Thursday Evening Links

Assorted content to end your day.

- Carol Goar discusses how the Cons' latest attacks on Employment Insurance add just one burden to the backs of workers who have already borne the brunt of decades of corporatist policy:

(L)ast Sunday, employment insurance benefits in two-thirds of the country were quietly reduced. Existing recipients were spared but new EI claimants — starting with the 54,500 workers who lost their jobs in March — will be subject to tougher rules. Most will get less support.

Generalizations are impossible. The impact on any person depends on his or her employment record, skills and the health of the local job market. But by and large, EI applicants in Oshawa, Windsor, Hamilton, the Niagara region, Sudbury, Halifax, Montreal, Winnipeg, Regina and Vancouver will fare worse under the new rules. (The effect in Toronto will minimal because EI claimants here never received the same benefits as their counterparts in the rest of the country.)

Employment insurance rates are set by formulas so complex they defy explanation. But the essence of this change is that the government has pushed the threshold to qualify for the most generous form of EI treatment out of reach for most Canadians.
...
Ironically, Flaherty’s objective was to make the EI system more equitable, a goal shared by Canadians and the Ontario government. They envisaged a uniform rate structure that would boost benefits for everyone. What the minister delivered was a plan to lower them.

It was equity of a sort — a stingy sort.

Sunday’s rule change was the government’s latest move toward a “flexible labour” agenda. It came on the heels of a crackdown on EI recipients last month to ferret out “false and inappropriate claims.” Federal officials made unannounced house calls, grilling recipients. The month before, the government imposed a requirement that repeat EI claimants accept any job in a 100-kilometre radius that paid as little as 70 per cent of their previous salary.

No doubt these measures will sharpen the private sector’s competitive edge. But they will drive down wages and make it harder for workers who lose their jobs to recover.

These trade-offs have far-reaching consequences. Over time, they will erode Canada’s standard of living and reduce the resilience of its workforce. All Canadians — even those with ostensibly secure jobs — need to pay attention.

- Meanwhile, Karl Nerenberg nicely documents the Cons' "old-fashioned red-baiting" as the preferred means of distracting attention from how ill-advised policies are hurting Canadians. But if there's anything wrong with Nerenberg's approach, it's found in his apparent assumptions that the Cons would see the label as a criticism rather than a compliment.

- In what should come as a shock to anybody who's paid absolutely no attention, Don Cayo finds that once again the NDP has a better track record managing publicly money than right-wing alternatives. And Vaughn Palmer notes that the B.C. NDP in particular is taking the all-too-rare step of building an election platform on more realistic budget assumptions than the ones put forward by the Libs - trading the nominal spending room which would allow for larger campaign promises for the prospect that the NDP's platform might actually be deliverable.

- Finally, let's round up some others' reports and commentary on the NDP's convention this weekend - with Dan Tan, Gloria Galloway, Mia Rabson, Bea Vongdouangchanh, Jennifer Ditchburn, Arash Azizi, Lawrence Martin and Thomas Walkom among others contributing to the discussion.  

#mtlqc13 Priority Resolution - Human Rights

The final panel on policy resolutions at the NDP's Montreal convention will deal with human rights issues. And the Young New Democrats of Quebec have proposed a resolution which covers a number of issues worth including in that discussion:

6-26-13
Resolution on Rights in the Digital Age
Submitted by the Young New Democrats of Quebec
WHEREAS protecting digital rights is necessary to develop a sustainable economy in the 21st century;
BE IT RESOLVED that a new subsection (6.10) be added to the Policy Book:
6.10 Rights in the digital age
New Democrats believe in:
(a) Ensuring all Canadians have affordable high-speed Internet access.
(b) Updating the notion of copyright for the 21st century, while protecting creators.
(c) Preventing malicious prosecutions for copyright infringement.
(d) Putting an end to the legal protection for “digital locks,” to enable Canadians to transfer their digital content from one medium to another.
(e) Protecting the right to privacy and free expression on the Internet.
(f) Reforming the patent system with such measures as patent lifespan that varies by sector and measures to limit malicious prosecutions.
(g) Making government more transparent by adopting open government principles.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Subsection 6.7 g be struck from the Policy Book.

Of course, the open government theme is addressed in a number of other resolutions (including two I've mentioned before). But the NDP will be well served to also embrace the combination of intellectual property policy oriented toward creativity rather than rent-seeking, a commitment to Internet accessibility, and protections for both privacy and free expression online. And in each case, the party has the opportunity to stand alone in taking the side of Canadian citizens in dealing with rapacious (and deservedly unpopular) corporate interests.

#mtlqc13 Priority Resolution - Governance

One of the most obvious sources of cynicism in politics - which the NDP should be seeking to combat at every turn - is the presence of issues where opposition promises turn into government inaction or even abuse. And the Cons have sadly offered a case in point when it comes to accountability and transparency.

That means it's particularly important for the NDP to establish a strong message on accountable government which fits into the party's grassroots values. And luckily, there's just such a resolution up for discussion:

5-28-13
Resolution on Open Government Submitted by Terrebonne-Blainville
WHEREAS new information technologies enable citizens to interact more directly with government and participate more directly in government decision-making;
BE IT RESOLVED that Subsection 5.8 of the Policy Book be amended as follows:
New Democrats believe in:
f. Promoting an open government strategy with the objective of encouraging public participation, facilitating communication between government and citizens, and making information accessible to citizens while tracking which information is most sought after by the public with a view to gradually making this government information accessible to the public in a user-friendly, modifiable form.

Once again, another, higher-ranking resolution deals with much the same subject matter (5-14-13). But the difference between the two lies in the distinction between transparency merely as a way of peering in on goverment activity, and two-way communication which facilitates citizen participation. And the NDP should be seeking to emphasize its commitment to the latter ideal.

#mtlqc13 Priority Resolution - International Affairs

The NDP's position on trade policy has of course been a hot-button issue both inside and outside the party - making it the area I'd see needing some discussion in Montreal. And while a number of other resolutions deal with the issue, one offers a particularly neat means to add an explicit commitment to the bigger picture while allowing for the approval of reasonable trade agreements (and avoiding unnecessary modifications to what's already a well-worded section of the policy book).

