#skndpldr Roundup

The second-last Saskatchewan NDP leadership debate took place in Moose Jaw this past week, with the most thorough coverage coming from the Times-Herald (and Justin Crann). As usual I'll hold off on commenting until the video is available - though I have a couple of earlier debates to address over the long weekend, as well as the final one being live-streamed at 2 PM today.

Friday also saw the release of the latest financial reports. There, Ryan Meili continues to have the lead both in total money raised and cash on hand, but January saw a noteworthy switch of strategies among two other camps: Cam Broten had by far his best fund-raising month but spent more than he had the entire campaign to date in the process, while Trent Wotherspoon balanced off modest revenues with lowest-spending month so far to bring his campaign as a whole into the black.

On the commentary side, Mark Lemstra evaluated the candidates' health care policies. But it is unfortunate that he limited his review to the candidates' websites: in particular while it's somewhat of a surprise that Erin Weir hasn't released a policy in the area, he's had plenty to contribute when asked about the issue throughout the debates.

And regular commenter Dan Tan put together a noteworthy series of posts on the campaign from an outside perspective, featuring in particular this take on what the CCF and NDP have accomplished in the past:

The foundations & institutions of Saskatchewan - so resented by Wall & the Sask. Party - were built over decades by (small "c") conservative NDP administrations who wisely rejected the proselytization of deluded foreign economists. They rejected the Soviet Union's insistence on utopia through oppressive & invasive totalitarianism. They rejected the United States' insistence on utopia through wild & selective applications of Darwinian savagery. Instead, they fostered the creation of a capitalist system that insured stability (crown ownership), the safety of risk-takers (public insurance), and a tolerable standard of living (social programs).

Saskatchewan needs a professional & focused NDP more than ever. You stand in-defense of what your forefathers so wisely built. You stand in-between carpet-bagging charlatans and the local population they would hustle. You stand against the juvenile anarchists who traded hoodies & explosives for sharp suits & destructive legislation.

But I don't entirely agree with his conclusions - as even if one sees "bullet-proofing" a leader as one's end goal, I view the ability to inspire new people to get involved in actively defending against the inevitable attacks as essential to that end. In contrast, the ability to present as a well-polished "alpha" in the public eye isn't either a necessary or sufficient condition. (See Romney, Mitt.)

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Michael Harris concludes that we're currently stuck in a golden age for political falsehood and deceit:

(T)here are problems with blotting out inconvenient truths with self-serving Newspeak. It’s catchier than a flu-bug in a pup tent. Quite a few pairs of pants are on fire in Ottawa these days because cabinet ministers and senators have learned from the PM that the truth is what you need it to be. It can mutate, transform, even shed its skin. The trick is to say what you need to be true at a given moment.
...
Perhaps the wider truth here is that we live in an age of deception.

In the banking industry, the global price of money affecting $300 trillion worth of contracts was rigged for years by the collusion of traders and brokers. Crappy mortgages were sold as blue-ribbon investments. Giant hedge funds traded on insider information and even the drug cartels found banks eager to do their monetary laundry.

In big business, accounting firms lied for important customers, companies like SNC Lavalin paid huge bribes to unsavoury but influential characters to win contracts, suppliers sent fake parts to their military customers to boost profits — and mining companies abused workers’ rights in foreign countries in a way they would never try back home.
...
Parties of all political stripes have had their share of liars and cheaters, just as they have had a goodly number of visionaries and public benefactors. But when lying and cheating morph into a model of governance where citizens not only don’t know, but can’t know what’s going on, democracy becomes what H.L. Mencken called a fancy abstraction for the collective fear and prejudice of an ignorant mob.

It is an old chestnut, this matter of the limits of raw power. Can you really say two and two is five, that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia, that war is peace?

- But of course, a deliberate effort to suppress inconvenient truth makes for an essential part of allowing lies to stand unchallenged. Which brings us to the Cons' orders that Arctic research is to be permitted by DFO scientists only if the government has the ability to hide the results.

- Meanwhile, Hannah McKinnon thoroughly critiques the Cons' dishonesty when it comes to climate change.

- Finally, Karl Nerenberg reminds us that Stephen Harper had a wide range of choices in dealing with the Senate, and consciously chose to set a new standard for corruption and patronage. The CP reports on the likelihood that Pamela Wallin and other Con Senators used public money to serve as campaign shills for their prime ministerial puppet-master. And Tyler Sommers is the latest to suggest that abolishing the current upper-chamber monstrosity is a necessary first step to any more democratic system.

Musical interlude

Age of Electric - Remote Control

Juxtaposition

Unintentional setup...

Ultimately, any evaluation of a government's fiscal responsibility should include its willingness to make effective investments that carry a short-term cost and its prudence in avoiding unnecessary long-term liabilities - not merely any single-year balance sheet. And we'll be left to pay the eventual price if we fail to demand that broader view.

...meet unfortunate punchline:

On Friday, the government released its third-quarter financial report, projecting the province will finish the 2012-13 fiscal year with a pre-transfer surplus of $8.8 million in its general revenue fund. However, that’s a decrease of $86.2 million from what was forecast in the budget.

Finance Minister Ken Krawetz called it a balanced budget — despite dipping into coffers other than the general revenue fund. The government will draw an additional $120 million dividend from the Crown Investments Corporation (CIC).

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Friday reading.

- Zoe Williams questions when being poor became grounds for deliberate discrimination and ritual public humiliation (h/t to Mound of Sound):

What I cannot help noticing is a failure of normal human respect for the people at the bottom of the heap – Tuesday's ruling in favour of Cait Reilly and Jamieson Wilson has had its bones picked over for what it does or doesn't say about slavery, and yet the judges were clear: these people were treated dishonestly. They were treated as though, being unemployed, they could be parcelled about at the whim of the secretary of state.

A similar belief pervades the suggestion that those on benefits need to be ritually humiliated every time they go into a shop; or those on low wages, by dint of their low status, need to be monitored like criminals. Across the piece, having a low financial status is now elided, by politicians and by corporations, with being untrustworthy. 

- Meanwhile, Claire Davenport writes that gratuitous austerity is pushing an entire generation of European citizens toward economic ruin. And Yves Smith discusses how inequality has continued to grow since the 2008-2009 crash - with the top 1% taking massive income gains while the bottom 99% have actually lost ground.

- David Climenhaga points out that Alberta's latest budget only confirms what Stephen Harper, Brad Wall and other spokesflacks for the tar sands have tried to deny: both overdependence on resource royalties and a petrodollar have negative impacts for the province's finances. But Climenhaga is even more in point in recognizing how Alison Redford's "bitumen bubble" complaint seems calculated to distract Albertans from the massive social problems being blithely ignored - including the wealthiest city in Canada slashing school service for lack of funding, and refugee-camp conditions in the province's capital.

- Which isn't to say Alberta is alone in its utterly warped priorities: Simon Enoch writes about the City of Regina's obsession with costly P3 projects, while Brian Banks and Paul Gingrich observe that a Sask Party promise to address poverty has produced no substantive plan.

- Finally, Sid Ryan explains why the Cons are so determined to attack union finances:

In his decision, Rand explained that unions also need adequate resources in order to "redress the balance of what is called social justice." This is because, then as now, corporations have all the power in a workplace -- they can hire, fire, discipline and discharge any individual employee. Workers only have leverage if they work together and they should always have the right to do so.

