Canadian dollar and even the widest possible definition of labour issues:

He noted Canada’s export performance was the second-worst in the G20 over the last decade, with only 9 per cent of exports going to fast-growing emerging markets such as China and India.

But he sought to dispel the notion that the high loonie bears the bulk of the blame.

“Some blame this on the persistent strength of the Canadian dollar,” Mr. Carney said in prepared remarks ahead of his address.

“While there is some truth to that, it is not the most important reason. Over the past decade, our poor export performance has been explained two-thirds by market structure and one-third by competitiveness. Of the latter about two-thirds is the currency while the rest is labour costs and productivity.

“So, net, our strong currency explains only about 20 per cent of our poor export performance.”

By Carney's own account, then, "labour costs and productivity" have had only half as much effect as the boosted Canadian dollar on exports. Which (for anybody willing to listen) should thoroughly undermine the claim that there's any validity to a Con position pretending the dollar is no issue at all, while attacking the far smaller labour factor at every turn in the name of competitiveness.

- Though I suppose we shouldn't operate under the illusion that the Cons' economic plans have anything to do with accomplishing anything useful - as Jim Flaherty is rerunning his thoroughly-discredited "do what I ask, or I'll ask again more pitifully" strategy to deal with the glut of uninvested corporate cash.

- And in case anybody thought a new set of MPs might help rein in the Cons' worst impulses, here's a shorter Chris Alexander:

Lousy media, refusing to accept that all inconvenient prior statements have been declared inoperative. Why won't they just transcribe the word of the Ministry of Truth and leave it at that?

- Finally, David McGrane takes on the Saskatchewan Cons' sad attempts to preserve poor representation for their constituents by pointing out what representation is supposed to accomplish:

Optimal democratic representation means having an MP exclusively devoted to representing your concerns. The proposed constituencies map improves democratic representation by having more rural residents represented by exclusively rural MPs, and more urban residents represented by exclusively urban MPs. It's a win for both the city and the countryside.

No other province has split rural-urban ridings, making Saskatchewan the outlier of Canadian democracy. Other provinces have realized that separating urban and rural residents into different ridings provides better democratic representation and conforms to electoral law that stipulates that ridings must contain residents with similar identities and similar "communities of interest."

If we take a step back and consider, we realize that the proposed boundaries are best for democracy. That's what really counts.

New column day

Here, on the tendency for political parties to try to glorify past leaders by plastering their names and faces on the map - and the potential for Jack Layton's legacy to be based on a far more direct connection to citizens.

For further reading...
- Politico documents some of the Republicans' general efforts to rename everything in sight after Ronald Reagan, while Rebecca Schoenkopf highlights the latest example.
- Tim Harper discusses the Cons' attempts to rebrand Canadian landmarks for partisan gain, while Tim Stanley highlights the :Aryan character" values of John A. MacDonald.
- And the first couple of examples of sites named for Layton are reported here and here.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- On the anniversary of Jack Layton's death, Tim Harper points out how far the NDP has come in just a year, while Brian Topp highlights where the party still needs to go:

(W)hat to do about the federal government’s crisis of relevance? Recent Liberal and Conservative governments have worked together on a common agenda to make Canada’s national government largely irrelevant to the daily lives of most Canadians. Today’s federal government is a Parliament, it is a public service, it is an army and police force, and it is a largely unconditional bank machine for provinces.

Small wonder that Canadians increasing tune federal politics out. Small wonder Parliament in recent times has been about embarrassing squabbles over trivia. What else was there to talk about? Here is the fundamental mission of the New Democrats: to demonstrate that the Liberal/Conservatives are wrong, and that there are indeed important projects and priorities that Canadians can and should work on together. Not symbolic issues, designed to get us angry and to divide us from each other. The real stuff: Equality. Jobs. Health care. Economic security. The environment. Reclaiming our good name in in the world.

New Democrats need to find a way to give Canadians hope that we are more than the sum of our parts, and that there is much we can do together to make a good country a much better one – carefully and prudently, one practical step at a time, without reigniting the old federal-provincial wars that separatists and conservatives build on, each in their own special way

Meanwhile, John Ibbitson has a rather smaller vision for the NDP, suggesting that it should do nothing but accept the top-down, consumerist political style that's turned off so many voters. Ryan Cleary offers his own tribute, and Cityslikr challenges anybody who claims to respectfully disagree with Layton's proposals for greater generosity and equality to suggest some alternate means of building a better society.

- Mia Rabson rightly questions Elections Canada's lack of interest in prosecuting attempts at foreign influence on Canadian elections. And Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report that even as Elections Canada directly intervenes to provide evidence useful to Ted Opitz's argument over Etobicoke Centre, it's withholding information which might be relevant to the Council of Canadians' challenges in seven other ridings.

- Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob are almost entirely right in criticizing the Cons' attitude toward criminal law. But it's worth adding a proviso to the headline: the Cons' view is more along the lines of "once a criminal, always a criminal unless a Conservative", as the party is quick to offer absolution to anybody who's seen as politically useful.

- Finally, Matt Miller neatly sums up the mentality of "drawbridge Republicans":

(W)e’ve never had two wealthy candidates on a national ticket whose top priority is to reduce already low taxes on the well-to-do while raising taxes on everyone else — even as they propose to slash programs that serve the poor, or that (like college aid) create chances for the lowly born to rise.

Call them the Drawbridge Republicans. As the moniker implies, these are wealthy Republicans who have no qualms about pulling up the drawbridge behind them.
...
Most rich Republicans who champion regressive tax plans find it necessary to at least pretend they’re doing something to help average folks. John McCain, who’s lived large for decades thanks to his wife’s inheritance, famously had trouble keeping track of how many homes he owned — but McCain also tried bravely to create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. George W. Bush campaigned as a “compassionate conservative,” and touted education initiatives that made this claim plausible.

Today’s Drawbridge Republicans can’t be bothered. Yes, when their political back is to the wall — as Romney’s increasingly is — they’ll slap together a page of bullet points and dub it “a plan for the middle class.” But this is only under duress. The rest of the time they seem blissfully unaware of how off-key they sound.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Chairfelines.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- As we approach the anniversary of Jack Layton's death, Tom Mulcair discusses some of the lessons he learned from his predecessor as NDP leader:

(W)hen Mulcair first joined the NDP caucus in 2007, he was sometimes frustrated by the 'go-around' sessions — seemingly endless, repetitive meetings at which MPs debated issues and batted ideas back and forth.

"Sometimes I would find the go-arounds in caucus to be really long processes, but then I realized what (Layton) was doing. He was working with every single person in the room and there was a real art to it.
...
He also learned something about the fine art of political persuasion from Layton.

"Jack rarely tried to convince people by saying to them, 'This is what I'm going to do for you.' Jack had a way of talking to people, which was, 'Things have to change, here's how you can help bring about that change.' That's subtle but it's something that Jack really did intuitively and it's something I picked up on."

Mulcair said he's tried to adopt a similar approach, "rather than lining up policies and saying this what we're going to do, it's we want to listen to you, we want to work with you and we think we can do things better together."

 - Duncan Cameron echoes the view that Layton's willingness to listen set him apart from far too many of his political colleagues:

Reaching out to people, getting to know what they were thinking, opening a two-way dialogue (even with serious adversaries) was what characterized Jack Layton as a leader. Canadians had Jack right. He was the guy to be with for a beer, or to share a bottle of wine. He enjoyed himself, and was easy to like, as people guessed. He wanted to share his thoughts -- after he had heard from you first.

-  And Joan Bryden reports on polling showing just how fondly Layton is remembered by Canadians in general:

12 months removed from the emotional intensity of the moment, a new poll suggests a majority of people believe last year’s remarkable national display of remembrance was both authentic and appropriate — and they continue to hold Mr. Layton and his legacy in high esteem.

Some 62 per cent of respondents to the poll, conducted by Harris-Decima for The Canadian Press, said they viewed the torrent of public grief for Mr. Layton as genuine, compared with just 27 per cent who said they felt mourners simply got caught up in the moment.
...
And a whopping 91 per cent said they believe Mr. Layton made a positive contribution to Canada, 33 per cent of them describing his contribution as “very positive.”

 - On another note, Steve Morgan makes the case for universal pharmacare:

A recent study found that one in 10 Canadians can’t afford to fill their prescriptions as directed. Such financial barriers often increase costs elsewhere in the health care system — from the public purse. For example, if a parent cannot afford the necessary drugs for a child’s asthma, they may be forced to visit the emergency department when the asthma gets out of control.

Thus, the question is not whether it is fair to provide refugees with prescription drug coverage; the question is whether it is fair — and even fiscally responsible — not to provide such coverage to all Canadians.
...
In truth, a universal Pharmacare program would save Canadians billions of dollars; some estimate up to $10 billion per year.

The proof is found in virtually all countries comparable to Canada, countries like Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In comparison to Canada, pharmaceutical spending is lower and has been growing more slowly in all of these countries. Yet they all provide better, more equitable access to prescription drugs than Canada through universal Pharmacare systems of one form or another.
...
If Canadians take pride in their medicare system, and want to achieve better access to medicines at lower costs than they pay today, then maybe it is time for the original vision of medicare, which included Pharmacare, to be completed as planned.

- And finally, Don Lenihan has his doubts that mandatory voting is necessary to encourage political parties to reach out to disaffected voters. But while I'd agree with Lenihan that mandatory voting without a cultural shift would have only a limited impact, it seems to me entirely possible that one might facilitate the other - both by forcing a government elected by a small proportion of the population to reach out to a far larger group, and by setting up incentives for parties to build long-term connections to voters who they know will be participating for decades to come.