4-21-13
Resolution on Unfair Trade Practices Submitted by Beaches-East York
BE IT RESOLVED the following clause be added to Section 4.5 of the policy book, after clause b, and that subsequent items be reordered accordingly:
[4.5 New Democrats believe in] c) Classifying wage suppression, union suppression and lax environmental regulation as prohibited "unfair trade practices“ in international trade agreements.

Of course, there's room to import some other principles as well - such as ensuring that "unfair trade practices" aren't merely enforceable by corporate interests or measured in terms of lost profits. And if the resolution can be further strengthened to account for those types of considerations, then all the better.

But the starting point in addressing trade should be a concrete commitment to ensuring that social values are strengthened rather than undermined by international trade. And the resolution from Beaches-East York fits that goal.

New column day

Here, on how the Wall government is extending purely individual rights such as the right to privacy to corporations - and how that could lead to yet more corporate abuse in the future.

For further reading...
- The Hansard record from March 18 featuring Gord Wyant's approval of corporate secrecy in the name of civil libertarianism is here (PDF, starting at p. 2747). 
- The Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner's letter to Wyant questioning the "company's privacy" language (among other parts of Bill 65) is here (PDF).
- The Supreme Court of Canada's seminal decision on the quasi-constitutional nature of individual privacy is here; see in particular paragraph 64 and subsequent analysis (which was approved of by the majority which disagreed on the application of the agreed principles).
- Finally, I can't make mention of Mitt Romney's "corporations are people, my friend!" without including the most memorable context for it:

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Thomas Walkom adds another piece to the picture showing the Cons' efforts to shift both jobs and wealth offshore, pointing out that lax visa rules have only encouraged RBC-style outsourcing schemes. Craig McInnes recognizes that a cheap, low-rights worker strategy is a problem whether labour is imported to Canada or exploited abroad. Haroon Siddiqui, David Doorey, Heather Mallick and Barbara Yaffe express their own outrage about the deliberate elimination of Canadian jobs. And the Alberta Federation of Labour calls attention to the scope of the temporary foreign worker program.

- Mike de Souza offers a detailed look at how the Cons encouraged the oil industry to completely rewrite (and gut) Canada's environmental laws through omnibus legislation.

- And in case anybody was under the illusion that nobody has noticed the Cons' ethical abuses beyond the editorial pages, a new poll should put that to rest:

Fifty-eight per cent of Canadians disapprove of the Conservative government under Harper’s leadership, compared to 42 per cent who approve.

Canadians are especially troubled by the government’s actions in one area — secrecy and ethics.

The poll found that 69 per cent of people believe “the Harper Conservatives are too secretive and have not kept their promise to govern according to high ethical standards.” Thirty-one per cent believe the Tories have kept their promise.

Similarly, the poll found that 63 disagreed with the statement the “Harper Conservatives are living up to the promise they made when first elected in 2006 to provide an ethical, open and transparent government.”

- David Climenhaga exposes the Fraser Institute's main method of ensuring that their corporatist propaganda never faces any direct rebuttal.

- And finally, Peter Graefe rightly comments that with two parties with a combined legislative majority jockeying for position on the left in Ontario, now would be an ideal time for some significant action to combat poverty in the province.

#mtlqc13 Priority Resolutions - Social Policy

Not surprisingly, the social policy resolutions up for discussion this weekend include a wide range of issues - and I'll avoid highlighting the resolutions dealing with either familiar topics of discussion like gun control, marijuana decriminalization/legalization and housing.

Instead, I'll point out three resolutions which look to deserve particular attention:

3-39-13
Resolution on the Impact of Economic, Social, and Environmental Factors on Individual Health Care Submitted by the Quebec Section
BE IT RESOLVED that the following clauses be added to Subsection 3.1(r) of the Policy Book:
• Acknowledging that economic, social, and environmental factors impact individual, public, and community health and must be considered as social determinants of health; and
• Taking economic, social, and environmental factors into account when drafting economic, social, and environmental policy.

It shouldn't come as much surprise that I'd consider it a major plus to include some recognition of the social determinants of health as part of the NDP's official party policy. And while I'd like to see the wording strengthened and the issue promoted from a sub-point to a major theme in the longer term, this resolution offers a valuable starting point.

3-47-13
Resolution on Federal Funding for University Research Submitted by Hull-Aylmer
BE IT RESOLVED THAT a new clause be added to Subsection 3.2 of the Policy Book:
Ensuring that federal funding for university research is allocated primarily on a basis of public and/or scientific interest rather than commercialization potential or the interests of private business.

The federal government's influence over Canadian universities is of course restrained by provincial jurisdiction. But this resolution offers a means of expanding both the range of academic study carried out in Canada, and the public benefits we can expect to see flowing from federal research money.

3-52-13
Resolution on Guaranteed Annual Income Submitted by Fundy Royal
WHEREAS experiments with systems for Guaranteed Annual Income have shown positive results in terms of health and happiness, and economic stimulation, and
WHEREAS many low income Canadians are now forced to wait until the age of 65 (or 67) before they can afford to live with a minimal level of dignity, and (sic)
BE IT RESOLVED that the following clause be added to Section 3.4 of the Policy Book:
3.4
Fighting Poverty
New Democrats believe in:
e) supporting the implementation of a Guaranteed Annual Income system.

I'll note that a number of other resolutions - some higher in the current resolution list - also mention a guaranteed annual income. But those tend to fall short on one or both of two of my criteria by either focusing on small studies rather than broad principles, or failing to include the concept within the NDP's policy book.

I take it as implied that support for a guaranteed annual income or any other policy includes a desire to ensure its effective implementation, and think the NDP would be well served featuring a guaranteed annual income as part of its long-term policy menu. And so, I'd ideally want to see the Fundy Royal resolution (with the extra "and" deleted) moved to the top of the list.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Lana Payne offers an introduction to austerity for Newfoundland and Labrador residents who are just learning about it on a provincial level:

In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has also taken a rather deep liking to austerity.