This bargaining table principle applies equally to the halls of government. Concerned about Canada's growing inequality, individual workers recognize the need to work together to counteract well-heeled corporate lobbyists and convince politicians of every stripe to promote the livelihoods of working people and their families. For that reason, workers have increasingly given their unions a mandate to launch campaigns to defend public services, good jobs, the environment, and many other public priorities.

However, when it comes to influencing public policy, workers are again at a great disadvantage. In stark contrast to the paltry five per cent of election financing that came from unions between 2004 and 2011, corporate Canada contributed a whopping 40 percent of all election funds, including $26 million to the Conservative Party.

And what did Canada's corporate elite get in exchange for their generous support for the Harper government? Well, among other things, the passage of a new law allowing employers to pay migrant workers 15 per cent less than the going rate and another forcing employment insurance claimants to compete for lower wages.

It is no wonder that working people across the country are working together to stop Canada's race to the bottom. For every worker in Canada, the Rand Formula is the basis of their democratic rights and promotes fairness in their workplaces. As much as Tories may try to dress up their anti-worker policies as "freedom of choice," they are only offering Canadian workers one choice: lower wages.

On poll dances

Shortly after I posted yesterday's roundup featuring some discussing of Praxis Analytics' Saskatchewan NDP leadership polling, Jordon Cooper chimed in with the results of an internal poll distributed by Cam Broten - which has been treated as somewhere between worthless and gospel depending on the leadership camp commenting on it. So let's take a quick look at the actual significance of internal polls in past NDP leadership races in determining what weight any new ones should carry.

The most recent examples to be considered would come from the 2012 federal race - where virtually all polling confirmed Thomas Mulcair to be the front-runner, but a string of polls (both candidate-based and independent) placed Brian Topp a distant fourth or fifth. Topp's camp declined to make his full numbers public, but said its polling suggested a radically different shape to the race - and it was the candidate who played his cards close to the vest who proved to be correct, as Topp finished a strong second.

But an even better previous example can be found in the 2009 provincial leadership campaign. At that time, this was my attempt to make sense of a poll showing Yens Pedersen running a strong second among a sample of 20% of the NDP's membership at a point when virtually no other data placed him in that position. And I tend to see the theory as largely holding up: an internal poll is likely to be highly inaccurate in telling us about vote shares (as Pedersen's was), but it may also help to set a floor for the polling candidate's raw vote level - and in retrospect I should have placed greater emphasis on that point in ranking the candidates through the balance of the 2009 campaign.

In Broten's case, I don't think there was much doubt that he would hold at least as much first-ballot support as we can plausibly infer from the poll released so far - though more information as to how many votes were actually included would offer a bit more perspective on that point. But for other factors including the relative positioning of the candidates, the safest starting point is to view the noise included in candidate-based polling as far outweighing any signal - particularly in light of the requirement that campaigns identify themselves (thus planting a seed for respondents) before carrying out the poll.

That said, I'll shift gears to a somewhat broader point. The major difficulty in trying to evaluate the state of any leadership race is the fact that all polling faces at least one of two inherent flaws: truly independent pollsters don't have access to the membership list necessary to take a viable sample of voters, while campaigns have an obvious bias in conducting and releasing polls based on an accurate voter list.

But there's another party involved in any leadership campaign with both the necessary information to reach all members (or a fair sample thereof), and at least an arguable incentive to ensure members have better information about the state of the leadership race. So with that in mind, I'll close this post with questions for discussion: should the NDP and other political parties consider commissioning leadership polls for themselves under agreed rules and timelines? Or does the risk of being perceived to interfere in a leadership campaign outweigh the value of what would surely be seen as the authoritative source of polling data?

New column day

Here, on how a narrow focus on balancing budgets misses the more important story as to how our elected officials manage public money.

For further reading...
- Paul Krugman makes a similar point with reference to happiness economics, while highlighting the particular value of stimulus within a depressed U.S. economy.
- Ian Lovett reports on California's proliferation of "capital appreciation bonds" as a prime example of the dangerous buy now, pay later approach, while Douglas Hainks points out that Miami's new baseball stadium will escalate in cost from $91 million to $1.2 billion under a similar scheme.
- And sadly, the City of Regina's wastewater treatment plant looks like it may be added to the list of needless long-term liabilities added to our books in order to avoid an accurate accounting today.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Marc Lee and Iglika Ivanova offer up a framework for a more progressive and fairer tax system.

- Andrew Hanon looks behind the Fraser Institute's labour-bashing and finds that what it's really criticizing is fair pay for women in the public sector.

- Fern Brady notes that conservatives have succeeded in pitting exactly the people with the greatest need for social assistance against each other - with the result being that far too few people are questioning whether cuts serve any useful purpose in the first place:

Logically, I'd expect those on the sharp end of things to be pro-welfare. But if anything, many interviewees had internalised a Thatcherite every-man-for-himself mentality, wanting benefits for themselves but resenting anyone else getting a handout.

There are almost too many examples to list but the kind of attitudes I heard daily went along these lines: the disabled man thinks it's wrong the drug user down the road gets methadone. The drug user is outraged that the large family next door gets a spare room and hopes they are hit by bedroom tax. The large family is sick of elderly people getting big houses they don't need. The elderly woman hopes these large families are forced to stop having kids once the money dries up. On and on it went in a circle, anger constantly directed at other victims of the coalition government's Welfare Reform Act instead of the politicians and policymakers responsible.
...
The value of influencing attitudes towards social inequality is deeply underestimated. If you manage to persuade everyone that poverty is a moral condition and claiming benefits is the symptom, it's a guaranteed way to ensure those handing out the money treat recipients as guilty until proven innocent. Shame is being employed as an ingenious tool to ensure people feel constantly stigmatised. And if you feel undeserving you're hardly going to be forthcoming about what you're entitled to.

This isn't just about votes. The less people believe they're entitled to this money – and they are entitled – the less likely they are to maximise their income through benefits. It's ideal for the government because it fosters an environment in which people are less likely to appeal when their claim is rejected and less likely to support those around them who may be suffering as a result of the welfare changes.

In a way you have to marvel at it. How do you get people to accept a policy that's inexcusably prejudiced against the most vulnerable in society? Make sure they take on the same mean-spirited, self-serving attitude that influenced that policy in the first place. Genius.

- pogge wonders rhetorically whether the Cons will ever act on a unanimous resolution to strengthen the Canada Elections Act to address robocalls and enforcement issues.

- Finally, Aaron Wherry nicely responds to Justin Trudeau by noting that better patronage isn't a path toward a useful or legitimate Senate. And Andrew Coyne muses that abolishing the current abomination might leave more options open for a less dubious upper chamber in the future.

#skndpldr Roundup

In the most noteworthy leadership development of the past few days, Praxis Analytics has released the first set of public poll results since last fall - with a couple of interesting findings.

First, there's the fact that nearly two-thirds of respondents (in a poll of the general public) couldn't name any of the candidates. That means that whoever wins the race will be starting nearly from scratch in building a public profile - which isn't without its upside, as it looks to signal that the money the Saskatchewan Party spent attacking the candidates was an utter waste.

Second, there's the suggestion that Ryan Meili, Trent Wotherspoon and Cam Broten are in a tight three-candidate race at the moment. That makes for a somewhat different take than my current impression - but likely offers a useful indicator as to the difference in the polls between the most active members whose preferences are more obvious, and people who haven't publicly identified their support for one candidate or another.