On openings

Following up on this morning's post (as well as discussions from Kayle Hatt and Chantal Hebert), I'll offer my theory as to why a Quebec NDP might be a perfect fit for what's otherwise a relatively crowded provincial scene.

At the outset, Quebec voters have shown an inclination to give a chance to parties who decline to get caught up in the traditional federalist/sovereigntist polarity in favour of a more policy-based approach fronted by a well-regarded leader. In the past few years, the ADQ provincially, NDP federally and now the CAQ provincially have all fit the bill. And all have managed to earn the support of a substantial proportion of Quebec's electorate without the strength on the ground of the province's better-established political machines.

But there's an important distinction within that list of parties.

The right-leaning ADQ and CAQ have run out of steam around 30% of the popular vote in trying to pair a "change" message with their ideological bent, while the NDP's support has at times reached up into 40s and even 50s even through a change in leadership. And I suspect that's the result of the NDP offering a set of political values which represents a better match both for the province at large, and in particular the set of voters who are open to new allegiances.

At the moment, the Quebec scene features three sovereigntist parties fighting for left-of-centre votes, along with multiple centre-to-right parties trying to claim the federalist mantle. And the new parties for this election cycle merely added to those pairings.


But there's a reason why those well-worn combinations are producing diminishing returns across the board. And there's surely nobody in a better position to offer an alternative that can draw from dissatisfied voters in both broad camps than the party which has already managed the feat federally.

Of course, a provincial NDP wouldn't yet have one of the common ingredients for a Quebec breakthrough. But I'd have to figure it would have a strong chance to find a leader who can fill in that gap - whether from the ranks of other parties as has been the trend, or from among the NDP's current base.

And with Quebec's current parties fighting to see who can eke out enough seats to cling to power with support from between a quarter and a third of the province's voters, the prospect of a party with a real opportunity to approach true majority status could make for an even more dramatic orange wave than the one which swept 59 NDP MPs into office.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Pratap Chatterjee discusses our new age of robber barons - and how the wealthiest CEOs get out of paying any tax at all on massive sums of money:

The Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington DC thinktank, says that a chunk of the money Ellison spent buying Lanai should have paid for elementary school teachers and clean energy jobs, instead of fulfilling the billionaire CEO's vacation fantasies. That's one conclusion of their new report, "The CEO Hands in Uncle Sam's Pocket: How Our Tax Dollars Subsidize Exorbitant Executive Pay", which points out that Oracle took advantage of a 1993 loophole in tax law to designate $76m of Ellison's income as "performance-related pay", which allowed him to avoid paying any taxes on the money.

Dozens of US CEOs have cashed in on this major tax incentive at an estimated cost to US taxpayers of $9.7bn last year. Statistics provided by National Priorities Project suggest that the same amount of money could have paid for 142,625 elementary school teachers, or healthcare for 4.96 million low-income children.

"At a time of austerity, it's beyond absurd that billions of our tax dollars are pouring into executive pockets," says Sarah Anderson, a report co-author.

- Meanwhile, Erin Weir points out that Vale's choice not to proceed with a potash mine in Kronau only highlights the fact that corporate decision-making has far more to do with other factors than with provincial giveaways - serving as all the more reason for Saskatchewan to ensure it gets fair value for our potash.

- And Jim Stanford notes that the key to growth in our auto sector involves public policy which actually values industrial development, not further attacks on employees:

Imagine, purely for discussion, that labour costs were reduced in Canada. Right now, with a very strong dollar, total nominal labour costs (including benefits) at the three companies average about $3 per hour more than in the U.S. (Real wages, adjusted for higher Canadian prices, are actually lower here.) Suppose that gap was eliminated and costs fell by $3 per hour. Would that usher in a new era of automotive prosperity?

It takes an average of 29 hours of in-house shop-floor labour to manufacture one vehicle (including engine, transmission and final assembly). A $3 hourly saving therefore translates into an $87 reduction in the cost of a car. That’s not even enough to pay for deluxe floor mats in your new sedan, let alone underwrite the future success of an entire industry.

Meanwhile, the all-important policy context in Canada is currently making things worse, not better, for the auto industry. For example, the Harper government is aggressively pursuing free-trade deals that would eliminate tariffs on imports from three different auto-exporting powerhouses: the aforementioned Germany, Japan and South Korea. That would undermine the competitive position of domestic-made vehicles by about $2,000 per unit – outweighing our hypothetical labour savings by a 20-to-1 ratio. Similarly, the continuing flight of the loonie eats up any labour savings as fast as they can be tallied; indeed, the loonie’s 5-cent rise since June alone has added $3 per hour to Canada’s apparent hourly cost.