It is a ready-made excuse to gut government and change the positive role it should play in our lives, in building a better society, in sharing economic wealth and mitigating the inequality gap.

It is another excuse to trash government as a catalyst to build opportunities for all citizens; another excuse to turn Canada into a fend-for-yourself country, where collective action is a thing of the past.
So in this regard, austerity fits nicely with the Harper conservative ideology.

Many economists have blamed austerity at the federal level for reducing economic growth. Three austerity budgets have resulted in fewer opportunities for Canadians, especially younger Canadians. David MacDonald, who leads the Alternative Federal Budget process, advised the Harper government to “turn off the austerity auto-pilot and get the economy going.” Instead of “budgeting with eyes wide shut,” Mr. MacDonald, an economist, urges government to address the issues that most Canadians struggle with every day, instead of making things worse and leaving Canadians to fend for themselves.
...
The cuts are beginning to form a theme. The Family Violence Intervention Court. Human Rights Commission. Adult Basic Education. Dental program for poor seniors. Arts and Culture. Libraries. They are the sorts of public programs that speak to the kind of society we wish to have; one that protects the vulnerable (abused women and children), that provides opportunities and second chances, that ensures our history and culture is not just for those who can afford it.

- Paul Buchhelt discusses how the corporate wealth-extraction machine is built on the backs of mere citizens. And Leo Gerard points out the bait-and-switch tactics used to focus people on tiny amounts of money distributed through social programs, rather than the trillions of dollars siphoned offshore for the benefit of the very few.

- Erin Weir writes that the problems with the Cons' temporary foreign worker program goes far beyond RBC:

The number of temporary foreign workers in Canada has more than doubled since the Harper government took office. The Department of Citizenship and Immigration reports the presence of 338,000 temporary foreign workers at the end of 2012.

This temporary work force is now almost as large as New Brunswick’s entire employed labour force and far exceeds that of Newfoundland and Labrador (not to mention Prince Edward Island.) With remarkably little evidence or public consultation, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program has added the equivalent of a small province to Canada’s labour market.
...
(T)he program’s expansion has not been targeted to perceived shortages. RBC is not alone in bringing temporary foreign workers to Toronto, a city with an unemployment rate well above the national average.

Since 2008, the number of temporary foreign workers has increased by 24,000 or 60 per cent in Toronto, 18,000 or 70 per cent in Quebec, and 5,000 or 80 per cent in the Atlantic provinces. Together, these regions of high unemployment account for most of the post-recession increase in Canada’s temporary foreign work force. With the exception of Toronto as well as Newfoundland and Labrador, wages in these regions are below the national average.

Expanding labour supply, without an offsetting expansion of demand, increases unemployment and/or decreases wages. Because temporary foreign workers are not permitted to permanently settle in Canada and often remit earnings to their home countries, they are unlikely to contribute as much to Canadian consumer demand as to labour supply.

The government’s policy of allowing employers to pay temporary foreign workers up to 15 per cent less than the prevailing wage obviously undercuts prevailing wages. Because temporary foreign workers are beholden to their employers, they have little ability to assert their workplace rights or negotiate wage improvements.

An econometric study based on data through 2007 published last year in Canadian Public Policy concludes, “The expansion [of the Temporary Foreign Worker program] in Canada to all low-skill occupations without limit has had an adverse effect on the Canadian labour market.” There is reason to fear that adding more vulnerable workers to weak labour markets since 2008 has further worsened unemployment and undermined wages.

- Peter Graefe notes that Quebec's example of higher taxes at the top, more income redistribution and greater direct social programming has produced a "Sweden on the Saint-Lawrence" that the rest of Canada would do well to emulate:

(E)very province has its own path to putting together movement pressures with political parties and with sympathetic bureaucrats to advance an equality agenda. The Quebec case does show that it is possible to make a significant difference on the provincial scale, which should perhaps push movements to make progress on the provincial front first, rather than trying to cobble together pressure on the federal government.

Perhaps more importantly, the specific policies and strategies adopted in Quebec are largely absent from the vocabulary of political actors in the rest of the country. Policies have been tried and shown to work. Their effects both on individuals directly affected, but also on big picture indicators like taxation, employment, inequality and poverty, have started to be catalogued. These examples should be up the sleeve of every social policy activist in Canada as solutions within the grasp of a provincial government. Movements for equality do themselves no favour when they leave this knowledge on the shelf on the assumption that Quebec is somehow as foreign as Sweden.

- Finally, Jason ambitiously asks what politics are all about - while offering some suggestions for Cam Broten in his role as the Saskatchewan NDP's leader.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Cozy cats.

#mtlqc13 Priority Resolution - Environment

On the environmental side, I'll limit my focus to one priority resolution. That's in part because the NDP's existing policy book looks to largely cover the most important aspects of the environment, and because the resolutions submitted for the Montreal convention largely have a fairly narrow focus (which takes it outside my goals in assembling the priority resolutions list).

But one resolution does offer some important new material to define the NDP's direction, even if it looks fairly familiar based on the party's current policy:

2-51-13
Resolution on Energy and Pipelines
Submitted by Toronto-Danforth
BE IT RESOLVED THAT the following
clause be added to Section 2.4 of the policy book:
i. Opposing the shipment of unrefined oil-sands bitumen through pipelines (new or old) over long distances, and only supporting the shipment of refined bitumen in the context of (1) the refining taking place close to the source of extraction, (2) the end product being intended for consumption within Canada, and (3) a broader strategy that includes a move towards renewable energy sources and a just transition for the workers employed in oil-sands related industries.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT subsequent clauses in Section 2.4 be reordered as necessary.

This resolution can be seen largely as a specific application of existing party policy, including the following:

2.4 Energy
New Democrats believe in:
...
h Discouraging bulk exports of our unprocessed natural resources and fossil fuels and providing incentives for value-added, responsible upgrading, refining and petrochemical manufacturing in Canada to maximize the economic benefits and jobs for Canadians.