In other news, Ryan Meili released his policy statements on democratic renewal (featuring a goal of doubling the NDP's membership over the next two years) and health care. In addition to the endorsements I've discussed before, other late-campaign declarations of support have included Glenn Hagel's endorsement of Wotherspoon, Sean Shaw's for Broten, and (if I'm reading it correctly) leftdog's approval of Erin Weir.

Finally, the lengthy debate schedule is winding down, with the last two taking place tonight in Moose Jaw and Saturday in Saskatoon (with the debate to be live-streamed for those who can't attend).

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Carol Goar discusses Canada's broken fiscal stabilizers - as unemployment insurance and social programs intended to assure citizens of at least a reasonable standard of living have been cut to well below that level:

Canada’s economic shock absorbers are badly worn.

Employment insurance, which once softened the blow of losing a job, has dwindled to the point that only a minority of the unemployed are eligible for benefits.

Welfare, which once prevented people from hitting rock bottom, now leaves recipients 60 per cent below the poverty line.

The income tax system has become flatter and more rigid. There were 13 income brackets in 1981. Today there are four. This means people’s tax bills don’t go down as quickly when their earnings fall.
...
While the finance minister holds down the brakes, his colleagues seem bent on yanking the tubes out of Canada’s diminished shock absorbers.

Finley is making it harder to get employment insurance. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is making it harder for new Canadians to rebuild their family support networks in this country. Revenue Minister Gail Shea is making it harder for Canadians without Internet access — typically the poor and the elderly — to claim tax refunds and credits. Infrastructure Minister Denis Lebel is making it harder for the provinces and municipalities to plan public works projects and hire workers. And Labour Minister Lisa Raitt is weakening the collective bargaining system.
...

The problem is not just austerity. It is austerity imposed with no regard for the hardship caused by a stop-and-start, up-and-down, lurch-prone economy.

- Meanwhile, Kev uses the example of Bell's one-day commitment to mental health funding as a reminder that we should be skeptical of corporate charity as a substitute for fair taxes and other public revenue generators.

- Michael Harris pushes back against what looks to be a transparently false claim from the Cons that new restrictions on government-employed scientists are merely a continuation of the status quo, then explains what the new policy means:

The big worry among scientists is that the new policies could be used to make it impossible for government scientists to do any “unmanaged” research in the future. That’s because whatever they do now will be tightly controlled from the onset — from funding applications through to the final step of communicating research findings to the scientific community and the general public.

With the rapid development of the Alberta oilsands a key priority of the Harper government, the need for independent science has never been greater. Under the new DFO policies, government could stop publication of studies like the one recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science in the United States. That federally-funded study linked oilsands activity to the deposit of toxic hydrocarbons in Alberta wilderness lakes, closing the door on the claim by industry and government that the pollution could be coming from natural sources.

Question: if scientists wanted to pursue the unfinished business of the oilsands research just published by the National Academy of Science, going beyond hydrocarbons to look at the levels of other contaminants such as heavy metals, mercury or soot, would they get the green light from DFO under the new funding policy?

- Finally, Duncan Cameron suggests that a pre-election cooperation agreement among Canada's opposition parties could include a broad range of issues rather than focusing on electoral reform alone. But the CP points out one of the areas where agreement may be difficult to achieve, as the Libs are joining forces with the Cons to preserve a patronage-based Senate.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Bright-eyed cats.

#skndpldr Candidate Rankings - February 12

As I mentioned in my follow-up notes from Saturday's Saskatchewan NDP leadership debate, the candidates' performance hasn't done much to change my impression as to their relative position. (Which, as a reminder, is different from my personal endorsement.)

But there have been a couple of additional indicators over the past week: the audience response to the candidates at Regina's forum, and the information provided by the few voters who have provided hints as to their down-ballot support. So will any of that affect this week's rankings?

1. Ryan Meili (1)

Well, there's no change at the top, as Meili has continued to keep at least somewhat of an edge over his competition on all visible fronts (including crowd support at the all-candidates debates, public support on social media, and perhaps most important his continued ability to draw crowds for campaign events).

2. Cam Broten (2)

In contrast, Broten seems to be facing some conflicting signals: while he's probably slightly more entrenched ahead of the candidates below than he was some time ago, he's also facing significant obstacles in trying to overtake Meili.

On the upside, Broten has seen a fairly regular stream of declarations of first-ballot support among voters. But he's always figured to need a strong down-ballot showing in order to win - which makes it highly problematic that not a single multi-candidate ballot or announcement that I've seen from a supporter of another candidate has placed Broten above any of his competitors. (Of course, most of those public ballots have been from Meili supporters whose second and third choices may not impact the race anyway - but it does seem to suggest Broten has some distance left to go in reaching out beyond his own camp.)

3. Trent Wotherspoon (3)

Meanwhile, Wotherspoon faces the converse problem. At the outset of the campaign I wouldn't have seen much prospect that any significant number of Meili supporters would list him second, as at least a couple have done already. But those down-ballot successes will only matter if Wotherspoon remains on the final ballot - and a modest showing at the start of the voting period would make it unlikely they'll ever come to light.

4. Erin Weir (4)

And likewise, there isn't much to suggest Weir's position has changed over the last week. While his endorsement from Fred Clipsham offers a helpful late-campaign boost, the more important question for now is at the membership level rather than the endorser level.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Yves Engler discusses the importance of a "social wage" - and how the minimum standard of living we're prepared to tolerate affects the well-being of all kinds of workers:

These attacks against the poor and unemployed should be opposed by anyone who cares about their fellow human beings. But in addition to compassion, working people have another important reason to oppose these cuts to social benefits: a self-interest in maintaining the social wage.

Right-wing pundits often claim that welfare payments or unemployment benefits cost us all. And at one level it is true that welfare benefits cost everyone, though rarely are these costs a significant chunk of public expenditure.

Examined from another perspective, however, social entitlements such as welfare and EI are an important means to protect the wages and conditions of working people. Decent welfare and unemployment benefits provide a security guarantor for wage workers who may fear losing their jobs. When decent social entitlements exist, invariably workers’ bargaining power is improved. In short, the strength of welfare and unemployment benefits helps determine a country’s social wage — its generally accepted minimum pay and benefits.
...
Lobbyists for wealth-holders certainly understand the relationship between social entitlements and the social wage. Business organizations have ferociously attacked social entitlements over the past 20 years. In doing so, they’ve driven down the social wage and increased the proportion of income going to the relatively small number of wealth-holders.

- And Linda McQuaig notes that the corporatist war against unions fits into the same overall strategy of consolidating wealth to the exclusion of most Canadians:

The real question is: as the country has grown richer, who should benefit? Under the more egalitarian system that prevailed during the early postwar decades, the economic benefits would have been more widely shared and could have been used to actually lower the retirement age (or extend holiday time, such as in Scandinavia, where the norm is six weeks paid vacation).

A few decades ago, North Americans often whimsically posed the question: in the future, what will we do with all our leisure time?

As it turned out, our leisure time shrunk (with two years of it now snatched away by the Harper government).

Indeed, instead of being widely shared, almost all the benefits of economic growth in recent decades have been siphoned off by a small corporate elite.

It’s that same corporate elite, and its political and media supporters, who now assure us that unions are no longer relevant.

 - Canadian for Tax Fairness points out that the OECD has finally noticed the issue of double non-taxation - where corporate tax-avoidance strategies result in multinational businesses paying tax nowhere.