It seems almost pointless to even worry about labour costs when the broader policy framework that is so essential for industrial success is glaringly absent.

- Finally, Dene Moore reports on how the Harper Cons have gutted the exact review process which they plan to rely on as validating the construction of pipelines wherever Enbridge chooses to place them.

The final piece

Let's follow up on the news that the NDP is planning to assemble a Quebec provincial party in time for the next election with a look at how the move would affect the NDP. And lest there be any doubt, I'd see the development as a huge plus for the party at both levels.

For now, though, let's focus on the federal considerations involved.

The most obvious benefit to a Quebec provincial NDP would be the opportunity for greater party-building - in Tom Mulcair's regular analogy, encouraging the growth of roots to support the party's trees. A provincial wing would set up a formal structure for membership sales and fund-raising within the province which has shown the greatest support for the party, while also allowing a far greater number of interested citizens to get involved as volunteers and candidates to build the next generation of potential leaders.

But the more intriguing development might be found in the widespread theory that Canadian politics are headed toward a greater left-vs-right clash of ideas.

So far, the Cons have been ahead of the game in developing national links between like-minded people. But they haven't been able to develop a consistent national and provincial brand like their American counterparts, due in large part to the fact that the Conservative name is mud in at least a few provinces.

That means that after years of the Cons setting the terms of debate, the NDP is now closer than any other party to presenting a consistent set of values across Canada at the federal and provincial levels. And a Quebec NDP would be the final piece of that puzzle.

Of course, with the opportunity for such national definition comes the need for a Quebec NDP to stake out a specific patch of political terrain - which I'll cover in a later post on the possible Quebec effects of a provincial NDP. For now, though, suffice it to say that the advantages in developing a provincial support structure in Quebec look to far outweigh any costs for the federal NDP.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Armine Yalnizyan points to the Law Commission of Ontario's proposals to make sure that labour laws don't stack the deck against workers, and encourages citiznes to have their own say:

The truth is, most people don’t know anything about their legal rights as workers, and even if you do, it’s a difficult system to navigate. Putting aside the costs and serious backlog in the courts, if you don’t have a union backing you, you know you’ll get fired if you complain. So most people just quit one lousy job and….end up in another.

But that simply emboldens bully employers. So it’s really up to the rest of us to become more aware of these situations and talk about them, as this process triggered by the Law Commission of Ontario hopes to do.

They are inviting response and your ideas on how to improve the legislation, or better enforce them.  You can check out their website and weigh in with your views by October 1.

- And of course, the Saskatchewan NDP is working to ensure that citizens have an opportunity to speak out here as well. Which stands in stark contrast to the Harper Cons' longtime plan to silence anybody who didn't read from their own talking points (as pointed out by Keith Reynolds).

- But as important as it is for citizens to be able to speak out, it also matters who decides whether or not to listen to us. And on that front, I'll have to disagree with Adam Radwanski's belief that a trend of political offices being placed in corporate hands somehow offers any particular reason for hope - as it only seems likely to ensure that the business elite continues to run roughshod over everybody else.

- And Kev provides a prime example of how public policy has been designed to fail people who most need it - as Ontario's basic social assistance amounts aren't even enough to cover housing (let alone other basic needs) in much of the province.

- Finally, on a more optimistic note, Aaron Wherry writes about Jack Layton's final letter to Canadians, and how it's still serving to inspire plenty of people as we approach the anniversary of his passing.

On potential support

Abacus' latest federal poll includes some noteworthy data on which voters see a real prospect of shifting their preferences - and particularly on the number of voters who are willing to entirely rule out a vote for either the Cons or the NDP.

In particular, Bloc and Lib supporters are roughly twice as likely to say there's "no chance" of their supporting the Cons than the NDP (72%-37% and 50%-24% respectively), while the Greens aren't far behind at 52%-30% - all of which suggests that plenty of non-supporters are somewhat leaving open the possibility of uniting behind the NDP as the leading alternative to the Cons. And even comparing the parties' own supporters, more NDP than Con voters rule out a vote for the other party by a 63%-56% margin.

Which leaves one noteworthy group of voters where the Cons point to a slight advantage in growth potential: those who are truly undecided, who rule the Cons out slightly less than the NDP (43% compared to 48%, with a comparable advantage in respondents indicating a "fair chance" of support).

Now, I'd be interested to find out what group of voters is mostly represented in the "undecided" group to produce that result. (Perhaps Red Tories and blue Libs who aren't currently satisfied enough with any of the options to indicate a preference?) But it's noteworthy that the NDP looks to have far more room for growth than the Cons among every other party's supporters - meaning that the Cons' hold on power may depend on their being able to reach voters who haven't yet found any reason to support them, rather than merely catering to their current base.