However, the new resolution provides significantly more clarity as to the standards applied by the NDP in limiting our reliance on the wholesale export of unrefined bitumen - along with needed recognition that the our policy dealing with the oil sands should be directly linked to a long-term shift toward more sustainable resources.

Because the above resolution doesn't focus quite as narrowly on hot-button issues as related resolutions (particularly those dealing with individual pipelines), I won't be surprised if it ends up getting lost in the shuffle. But I'll hope to see some effort put into an overarching set of principles as well - and even if there's ample room for debate about the specific of the Toronto-Danforth resolution, it offers an important starting point on that front.

#mtlqc13 Priority Resolutions - Economy

Following up on my earlier post, let's start taking a look at a few of the resolutions which I hope to see discussed and passed at this weekend's federal NDP convention in Montreal.

In addition to the criteria mentioned in my earlier post, I also won't spend too much time highlighting resolutions which already close enough to the front of the line to be likely to pass (or which largely duplicate such resolutions). Instead, I'll focus on resolutions which will need to be promoted in the order of precedence to have a chance of being discussed and passed.

For those not familiar with the convention process, amendments to the resolutions submitted as well as the order of discussion for the plenary sessions will be determined at Friday morning's resolution panels. Unfortunately, I personally won't be arriving at the convention until that afternoon - and I'll encourage readers who will be around for the Friday morning resolution panels to discuss how to move the resolutions forward.

Without any further ado, here are the two resolutions I'd like to see promoted out of the first resolution panel (Innovating and Prospering in the New Energy Economy):

1-26-13
Resolution on Consumers’ Rights Submitted by Winnipeg Centre
WHEREAS the public good is threatened when the independence of inspection agencies are compromised; and
WHEREAS the responsibility for ensuring that all industries in Canada are properly regulated rightfully rests with the government not the private sector;
Therefore be it resolved that the following clause be added to Section 1.13 of the policy book:
1.13 New Democrats believe in:
k. Ending self-regulation in all industries and ensuring that government inspection agencies are robust, scientific and independent of political and market influence.

Since I've written a recent enough column on much the same subject, I won't go into a lot of detail on the importance of an independent public service which avoids industry capture. But the above resolution nicely captures the concern about non-regulation and self-regulation - while neatly distinguishing the NDP from its main federal competitors who are all too happy to let industry write its own rules.

1-93-13
Resolution on Progressive and Fair Taxation Submitted by Halifax
Changes to read:
1.7 Progressive and fair taxation
New Democrats believe in:
a. A progressive tax system.
b. A tax system that is robust enough to support expanded, effective public services and programs.
c. Taxing capital gains and stock options at the same rate as salaries or wages.
d. An aggressive response to tax evasion, including the use of tax havens.
e. Converting deductions from taxable income to tax credits to simplify the tax system and make it more progressive.
f. Making tax credits refundable to assist very low income Canadians
g. Ensuring that profitable corporations pay a fair share of taxes.
h. Restoring estate taxes on estates over $1 million as an element of a progressive tax system.
i. Targeting tax reductions to help low and modest income Canadians.
j. Introducing a Financial Transactions (Tobin) Tax
k. Eliminating Tax Free Savings Accounts as a means of tax avoidance

A number of other resolutions (including some higher in the current priority list) deal with some of the issues included in this complete rewrite of the NDP's existing tax policy. But none comes close to hitting all the points included in the Halifax resolution - which commits the NDP to a highly progressive set of tax policies while leaving open the question of which ones to pursue immediately. And so I'd prefer to see this resolution passed in Montreal, with future discussion to be based on the above principles.

I'll note that the panel including these resolutions also features a number of issues surrounding labour, privatization and industrial policy - and I fully expect there to be strong advocates wanting to see those dealt with as well. But ideally, we'd see the above resolutions make it to the front of the line.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Linda McQuaig tears into the Cons for exacerbating the gap between the too-rich-to-pay-taxes class and the rest of us:

Ordinary citizens diligently spend hours calculating their income and deductions and meticulously filling out forms, fearful of the probing eye and relentless reach of the tax man. At the same time, some of our richest citizens quietly park billions of dollars on faraway islands where the sun delightfully reaches but the tax man delightfully doesn’t.

The enormity of the scam that tax havens offer the tax-evading rich — and the horrendous hole they leave in national coffers around the world — has long been known and largely ignored, even as governments obsess about the resulting deficits. That’s because the rich have managed to convince us that the shortfalls should be made up by the hapless saps who diligently fill out their returns, and by government employees who have the audacity not to be working in the private sector.
...
In reality, the [bilateral treaties favoured by the Cons]were so poorly designed they’ve been virtually useless in making it harder for Canadians to hide money offshore.

On the contrary, they’ve actually opened the floodgates to tax haven use. That’s because, once a tax haven country has signed one of these (largely useless) bilateral treaties, it qualifies for special treatment under the new Harper rules, allowing multinational corporations to route their profits through the tax haven, thereby avoiding Canadian corporate tax.

For the Harperites to claim they’re clamping down on tax havens would be like claiming a clampdown on bank robberies by setting up a turn-in-a-robber snitch line, while at the same time providing robbers with instruction manuals on cracking safes.

- Meanwhile, Barbara Yaffe notes that the Cons' deliberate attacks on the CRA (particularly when it comes to its ability to pursue tax evaders) only serve to make the general public cynical about our revenue collection system - presumably fitting the Cons' longer-term goal of undermining trust in our public institutions. Jason Fekete reports on the gap between the Cons' rhetoric on tax enforcement, and their choice to impose hundreds of millions of dollars in new cuts to the CRA. And Scott Klinger writes that the U.S. faces a similar problem of individuals being forced to pick up the bill for corporate and elite tax giveaways.

- Thomas Walkom highlights the other most prominent example of the Cons using the power of the state to grind down workers for the benefit of plutocrats - being of course their choice to encourage the corporate sector to import cheaper labour rather than training and employing Canadians:

This is the dirty little secret about job-training in Canada. Employers don’t train workers because most don’t have to.