- Finally, Dan Lett comments on the sad connection between Bell's attempt to spark some talk about mental health issues, and the Cons' choice to single out the mentally ill as their latest target for "tough on crime" posturing.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Shawn McCarthy discusses the Cons' latest plan to sell Keystone XL to the U.S. - which involves hoping that the best-resourced government on the planet will be suckered into accepting a transparently false pretense that the Cons have the slightest interest in addressing climate change. And Harper cabinet appointee Monte Solberg offers a window into the Cons' environmental mindset, trying to make a case against "thinking globally" on the basis that there are easier votes to be won by focusing on small vacation areas while shredding the rest of the planet.

- The Cons' latest Senate abuses have provoked plenty of discussion as to how in the world we can justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars on an unaccountable set of patronage appointees. Among those calling for (or at least musing about) abolition are Diane Francis, Paul Sullivan and Geoffrey Stevens. Kai Nagata recognizes that we should see Patrick Brazeau as entirely emblematic of the Cons - rather than accepting their spin that it's just bad luck that he's following in so many disgraced footsteps. Murray Dobbin compares Brazeau's abuse of privilege to the genuine movement for change behind Idle No More. Stephen Kimber contrasts Mike Duffy's one-time journalist persona against his current diminished state, while Dan Leger wonders whether Duffy has officially joined Brazeau in being cut loose by the Cons.

But the definitive word goes to Sixth Estate in discussing Duffy:

(W)e’re no longer talking about an issue of merely failing to uphold a few technical rules. We’re talking about fraud here.

The only question is: fraud against whom? Against Ontario taxpayers, for using an Ontario health card when he is really a primary resident of PEI, or against federal taxpayers, for collecting expense fees for his PEI cottage when he is really a primary resident of Ontario?

Either way, I guess we now know why right-wingers are so paranoid that lazy, self-interested gits are ripping off the welfare system. That’s what they think is going on, because it’s exactly what they do when given the opportunity.

- Digby compares the "donor class" of Americans who fund political parties to the wider citizenry - and finds that the U.S. government (like its UK equivalent) is paying far more attention to the frivolous deficit obsession of the former than the job and income security concerns of the latter.

- pogge rightly highlights the Cons' strict party control over private members' bills. But I'll add that the vetting of what's supposed to be the prerogative of individual MPs is far from new, as Garth Turner raised exactly the same concern after he was booted out of the Cons' caucus.

- Finally, CBC reports on the Cons' willingness to fund an anti-gay organization to work in Uganda (home of some of the most obvious homophobic policies on the planet). And Dennis Gruending compares the treatment of Crossroads Christian Communications to that of other groups such as KAIROS and Development and Peace who were de-funded for failing to share the Cons' values.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Ian Lovett reports on the use of "capital appreciation bonds" in California to ensure that future generations pay an inflated price to private-sector developers for infrastructure today.

- Justin Ling's review of Joyce Murray's message about electoral non-competition pacts is well worth a read - but I'll particularly highlight this part:

Do you want Stephen Harper to be defeated in the next federal election?

Alright, we’re already off to a rocky start.

Politics of negation is dangerous, ugly, and unfortunately rears its ugly head very often in leadership campaigns.

“Elect me and I’ll stop [gay marriage/abortion/separatists/Toronto elitists]” has long between a rhetorical sledgehammer that’s good at getting gut reaction from ignorant people. Nothing more.

So when Joyce Murray asks me if I want Stephen Harper to be defeated, my immediate answer is ‘no’ — I want a government that, if possible, is more competent than our current one. Everyone should want that. Murray, like Trudeau or Garneau, should be making a case that she can do that. Not offering an Ocean’s Eleven caper on how to dupe the prime minister.

- But of course, there's loads of room for improvement on the government we're currently stuck with. And on that front, Steven Shrybman points out just the latest example in commenting on Harper's dubious assertion that his party's misleading robocalls weren't in breach of CRTC regulations, while Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault laments the fact that the Cons are trampling on access to information more and more as their stay in office drags on.

- Herbert Gans discusses how the U.S. media can contribute to genuine democratic debate far better than it currently does. And Rick Salutin laments the state of the CBC in having fallen into the same infotainment format as other broadcasters:

The gold standard for anchors was the U.S.’s Walter Cronkite. He was ready to stand up against the state and the flow and was solid as the bronze statue of the American revolutionary minuteman who stood “by the rude bridge that spanned the flood/ His flag to April’s breeze unfurled.” He had rhetoric and a voice to accompany it: “All things are as they were then except — You Are There.” When president Lyndon Johnson heard Cronkite turn against the Vietnam War, he said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the country.” Compared to Cronkite, Mansbridge isn’t an icon, he’s a barometer.

He’s happily gone with the flow — and the pressure. CBC has become numero uno for crime stories, weather coverage (today’s snow), product launches, celebrities and awards gossip. None of this is new, or news, and CBC itself doesn’t contest the point. The penny story was another example but the one that probably propelled me into this anchor obit was their infinite overkill on the new BlackBerry. (To give CBC radio its due, Carol Off did an item about that on As It Happens.) Also, to be clear, the Z10 drowned in pseudo-journalism everywhere. That’s my point: why have a public broadcaster if it duplicates everybody else’s obsessions? Nor do I want to romanticize the old CBC news. It was pompous and often misleading. But at least it distorted stories I cared about.

- Finally, Murray Mandryk rightly recognizes the significance of Jack Mintz' report on Saskatchewan's incoherent potash royalty structure.

#skndpldr - Regina Debate II Notes

Since I was one of many who attended yesterday's leadership debate in person, I won't wait for the video to be posted before discussing it. (For some of the play-by-play, see live-tweeting from SKYoungNewDemocrats in particular, as well as a bevy of others using the #skndpldr hashtag.)

All four candidates' presentations were around the upper end of the range established in previous debates. That makes for a rather impressive result given that the candidates had already participated in a forum in Saskatoon yesterday morning, but it also means the debate wasn't likely to change minds among voters who have been watching the campaign so far.

For Cam Broten, yesterday's showdown was one of his best in quite some time (at least out of the ones I've seen). But he had some help on that front thanks to two of his fellow candidates.

Both Ryan Meili and Trent Wotherspoon used their first round of questioning to challenge Broten about issues which had caused him trouble in previous debates (Meili discussing his previous involvement in social movements, Wotherspoon his position on the Sask Party's corporate tax cuts). But in both cases, Broten was more than ready to answer a question he'd heard before - which seems to have been a fairly regular pattern throughout the leadership debates. And Wotherspoon in particular was left to merely thank Broten for the clarification as his follow-up question.

That said, if Broten showed that he won't be stumped by the same question twice, Meili's strongest moment involved a thorough response to a question which came out of the blue. I don't recall much (if any) discussion in the previous debates along the lines of Weir's question as to whether to pursue large-scale hydroelectric power in order to phase out coal generation - but Meili was able to neatly weigh the conflicting considerations involved in hydro, and then conclude that our options aren't limited to the either-or choice suggested by Weir.

As for Weir, he offered his typical mix of well-timed jokes and incisive challenges to his competitors - with his questions to Wotherspoon about small business taxes serving to particularly highlight his own strengths. But Weir did take some time to circle around to a response to a fairly simple personal question from Broten (as to what advice he'd give potential candidates based on his own experience in 2004), signalling that he's still not as comfortable taking an opportunity to build personal connections to the audience as he is discussing policy.