They expect government to train workers at public cost. And if that doesn’t work, businesses expect government to let them import from abroad workers who are already trained.
...
(A)side from a few vague mutterings, the Conservative government does not seem prepared to seriously scale back temporary worker programs that allow business to cherry-pick cheap labour from abroad.

If companies knew they couldn’t import, say, skilled pipefitters from Europe, they might put more effort into training domestic workers to meet their needs.

But employers know they don’t have to train. Instead, they need only wait until the last minute and then complain of labour shortages.

Over the last decade, as my friends at the Globe and Mail have reported, the number of temporary workers admitted to Canada has more than tripled, from 101,000 to 338,000.

This in the midst of the worst recession since the 1930s.

Business insists that such workers are needed because skilled Canadians are unavailable. But far too often the real reason is that foreign workers are willing to work for less.

- And Sunny Freeman discusses the Wall government's simultaneous and concerted effort to put the screws to Saskatchewan workers.

- Finally, Daniel Beland offers an accurate look at how Saskatchewan's electoral boundary revision process has (fairly and properly) played out. And needless to say, the province's Con MPs are up in arms over the possibility of fairness finding its way into the federal political system.

On changed incentives

Steve has already pointed out RBC's status as the leading beneficiary of corporate tax giveaways in the context of its outsourcing of Canadian jobs (using temporary foreign workers as an intermediate step). But it's worth highlighting that there's much more than a coincidental connection between the two.

After all, a tax system which includes meaningful rates on corporate profits and high-end individual earnings will implicitly increase the cost of prioritizing those ends over investment in an actual business. Which means there's less reason to let dead money accumulate within a corporation rather than investing, and also less to be gained by individual executives pursuing a dropped-watermelon strategy rather than trying to build a business which can sustain both employment and profits in the longer term.

Conversely, a system which facilitates a get-rich-quick approach for current executives serves as an incentive to do exactly what RBC is doing. And indeed, the public policy decision to encourage businesses to treat employees as disposable only highlights that executives will likely be seen the same way - which only exacerbates the change in incentives resulting from a lower tax rates applied to a cash-out-now approach.

In sum, RBC's outsourcing doesn't represent a betrayal of some public good which might have been expected to result from the corporate tax cuts carried out by the Libs and Cons. Instead, it's a logical consequence of their underlying philosophy - meaning that there's plenty of blame to go to Canada's corporatist parties as well as to RBC.

(Sean has more from a municipal perspective.)

(Update: See also Will McMartin on B.C.'s experience.)

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Michael Harris takes aim at Stephen Harper's thugocracy:

There is little that Stephen Harper has done that other prime ministers before him have not. But no one has used closure, time allocation, committee secrecy or omnibus legislation to a degree that renders Parliament itself irrelevant.

And he has done some other things that no prime minister ever has. He is the only one to have been found in contempt of Parliament. And has any federal government ever tabled a budget without also tabling the Planning and Priorities report? If the government’s spending details aren’t in the budget speech, aren’t in the omnibus legislation and aren’t in the estimates, isn’t Parliament then voting money without knowing how it will be spent or where cuts will be made?

The prime minister’s solution to the Warawa Mutiny is pure Stephen Harper and shows once again that this man is tone-deaf to his own shortcomings — a proclivity that will soon have him at Lying Brian numbers in the polls.

- Daniel Wilson wonders whether Harper is actively trying to pick a fight with Canada's First Nations. And Paul Adams explains how Harper has managed to avoid responsibility for his deliberate neglect in dealing with climate change, with these two elements striking me as particularly important:

Assessing risks: Human beings just aren’t that good at assessing probabilities and risks, or making the trade-offs between them, especially over time, as behavioural economists such as Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler have been exploring in recent years. That’s why surveys show we exaggerate the danger of being killed by a terrorist, why we buy lottery tickets when the odds are so bad, and why we don’t save enough for retirement. The risks of climate change have been difficult to imagine — at least until recently, when changes to the weather have become more dramatic. We find it much easier to conjure up the fear of losing our jobs or of paying more for gas at the pump.

The Harper government’s communication strategy:  The government’s approach to climate change has essentially been to make a lot of “policy noise”, proclaiming various targets without doing anything to achieve them, promising to harmonize with a non-existent American plan, and so on.  As a recent draft paper by two University of Ottawa scholars has suggested, this meaningless marching back and forth creates an illusion of government action that plays to the psychological weaknesses I described above. They call it “constructed ignorance”. The stunning thing is that the Harper government maintains the artifice of sharing the public’s concerns about climate change while at the same time using passive-aggressive tactics to check even modest steps to combat it at the international level — and even in Alison Redford’s Alberta.

(Which, needless to say, fits with my theory that the Cons are happy to voice their support for whatever climate change policy is furthest away from being implemented - at least until it comes time to put up or shut up.)

- Nick Fillmore takes a look at Ralph Klein's real legacy. And it's particularly sad to see that the "string of anti-social policies and programs" also looks to have been a blueprint for Brad Wall's corporate takeover of Saskatchewan.

- Verda Petry comments on the dangers of P3s:

The Wall government, with its accumulated deficit of $10.5 billion (LP, March 21) is fast approaching the $15-billion debt the Devine administration left when it was defeated in 1991. Add to the current debt the pillaging of Crown earnings and the growth in P3s and the result is that we and our descendents will be shackled with debt for the next several decades. No flexibility in programming will be possible for future governments.

Municipal officials and government ministers try to trick the public into believing that P3s are a "win" for everyone. This position is extremely deceptive. It is only a "win" for private developers who make a profit from investment in public infrastructure. For them, it is a secure investment because taxpayers will always be there to cover the costs of the debt.

- Finally, Alice provides a thorough look at the Labrador by-election - noting in particular that there's ample reason for each of the NDP, Libs and Cons to see a reasonable chance of winning the riding.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Stephen Maher points out why we shouldn't believe the Cons for a second when they claim to care about cracking down on offshore tax evasion:

The top level of Canadian society is a small club, and it includes politicians. The people who run the country are on excellent terms with the business people who squirrel away money in offshore tax havens.