Finally, Wotherspoon moved well past his first set of talking points on most of the issues discussed, regularly identifying the elements of a question which hadn't yet been answered and adding substantive discussion to the mix. And he offered strong responses both to Broten's familiar question about party structures, and to Meili in ruling out uranium refining in the province (while explaining his continued support for mining). But his closing remarks did leave some room for improvement: Broten's preceding speech covered a substantial number of virtually identical messages, and Wotherspoon didn't change gears or at least comment on the similar themes to distinguish himself.

Again, the main takeaway looks to be that all of the Saskatchewan NDP leadership contenders have developed into stronger candidates as the campaign has progressed. And we'll know before long who came away convinced by what they saw - as well as who's left to be persuaded.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Tabatha Southey rightly turns Brad Trost into a poster boy for the Harper Cons' deliberate aversion to critical self-evaluation:

We shouldn’t be too quick to judge.

Let’s instead take a cue from Conservative MP Brad Trost, who, when questioned regarding the calls, said, “I don’t think there was anything wrong with the robo-call. I think it was good and accurate information and we should stand behind it.”

Then Canada’s Candide went on to add, “I didn’t hear it. I don’t know the script. Don’t know anything. … One of my colleagues had it at her residence and her husband got it and he said it was fine. I’ll take his word for it.”

We may have lost the penny this week, but I hope we coined the word “Trostful,” which I will define as “marked by a total belief in the reliability, truth and strength of anything your colleague tells you was said to her by her husband, or similar evidence.”

 - Meanwhile, Murray Mandryk is rather sharper in his depiction of the Cons:

That the Conservatives denied involvement in the anonymous robocalls until being caught, red-handed, by the PostMedia voice analysis makes this explanation a dubious one. But that they have kept repeating the deceit at every available opportunity pretty much shows how disingenuous their denials really are..

They offered nonsense briefs to the commission arguing Saskatchewan hadn't grown much in the past 10 years and rural and urban voters had identical interests anyway. They stacked the meetings with friendlies spewing similar nonsense. They exaggerated how many of their friend-lies actually attended the meetings or presented briefs and then they claimed these meetings represented 75-per-cent provincewide opposition to the new boundaries.

And even when caught with their little "miscommunication" of the truth - even when the Conservatives had to own up to the fact that they were the ones responsible for the phoney and misleading push polling - they remorselessly did it in a way in which they simply repeated every one of the above falsehoods all over again.

Remorse? You've got a better chance of finding it in most federal prisons.

- Charles Hamilton reports on the Sask Party's announcement that it won't countenance any public benefit from alcohol sales. Don Gunderson rightly responds that it's the citizens of the province who will lose out as a result of that corporate giveaway.

- Chantal Hebert and John Geddes both wonder whether the particularly egregious abuses of public trust and money from Stephen Harper's highest-profile Senate appointees will pave the way for the abolition of the unelected chamber.

- And finally, John Ibbitson concludes the Globe and Mail's series on making Parliament relevant again by writing that courage on the part of MPs is the most important ingredient in a democratic revival.

Musical interlude

Deftones - Tempest

#skndpldr Roundup

Not surprisingly, the Saskatchewan NDP leadership campaigns look to be focused entirely on their efforts to get out the vote now that the voting window has opened. And so aside from a few additional endorsements all around and some jostling for position in the early voting, there hasn't been much new beyond the candidates' own activities.

On that front, the candidates appeared in Prince Albert yesterday and took part in both an unofficial a debate for MNB Northern Radio (documented in part by Max FineDay), and the official party forum (reported on by Matt Gardner, and live-tweeted by Erica Spracklin, Brett Estey and Nathaniel Cole). And they'll be participating in another Regina debate tomorrow afternoon.

Which is to say, there should be plenty more to talk about before long. And I'll be particularly interested to see whether a couple of developing trends in publicly-posted votes continue over the next little while.

[Update: Corrected to note that the MNB forum was party-organized as well.]

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- While we may sometimes lose track of the continuing differences between Canadian politics and those in the U.S., here's a reminder of how we're familiar with a far wider and more progressive range of public policy choices: while we've seen plenty of discussion about improving the standard for retirement benefits available under our national pension plan (even if public support for that expansion has been ignored by a right-wing government), Duncan Black's call to do the same for Social Security is being raised as a voice in the wilderness:

If the consensus is that we need policies in place to ensure that the vast majority of people have at least a comfortable retirement, then we need to adjust our current failing policies. Expecting people to save sufficiently for their retirement, even if those savings are subsidized by our tax code, is unrealistic.

The 401(k) experiment has been a disaster, a disaster which threatens to doom millions to economic misery during the later years of their lives. Proposals to improve our system of private retirement savings -- even good ones -- will offer little to no help for the baby boomers who are currently nearing retirement, and are also unlikely to be of sufficient help for current younger workers. We need to increase Social Security benefits, now and in the future. It's the only realistic way to provide people with guaranteed economic security and comfort post-retirement.

- Chris Selley sums up the cynicism behind the Cons' latest attempts to make Canadian citizenship revocable:

They’re rarely subtle, these Tories. And they’ve perfected a brand of politics so unashamedly coarse, and so transparently manipulative, that it boggles the mind that anyone could be won over by it.

Take C-245, Calgary MP Devinder Shory’s private member’s bill — titled An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (honouring the Canadian Armed Forces) — which would strip Canadian citizenship of anyone who “engage[s] in an act of war against the Canadian Armed Forces,” provided he holds another passport.
...
There is no doubt such a law would be challenged in the courts, and the Conservatives wouldn’t give a fig if it lived or died. Regardless, assuming the opposition parties opposed the bill (which they had better), the Conservatives would have yet another dumb-dumb talking point. (“Do you support the Liberal-NDP-Bloc Québécois coalition’s soft-on-terrorism agenda?”) It would all cost millions, but hey, it’s not their millions. If the law dies, they can shrug and move on.
...
(I)f you gain citizenship legitimately, it’s yours unless you give it up. You have rights in Canada, and responsibilities to Canada; and Canada has a responsibility to you, including dealing with you if you blow up a bus in a faraway land. That’s the way it is, and the way it should be. The rest is just fundraising bait.

- Meanwhile, Chris Hall discusses how the bill would be designed to create two-tiered citizenship, with new Canadians left in a permanent state of limbo:

Canada doesn't have [wide-ranging authority to revoke citizenship]. (Nor does the U.S., unless citizenship was acquired by fraud.) And opponents say there are important policy reasons for that.

One is that the Shory bill, should it pass, would create two tiers of citizenship and so provide greater protection to people born in this country than those who choose to come here and become citizens.

Another is that the proposed changes would recognize only the privileges of becoming a naturalized citizen (like travelling on a Canadian passport, and having the opportunity to vote), and would not be a right that no government could take away.

As well, opponents argue that the two-tier approach violates Section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees that every Canadian is entitled to equal treatment under the law.

- Michael Harris discusses the Cons' latest attempt to stifle scientific research.

- And finally, I can only hope John Ibbitson and Tasha Kheiriddin are right in suggesting that Stephen Harper's Senate end game involves abolishing the house of patronage. But I still strongly suspect it's something else entirely.

#skndpldr - The Endorsement

As I've mentioned before, we can expect the bulk of the votes cast in Saskatchewan's NDP leadership election to be cast before the convention next month - and over the past day, I've seen plenty of comments to the effect that members are receiving their mail-in ballots. So I'll take the opportunity to offer my endorsement - which for this campaign will include a full ranked ballot. (Note that this is entirely separate from my candidate rankings, which again are intended to reflect likelihood of victory rather than my own choice among the candidates.)