Shea's meaningless tough talk was prompted by a CBC report that said Saskatchewan lawyer Tony Merchant has $1.7 million in a Cook Islands bank. Merchant's wife, Pana, was appointed to the Senate by Jean Chretien in 2002.

Do our politicians want the CRA to crack down on their friends and relatives?

Cockfield points out that the government is ruthless in prosecuting welfare cheats, but offshore cheats are able to skate.

"Super-rich people get tax breaks from tax officials," he said. "It's just part of the power structure."

It's clear that neither the CRA nor the government likes talking about the huge amount of Canadian money sitting in offshore bank accounts.

- Don Braid notes that Alberta's brief attempt to pretend to care about climate change has given way to a familiar "we'll do the least we can get away with" approach, accompanied by attempts to back away from an already-weak trial balloon. Barry Saxifrage highlights why Alberta can't be seen as anything but one of Canada's worst provincial offenders when it comes to exacerbating climate change.

- Meanwhile, Nathan Cullen writes about the impact of new pipelines on the people who stand to be affected - and who the Cons want to cut out of the process. And Andrew Nikiforuk (with help from Robyn Allan) points out that the arguments for massive new pipelines extending in every direction from the tar sands represent nothing but false promises.

- Trevor Herriot takes a closer look at the community pasture program the Cons have trashed without any apparent interest in what's being lost.

- Karl Nerenberg wonders what additional information investigators will be able to get from Michael Sona now that he's been officially charged (and again thrown under the bus by the party apparatchiks who controlled access to the Cons' voter database).

- And finally, Marc Spooner and Paul Orlowski make the case for revisiting the Saskatchewan Party's decision to impose standardized testing.

On priorities

Yesterday, I posted a brief overview of the policy resolutions set to be discussed at the NDP's federal convention in Montreal next weekend. But over the next few days, I'll go a step further in taking a look at the ones I see as most important for the party's development into Canada's leading progressive option over the long term.

Before I start listing individual resolutions, though, here are a few of the criteria I'll be applying in evaluating them.

First, I'll want to ensure that a priority resolution is substantive. It's well and good to offer statements of general principle or to state one's intention to study an issue, but I'll be looking for resolutions which provide some concrete definition to the NDP's policies in the years to come.

Second, a priority resolution should be forward-looking. While the convention is of course the product of a particular moment, I see it as better to define priorities which will remain relevant in future election cycles until such time as a policy proposal is fully implemented than to limit ourselves to reacting to the headlines. (On that front, I'll prefer resolutions which shape the NDP's long-term policy book to freestanding ones which will tend to be lost in the mists of time once the convention is over.)

Third, I'll be looking for resolutions which are distinctive. Thanks in no small part to the media Village, there's constant pressure on the party's leadership and caucus to equivocate or hew to the positions of other political competitors - and I don't see any particular value in having the membership further that cause. Instead, the most important contribution the membership can make is to evaluate which ideas set us apart from other parties.

Fourth, I'll want to promote resolutions that are innovative. It's natural that a large number of resolutions involve responses to immediate political issues, including the ones which are already being handled by the NDP's caucus. But I don't see the convention merely as a time to affirm that members agree with the caucus' opposition to the Cons' most egregious mistakes: instead,we should be looking to direct the party's attention to issues which haven't received the attention they deserve.

Finally, a priority resolution should be pragmatic. That doesn't mean that I want to limit the party's policy debate to bland incrementalism - but it does mean that I'll want to see some apparent means as to how an idea might be implemented in practice before making it a key focus for discussion.

Fortunately, there are plenty of resolutions submitted for the Montreal convention that look solid on all counts. And it'll be worth working to make sure those are the ones which receive the most attention from members at the convention - with the intention of ensuring that even media outlets inclined to focus solely on familiar frames are forced to notice there's a deeper progressive discussion happening within the NDP.

On topics of discussion

In advance of next weekend's Montreal convention, the NDP has released the resolutions (PDF) to be voted on by delegates. And for all the distraction created by a non-binding constitutional preamble, the more interesting point to watch will be the treatment of substantive policy resolutions which look to confirm the NDP's position as Canada's true progressive party.

For those who want to see concerted action against tax havens and unbridled financial speculation (including a Robin Hood tax), an increased focus on social and community ownership and employment rather than capital interests, and a move away from corporate self-regulation, the NDP's economic resolutions address all of those issues.

For those interested in social issues typically ignored by Canada's other political parties such as focusing on intergenerational fairness, basing policy on the social determinants of health, expanding and strengthening of the Canada Health Act, and eliminating mandatory minimum sentences, those subjects will also be up for discussion within the social investment panel.


And for those wanting a trade policy which doesn't handcuff Canadian governments, a system to protect the rights of temporary foreign workers or an explicit focus on diplomatic measures over military action, the panel on Canada's place in the world will address all of those possibilities.

What's more, the particularly progressive motions in each of the above policy areas will include resolutions put forward by the NDP's Quebec section (among other groups within the party). Which provides a strong indication that the province which gave the NDP its 2011 electoral breakthrough is fully on board with the type of social democratic principles which have long motivated the NDP's base across Canada.

Of course, there will be some obvious areas of debate: the group of resolutions on the environment and sustainable development in particular includes a number of competing proposals, while a number of resolutions across a wide range of areas will challenge conventional wisdom and past NDP policy alike.

But that only means there will be plenty of opportunity to hash out exactly where the NDP wants to go as a party. And the contrast between the flood of progressive ideas on display in Montreal and the Libs' continued choice to consciously stand for nothing should serve the NDP and its members well in building enthusiasm for the years to come.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- The Star makes the case for a serious crackdown on offshore tax avoidance:

Thanks to a spectacular data leak Canadians are getting a glimpse into what some have dubbed the “black hole” of globalization: The $20 trillion or more in unreported income thought to be stashed in offshore tax havens by the world’s richest people to avoid taxes. It’s not a pretty sight.