Before I get to the endorsement, though, I'll offer a reminder that this campaign offers a remarkably strong set of choices: there's obvious upside to each of the candidates, and none of the candidates has the type of fundamental flaw which would lead me to eliminate him from serious consideration. So a lower ranking shouldn't be taken to suggest that a candidate is anything less than well-suited for the NDP's leadership.

That said, I do think there's some room for differentiation based on a candidate's fit for the leadership responsibilities of managing a party (and eventually a government), and building and giving a voice to a progressive movement within Saskatchewan. So with that in mind, here's how I'll be ranking the candidates.

1. Ryan Meili

At the start of the campaign, I wondered whether Meili would look as strong in comparison to his competitors this time out  as he did in 2009. But if anything, Meili has exceeded my expectations, ranking at or near the top of the field in all the criteria I'd look for in the next Saskatchewan NDP leader.

Since the start of the campaign (and indeed the previous release of his book), Meili has had an edge in presenting the most principled and best-developed vision for Saskatchewan. But he's also taken a back seat to nobody in his ability to defend that vision when challenged. And he's assembled an impressive organization featuring plenty of new members since his earlier campaign - helped by a quiet but engaging personality which may be an ideal antidote to the over-the-top attacks the new leader is bound to face.

2. Erin Weir

The choices become more difficult through the rest of the ballot, as there are obvious trade-offs to be made between the advocacy, personality and strategic functions of a leader. But I'll rank Weir second based on his significant strength in the former area: he rates near the top of the field in both his established commitment to progressive causes, and his ability to defend them publicly.

Meanwhile, Weir's areas for improvement should be relatively easily addressed if he were to become leader. While his leadership campaign has looked a bit more like a one-man band than would be ideal, he'd have an opportunity to grow into the role of managing an organization. And while he may not match the social ease of Meili or Wotherspoon, he's been plenty comfortable applying his sense of humour as a means of engaging audiences throughout the leadership debates.

3. Trent Wotherspoon

Wotherspoon's obvious strength in connecting personally with a wide variety of people remains the strongest element of his candidacy - even if it didn't prove enough to allow him to establish himself as a prohibitive favourite as once seemed to be the plan.

But Wotherspoon has made enough progress on the advocacy front throughout a grueling debate schedule to raise the prospect that he'll be able to connect with Saskatchewan residents through the media as well as in person - and he's taken on some significant policy causes within the leadership campaign. And those pluses  place him ahead of his colleague in the legislature.

4. Cam Broten

Broten's understated but mostly effective campaign has been largely aimed toward avoiding exactly this type of ranking. But from my standpoint, his efforts to be seen as the safe candidate have backfired somewhat.

In a campaign where NDP members have every reason to discuss and set a new course, Broten has instead positioned himself as the standard-bearer for more of the same: policy proposals connected closely to the NDP's most recent policy book, a list of endorsers comparatively light on new faces, and most importantly Broten's inclination to portray other candidates' creative ideas as a negative while equivocating somewhat on policy himself. Those can be seen as strategic moves which are subject to reversal, or they can be taken as defining how Broten's leadership would look - but either way, Broten winds up at the back of the pack for now.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- John Studzinski describes how a sense of social responsibility and a country-wide commitment to making jobs available have placed Germany in a better economic position than its European neighbours:

Let me highlight some of the features unique to the Mittelstand model that I believe everyone should learn from – and imitate if they can. The first is what we might call the Mittelstand ethos – that business is a constructive enterprise that aims to be socially useful. Making a profit is not an end in itself: job creation, client satisfaction and product excellence are just as fundamental. Taking on debt is treated with suspicion. The objective of every business leader is to earn trust – from employees, customers, suppliers and society as a whole. This ethos chimes with the values of prudence and responsibility with which every schoolteacher hopes to imbue their pupils. Consequently, about half of all German high-school students move on to train in a trade. Business and education are natural bedfellows.

The second essential feature of the Mittelstand model is the collaborative spirit that generally exists between employer and employees. This can be dated back to the welfare state that Chancellor Otto von Bismarck established in the late 19th century to head off what he saw as the menace of socialism. Its modern-day equivalent is the system of works councils, which ensures that employees' interests are safeguarded, whether or not they belong to a trade union. German workers expect their employers to keep training them, enhancing their skills. In the post-reunification recession, it seemed only natural to German workers to offer flexibility on wages and hours in return for greater job security. More recently the government protected jobs by subsidising companies that cut hours rather than staff.

A third feature of the Mittelstand model is the determination of German companies to build for the long term. To this end, they tend to keep core functions such as engineering and project management in-house, while outsourcing production whenever this proves more efficient. Mittelstand companies are overwhelmingly privately owned, and thus largely free of pressure to provide shareholder returns. This makes them readier to innovate, and invest a larger proportion of their revenues in R&D. There are Mittelstand companies that file more patents in a year than do some entire European countries. It is one of the underlying reasons for their exporting success, even when their goods seem expensive.
...
(T)here is much that non-Germans could learn from. To close the gap between education and business, companies should take a greater interest in their local schools and colleges. If you haven't got spare cash for sponsoring gyms or computer equipment, go and talk to sixth-formers or degree students about what you do. Find out what graduates aspire to. It will help you to work out how to attract the next generation.

If you want to get more out of your employees and suppliers, consult them; invite them into your confidence. Don't complain: "We're not like the Germans. It won't work here." Think of a different way. Try harder.

The same applies to governments. Let me mention one simple legislative option. In German law, the owner of a family business who passes it on to the next generation can avoid paying inheritance tax if, during their tenure, they have increased employment and thereby benefited the economy. What better signal could a government give than by favouring those who create employment?

- Sixth Estate comments on the Cons' deceptive efforts to dictate Saskatchewan's electoral boundaries, while Lawrence Martin sees the lies as evidence that the Cons are rotting from the head down. Meanwhile, Alice thoroughly describes the independent boundary development process in Canada and notes that "gerrymandering" isn't the right term to describe the Cons' interventions.

- Chris Hannay discusses how our current governments are missing the point of social media - including with up to eight points of revision and control over every single Tweet.

- Finally, Duncan Cameron writes that the editorial boards and political adversaries criticizing the NDP's Unity Act should instead be recognizing the opportunity created by the party's success in bringing Quebec voters into a discussion as to how to make federalism work.

New column day

Here, on the difference between genuine accountability and the rather more barbaric version on offer from the Cons and the Sask Party.

While there are too many examples of the latter to list, I'll point out a few of the most recent ones - including the federal Cons' false denials and subsequent finger-pointing over their push-poll robocalls, Con MP Brent Rathgeber's declaration that he doesn't want the public having access to PBO research which doesn't serve a requesting MP's purposes, and the Sask Party's concerted attack on Saskatchewan's provincial auditor

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Tim Harper writes about Scott Vaughan's final report as the federal environmental commissioner:

Scott Vaughan doesn’t have the profile of some of his contemporaries but as the environmental commissioner bowed out with a final report Tuesday, he reminded official Ottawa how much he will be missed.

Vaughan is leaving after five years of what he calls — in typical understatement — identifying “gaps” in the environmental policies of the Conservative government. More often than not, those gaps are more like chasms.

He also departs at a time when the environment and the economy has never been so intertwined in this country, a point he hammered home before taking his leave.