At a time when Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is struggling to eliminate a $26-billion deficit and when governments around the world are starved for resources, the seismic leak to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists based in Washington can only add to the growing clamour for a crackdown on offshore accounts.
...
This predatory exploitation of gaps in cross-border tax rules has enabled a small, super-rich elite to shelter their wealth and avoid paying their fair share, leaving working people to shoulder the burden of sustaining the services we all rely on. It’s the kind of unfairness that fuelled the Occupy movement and shakes public confidence in the tax system. In March the CRA reported on its website that a landscaper, mortgage broker and homebuilder were fined for tax offences. But there was no evidence of the agency going after bigger, offshore fish. That’s got to change.

- And Ranjit Sidhu notes that offshoring has played a major role in exacerbating inequality around the globe - effectively ensuring the failure of any trickle-down theory of wealth.

- Josh Eidelson discusses how the state-facilitated abuse of guest workers serves as a bellwether for the treatment of workers generally. Trish Hennessy's latest numbers document the continued gender gap in Canadian workplaces. And the Economist notes that while governments have done plenty to protect elites' property rights, they're often entirely willing to take away whatever modest holdings a worker can put together in order to boost corporate profits.

- Craig and Mark Kielburger ask how citizens can influence policy decisions between elections. But I'll add that one of the most important contributions one can make involves social communication rather than direct pressure on politicians: indeed, it's only by discussion important issues with a wide enough range of people to push a government into action that the direct-contact strategy figures to be effective.

- Finally, Tabatha Southey's latest features this important retort to the Cons' divide-and-conquer approach to politics:

In the past, Ontario Conservatives have sometimes contacted her asking questions about whether, as a senior citizen, she resents paying school taxes when she has no children at home and is on a fixed income.

If they know she is retired, she reasons, they should know she has a bit of time on her hands as well.

For the record, my mother – who pretty much resents paying for almost anything – doesn’t resent “paying a tax to support a system that educated my four children,” as she puts it to the Conservatives. But she does resent “any implication that because I’m older now, I’m so shortsighted and mean as to have no interest in the education of my neighbours’ children …”

Juxtaposition

Shorter tar sands shills trying to get the general public to do their PR work:

Our oil industry affects every single Canadian from coast to coast to coast. Speak up in defence of your corporate masters - it's your patriotic duty!

Shorter tar sands shills when it comes to assessing the potential environmental damage from new pipelines:

If we can't see oil dripping off of you, we don't care what you have to say.

[Update: And by the way, take a look at Alison's Dilbit cartoons if you haven't yet.)

Musical interlude

Sneaker Pimps - Half Life

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Frances Russell weighs in on the Cons' continued contempt for democracy:

The Conservatives under Stephen Harper are running an effective dictatorship. They believe they are quite within their rights to muzzle Parliament, gag civil servants, use taxpayer money for blatant political self-promotion, stand accused of trying to subvert a federal election and hand over much of Canada's magnificent natural heritage to the multinational oil and gas lobby.

What is even more disturbing is that the national media, with a few notable exceptions, has underplayed or ignored these developments that are a clear assault on Canada's democratic institutions and processes.
...
Even more frightening is the code's proclamation that federal employees owe "duty of loyalty" to the "duly elected government" and spells out how offenders can be reported.

This is a historic -- and very disturbing -- development. In genuine democracies, the civil service is expected to be non-partisan and loyal to the Crown (the nation and its citizens), not to the politicians of the current government.

How long will Canada be able to claim to be a first-world democracy if this anti-intellectual, anti-science and clearly anti-democratic climate persists in Ottawa's corridors of power?

- Meanwhile, Bill Curry and Stuart Thompson take a look at the number the Cons have left out of the budget and find that they're again attacking the Canada Food Inspection Agency - slashing 15% of the budget from an organization which is already being told to accept an honour system from operators rather than actually functioning as a regulator.

- Glen McGregor provides a desperately-needed bit of sunlight into the shady operations of the Fraser Institute - but notes that the bulk of the organization's budget comes from millions in untraceable money from other foundations, along with seven-figure foreign donations.

- And finally, Erin Weir highlights how the Saskatchewan Party's business tax giveaways have nothing to do with economic development and everything to do with freebies for Brad Wall's corporate sponsors:

Saskatchewan already has a lower rate of 10 per cent for manufacturing and processing - the industries most able to relocate among jurisdictions. Corporate taxes do not explain Saskatchewan's loss of 4,200 manufacturing jobs in the past seven years. For example, several meat-packing plants moved to Manitoba, where such manufacturing facilities actually pay a higher provincial rate of 12 per cent.

Krawetz proposes to cut the general corporate tax rate, which applies to large resource, financial, construction and service companies. Clearly, a potash mine cannot move to another province in pursuit of lower corporate taxes.

Similarly, a construction contractor working on that mine must operate in Saskatchewan. Businesses that exploit local resources or serve local markets do not leave because of modest differences in corporate taxes.

A common misconception is that businesses can simply report their profits in whichever province has the lowest tax rate. In fact, the Canada Revenue Agency apportions each company's taxable Canadian profits among provinces based on the actual location of its sales and employees.

A corporation operating in a province must pay its corporate tax there.
...

(C)orporate tax rates have very little effect on private investment financed by debt, Canadian equity or American companies. However, corporate tax cuts reduce the revenue available to fund public investment in highways, bridges, schools, universities and other economically important facilities.

Statistics Canada concludes: "Between 1962 and 2006, roughly one-half of the total growth in multifactor productivity in the private sector was the result of growth in public infrastructure." The government of Saskatchewan should cancel planned corporate tax cuts and instead invest in needed provincial services and infrastructure.

On adaptation

Murray Mandryk's Wednesday column serves as a downright painful example of Monday morning quarterbacking - cherry-picking examples from seven decades of Saskatchewan governments to criticize "rash decisions" without recognizing the difference between reasonable experimentation and blatant cronyism. And under Mandryk's implicit standard for public-sector risk aversion (that if something could possibly prove to be anything less than an unqualified success, it's not worth doing), Saskatchewan's legislative assembly would be meeting around a donated table in a barn situated in the middle of the still-undeveloped prairie.