...

“We know that there’s a boom in natural resources in this country and I think what we need now, given the gaps, given the problems we found, is a boom in environmental protection in this country as well,” he said.

- Meanwhile, Aaron Wherry has some suggestions to make the Parliamentary Budget Officer more effective based on the U.S.' Congressional Budget Office. But I'm not sure there's much hope the Cons will accept "more resources" as an answer if it might cut into their advertising budget.

- The Star-Phoenix rightly called the Cons' robocall attacks against Saskatchewan's federal electoral boundaries commission "disgusting" - and just in time for the Cons to fess up only once the case had been proven against them.

- And Bill Tieleman is working on exposing the shadowy figures behind B.C.'s million-dollar corporatist media blitz.

- Finally, NDP MP Laurin Liu offers her ideas to make Parliament more effective and representative.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Upward cats.

On clarifications

Shorter Fred DeLorey:

Silly media, wasting its time asking whether we Cons were polling over gerrymandering Saskatchewan riding boundaries.  That would involve caring about respondents' opinions. The word you're looking for is "propagandizing".

#skndpldr Candidate Rankings - February 5

Once again, there's been relatively little to shift the respective rankings of Saskatchewan's NDP leadership candidates. So I'll use this post to point out a few points of interest which haven't yet made it into roundup posts.

1. Ryan Meili (1)

I haven't spent much time assessing the choice of image made by the leadership candidates so far. But the last couple of weeks have featured Meili simultaneously taking on two rather different personas: as the tech-savvy candidate who's introduced campaign apps to the party, and as the traditional candidate who's comfortable presenting himself and his policies with decidedly retro imagery. And so far he seems to have pulled off the feat.

2. Cam Broten (2)

Broten too has introduced at least one retro image which fits neatly into his overall theme. But Broten's campaign has otherwise remained fairly quiet - and it remains to be seen how much of a turnout machine he'll be able to get revved up once voting starts.

3. Trent Wotherspoon (3)

This may be a make-or-break week for Wotherspoon: the Sask Party's treatment of provincial auditor Bonnie Lysyk looks to be a lasting news item, and Wotherspoon is ideally positioned to respond to it as the chair of the Public Accounts Committee. But that opportunity comes with a risk as well: if he isn't able to maintain a clear advantage over a few government back-benchers on the story, then he may come under even closer scrutiny within the leadership campaign.

4. Erin Weir (4)

Finally, Weir has received a bit of criticism from Jason Hammond for pointing to commentary from bloggers and writers who haven't publicly endorsed him as part of a "Why We're with Weir" e-mail message. But while I've wondered at times about Weir's inclination to highlight what seems like purely neutral coverage, I don't particularly share Jason's concern with this particular set of quotes: each of the pieces of commentary posted helps to answer the question of "why" even if it doesn't necessarily come from a Weir supporter. (And indeed, I'd hope all of the candidates are able to take something useful from both the approval and criticism coming from outside voices.)

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The CP reports on the Canadian applicants rejected by HD Mining as it chose instead to staff its Murray River coal project solely with low-rights temporary immigrant workers:

The unions, which are more broadly seeking a judicial review of Ottawa's decision to issue permits to the workers in the first place, say their findings justify the legal challenge.

They filed documents to the Federal Court late Friday outlining some of the qualifications found within the tossed resumes.

One applicant had more than 30 years of wide-ranging and extensive experience in all aspects of underground mining, while another had 20 years of experience, including three as an underground operations supervisor, according to their submission.

Other sample applicants had six years experience, including three in an underground coal mine, while another had completed an "underground miner hard rock common core" certificate. At least three more had three years and experience installing ventilation, operating equipment and specializing in construction, diamond drilling and production.

"(There was) a full gamut of obviously qualified people," Cochrane argued.

But he said he's still unclear as to why the company would have found the applicants unemployable.

"That part is hard to determine from my perspective. It just looks like the Canadian applicants were discounted."

And it surely can't escape notice that it's taken a persistent effort by unions to bring the truth to light, even as HD Mining and the Harper Cons teamed up to keep Canadian workers out of the Murray River jobs.

- Errol Mendes wonders whether the Cons' omnibus environmental deregulation might be an attempt to escape the federal government's constitutional duty to consult with First Nations. And Bruce Cheadle reports that the Cons' advertising spending continues to balloon long after any actual productive stimulus has come to an end.

- Kim MacKrael discusses the effect of strict party discipline in the House of Commons, while Murray Mandryk notes that the Sask Party is following the Cons' pattern of having backbenchers do nothing but read a script prepared by the party's central command.

- Meanwhile, the Leader-Post offers its support to the new federal boundaries developed by Saskatchewan's boundary commission.

- Finally, the Broadbent Institute has unveiled a new introduction page for its Equality Project.

On predetermination

Shorter Brent Rathgeber:

What government backbencher would dare consider asking the Parliamentary Budget Officer for information if he can't suppress any inconvenient findings? I'd rather stay ignorant, thank you very much.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday morning reading.

- Sixth Estate is the latest to weigh in on Statistics Canada's findings about inequality:

Progressive taxes are based on the idea that the more money you earn, the more you spend on unnecessary luxuries. Poor people therefore have very low tax rates because the bulk of their income is (or should be) spent on absolutely necessary items: food, clothing, and shelter. Wealthy people have higher tax rates because the bulk of their income is available for discretionary spending. Losing 50% of $1 million per year isn’t remotely as painful as losing 50% of $10,000 per year.

Except that in Canada, the progressive taxation system has clearly been left behind. Over the past 30 years, the income of the top 1% nearly quadrupled, but their tax rate did not increase. The bottom 90% merely doubled, and their tax rate slightly decreased. The most explosive gains were won by the top 0.01% — an elite club which saw their income quintuple since 1982, even as their tax rate actually declined from a peak rate of 46% in 1994 to just 35% today. Some burden!

- And even the Conference Board of Canada can tell there's a problem with poverty and inequality that needs to be addressed:

Linked to inequality is Canada’s high poverty rate, which ranks among the worst of the 17 countries the report looks at.

Canada’s child poverty rate is 15.1 per cent, up from 12.8 per cent in the mid-1990s, earning a ‘C’ ranking – only the U.S. ranked lower. Working-age poverty was 11.1 per cent, up from 9.4 per cent in the late 1990s – the ‘D’ ranking Canada received was the same as the U.S. and Japan.

The Conference Board calls Canada’s rate of child poverty “unacceptable,” and says action needs to be taken.

“Poor children do not eat well, do not learn well and have low chances of escaping poverty when they grow up,” Lafleur said.

- Gaius Publius looks in detail at the evidence showing austerity helps nobody (except a few predatory elites who are more interested in distancing themselves from the masses than any social or personal good). And Paul Adams points out that it's long past time to move past Paul Martin's all-too-successful effort to claim that manageable deficits are a worse outcome than poverty and lost opportunity.

- Finally, Mike Duffy's sad attempt to create a Prince Edward Island paper trail in order to hang onto his Senate seat would be a damning blow to any chamber with a good name to preserve. But who wants to bet that his fellow Con patronage appointees will do anything but circle the wagons around him?

#skndpldr - Battlefords Debate Notes

With Saskatchewan NDP's leadership candidates figuring to be thoroughly familiar with each other and the party's debate format, one might have expected little new to emerge from the Battlefords leadership debate. But instead, it offered some novel subject matter for the candidates to discuss - and the candidates' reactions to new (or even differently-worded) questions still look to have plenty to tell us as the voting window approaches.


So what was new compared to previous debates? To start with, the audience questions took a couple of turns not seen in previous debates - with varying results.

An early question asking candidates to explain public-private partnerships and assess the P3 development of a new mental health facility was met with strong responses all around. And a later offering about the federal democratic deficit let each of the candidates focus on a particular area of strength: Trent Wotherspoon was able to champion open government and proper accounting transparency, Ryan Meili to focus in on the need for democracy to be reflected in institutions as well as a single leader's philosophy, Cam Broten to discuss the legislative process in detail and Erin Weir to pitch his proposal to eliminate corporate and union contributions to parties.

But a query about genetically-modified organisms gave rise to two distinct sets of responses: Meili and Weir both presented detailed discussions about the possible merits and pitfalls of GMOs, while Broten and Wotherspoon largely demurred on the basis that they weren't particularly familiar with the details of the issue. And that contrast was particularly stark in light of the second round of candidate questions, where Broten challenged Meili on his willingness to talk beyond a script, only to be met with an effective defence of the value of being open to discussing new and creative ideas.

Meili didn't fare as well responding to a more detailed set of questions from Weir about his plan to facilitate crowd-funding of investments. But he wasn't alone in providing at least one less-than-thorough answer: Broten avoided Weir's question as to whether favourable small-business tax treatment should be available to professional corporations, while Broten's question to Wotherspoon about party-building was also met with few specifics (even though Broten has asked similar questions before).

Finally, the most significant development may have been Meili's second round of questions, where he called out Broten's campaign based on concerns about personal attacks by volunteer callers. In effect, Meili seems to have concluded (and not without justification) that the best way to counter whisper campaigns is to bring them out into the open - and I'll be curious to see whether the campaigns take note of Broten's disavowal of the practice.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- The Guardian discusses how the all-too-familiar trend of growing inequality and ever more precarious lives for all but the fabulously wealthy is unsustainable:

While the debate in the UK is mostly focused on growth and how best to engender it, Reich explains in chilling detail why growth alone may not be enough. For too many, he explains, social mobility has begun to slide backwards. A small but growing band of global pirates – billionaires all, without allegiance to community or country, devoid of civic responsibility – accrue wealth from the continued immiseration of the squeezed majority. These hugely rich are fawned over and subsidised by governments even as inequality widens to a chasm that may yet produce social unrest.

Reich's analysis is similar to that of the UK thinktank, the Resolution Foundation. It launches its definitive study of low- to middle-income families, Squeezed Britain, this week. Britain has more than 10 million adults living on between £12,000 and £30,000 gross, the majority in work. However, this squeezed middle is fast becoming the squeezed majority, with even those on £50,000 seeing their children's prospects decline. The cause, Reich points out, is that while wages have flattened for years, the cost of living has spiralled and the richest have accelerated away. In the US, in 2008, 400 billionaires were "worth" more than 150 million of the US population. British housing statistics published last week indicated a similar contemptible polarisation under way here. The 10 most expensive boroughs in London, packed with Russian oligarchs, have a combined property "value" of £552bn, identical to that of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland combined.

Over the past few decades, average families have coped by more women going into employment, by working longer hours and by credit. But since 70% of the US economy is based on consumer spending, a lack of surplus cash means the engine is running out of fuel. The rich are small in number and don't spend nearly as much as the majority. "Free" markets with the rules written by the richest result in a shrinking public sector, deregulation, unemployment, low taxes for the most affluent and the threat of globalisation, depressing wages still further. The sum impact isn't "bad" capitalism, it is modern-day capitalism. How it changes, and how rapidly, is a challenge to its own survival. Once, the advancement of the employee was a part of the social contract. Under Thatcher, the aspiration of the average citizen was central via shareholding and home ownership. Now, a more brutal set of priorities pushes the requirements of "the little man" aside, while those who have money buy the influence that unjustly shapes the world in which we live. So how do we forge again the link between morality and the markets?

- And speaking of the immorality of markets, Ben Goldacre discusses how big pharma uses selective reporting of test results to get new drugs approved and prescribed - whether or not they actually serve any purpose other than profit extraction.

- Meanwhile, James Bell reports on how a concerted attack on the beneficiaries of social programs - as we're currently seeing from the Cons - serves to distract from the much larger amounts lost to tax evasion. And Trish Hennessy suggests that we should use stronger wording than "tax havens" to describe those who facilitate tax evasion.

- Finally, Murray Mandryk discusses Herb Emery's economic advice for the Wall government:

Emery's report is a great reminder to Wall - and the rest of us, for that matter - that maybe we don't need to rush into arbitrary spending decisions and that delays may not be the worst thing in world. Similarly, Emery raises some good points that dashing out to hire Irish workers or temporary labour - especially unskilled labour - seems wrong. Perhaps getting people from Ontario is better, Emery suggested. Maybe more money for skills training of First Nations people - instead of pouring more into university educations that benefit more mobile workers - is smarter government expenditure.

And if Saskatchewan people are unwilling to work at Tim Horton's for wages offered, they are likely telling us wages are too low.

Emery offers some wisdom that perhaps Wall should pass along a wake-up call to favoured groups like the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which constantly opposes minimum-wage increases. As Emery explains, if you can't pay workers a fair wage, maybe you're selling your coffee too cheaply. Bringing in unskilled workers from Mexico to pour coffee hardly seems a viable solution for anyone.

#skndpldr Roundup

As expected, the last week has been a relatively quiet one in the Saskatchewan NDP's leadership campaign - representing the break between membership recruitment and voter contact. But there have been a few developments worth noting.

Most obviously, the latest debate took place in Yorkton. Scott has already posted his thoughts, while Twitter coverage at the time was offered by Stephen Moore (with a particular focus on Trent Wotherspoon) and Paige Kezima.

But the development which figures to have the most impact on the balance of the campaign is Ryan Meili's 9 + 1 message: rather than allowing other candidates to take the lead in talking about what it means to elect a leader from outside the Legislature, he's making a highly visible pitch to the effect that the NDP should be looking to build strength beyond its MLAs. And the message looks like a fairly strong one on point - though there will be somewhat of a balancing act need to avoid distracting from Meili's broader vision and policy themes in responding to what's ultimately a relatively minor strategic consideration.

Meanwhile, Wotherspoon looked to answer some of the holiday musings about Cam Broten's relative success in influencing events in the Legislature by speaking out about the treatment of Provinicial Auditor Bonnie Lysyk by Sask Party MLAs. But I'd think that it's even more telling to see the response of the MLAs involved - who tried to excuse their disrespect for Lysyk by saying they don't know what her job actually is:

Scott Moe, one of the Sask. Party MLAs on the committee, said after the meeting members were acting on their own.

"The questions that I saw in there were more around the scope of the auditor's office and what exactly the office does and questions you might expect from fairly newly elected members in there."

As a bonus for Wotherspoon, he looks to enjoy an opportunity to follow up on the first new cycle as the Public Accounts Committee revisits the same terrain this week.

Finally, while Meili and Wotherspoon earned plenty of attention with their most recent public interventions, Erin Weir's latest should have received more. Obviously any news about PotashCorp's low royalties paid in 2012 fits with Weir's campaign message - but the minimal revenues coming in from the extraction of resources by a highly profitable private operator is also highly significant as a matter of provincial public policy.