But Mandryk is far from the only voice suggesting that such a standard should apply to government decision-making. As much as I agree with Donald Savoie's overall criticism of the viewpoint that government should be run like a business, he too takes as a given that the public sector should be held to an impossibly high standard:

It doesn’t much matter in the private sector if you get it wrong 40 per cent of the time so long as you turn a handsome profit and increase market share. It doesn’t much matter in the public sector if you get it right 99 per cent of the time if the 1 per cent you get wrong becomes a heated issue in Question Period and the media.

But the consequence of accepting that view is that we're bound to be stuck with a sub-optimal set of choices. Private actors will effectively be free to go ahead even with projects which have a near-certainty of causing public harm (since a government can't be certain it will do good by intervening to stop them). And public projects with even a strong possibility of success and a minimal opportunity cost will be rejected out of hand.

So what alternative model can we use to make sure that government decision-making best serves the public interest - both in avoiding bad ideas, and encouraging the development of good ones?

I'll suggest that we should want our governments to apply substantially the same lens to regulatory and public policy decisions. In either case, we should consider the costs of both action and inaction - and recognize that stagnation in a system which fails to try new ideas is itself a detrimental outcome.

Fortunately, that lens is nicely described by Tim Harford in Adapt. Without getting into too much detail, I'll summarize his philosophy as applying an evolutionary model to public policy development: encouraging new ideas which have a plausible (if far from certain) chance of success, while ensuring that risks are taken only on a scale where their failure won't significantly affect the broader public interest.

As a corollary of that view of public policy, a single failed program doesn't necessarily signal a failed government. (In fact, the reasonableness of a government can be found in large part in its willingness and ability to evaluate its own decisions - including acknowledging the failure of pilot projects while recognizing how the lessons learned may lead to future success.)

Instead, the fundamental question is whether a government orients its activities toward a reasonable set of opportunities. And that should include both making choices at the cabinet table, and devolving survivable amounts of decision-making authority to lower levels.

Of course, the evolutionary model for public policy development also implies that we should look to preserve the positive results of successful adaptation. And it's here that Saskatchewan's right-wing governments have done the most damage: from giving away Crowns which could have held tens of billions of dollars of value for the public to taking a wrecking ball to a well-developed film industry without even a hint of reasonable explanation, the PCs and Sask Party have proven to be more interested in demolishing anything which might speak to the NDP's good decisions than in maintaining and improving ideas which have obvious benefits for the province.

In sum, we should expect our elected representatives to look for opportunities to advance the public interest. And while it's indeed essential for governments to make reasonable choices, we won't get those if we presume that doing nothing is the only safe option - or indeed a viable choice in general.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- John Greenwood and CBC News both report on the offshore tax avoidance being revealed through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. And Susan Lunn observes that Canada's federal parties are all at least paying lip service to the issue - though of course the Cons' cuts to tax enforcement speak louder than their spin.

- Meanwhile, Paul McLeod notes that income inequality will also receive at least some much-needed attention in Parliament. And Danyaal Raza's discussion of the damage done to public health by inequality looks to offer one important point worth studying:

Not only are we falling behind when compared to our past selves, but also when compared to other high-income countries. For example, in the case of income inequality and child wellbeing, we are stuck in the mediocre middle behind countries like Denmark, Spain, Finland and Belgium. The same pattern is repeated for mental health, obesity, drug abuse and a multitude of other health ills.

In the United Kingdom, where research first established the link between income inequality and health, the issue has received cross-partisan support. In 2009, Prime Minister David Cameron of the Conservative Party acknowledged that “among the richest countries, it’s the more unequal ones that do worse according to almost every quality of life indicator,” while the Labour Party’s Ed Milliband stated, “The gap between rich and poor does matter. It doesn’t just harm the poor, it harms us all.”

Here at home, Canadians mirror such cross-partisan support. A recent Broadbent Institute study found that 58% of Conservative supporters, 71% of New Democrats and 72% of Liberals are all willing to pay more to protect social programs and make reducing income inequality a higher priority.

As a family doctor who sees the impacts of these public policies on the front lines, I find myself nodding in agreement to these sentiments and calls to action. While there are some clinical interventions I can use to address income and health, systemic policy change will be the ultimate lever of change. It is time for both federal and provincial governments to raise additional revenue from those most able to afford it in order to support social programs that help redistribute income and provide immediate health benefits for all people in Canada. In the face of mounting evidence of this growing problem and its consequences for our health and the health of our patients, our governments can no longer sit on their hands. The time for leadership on this issue has come.

- Pat Atkinson notes that the hidden effects of the Cons' budget include an attack on small credit unions.

- Finally, I'm fairly sure this was the headline the Alberta PCs wanted in order to change the narrative about the Cons' environmental neglect. But there's still ample reason for skepticism about a system based entirely on "intensity" targets rather than real ones - retaining the possibility that the tar sands can continue to ramp up their greenhouse gas emissions without paying a dime (or even collect credits for doing so).

New column day

Here, on how the CFIA's inability to do anything about tainted horse meat exemplifies the problems with weak and under-resourced regulators.

For further reading...
- Again, Mary Ormsby's original story is here.
- Andrew Nikiforuk's take on the appointment of oil lobbyist Gerald Protti to set up Alberta's new regulatory system is here.
- And for those who haven't given it a read in awhile, Matt Taibbi's feature on the role of financial institutions and their alumni in causing repeated crashes is worth another look.

On contradictions

Aaron Wherry nicely points out some of the jaw-dropping contradictions in the Cons' climate change messaging. But let's not forget a few more worth adding into the mix.

Having refused to implement any meaningful regulations or carbon pricing at the federal level, the Cons have tried to take credit for provincial attempts to fill the vacuum - even ones they've fought against with every fiber of their being. And they've not only scrapped the public organization which dared to highlight that difference, but they've since gone out of their way to hide its work.

Which is to say that in climate change as in other policy areas, the Cons' consistent pattern is one of offering misleading statements of fact, and perpetually chasing credit and refusing to accept any blame - regardless of whose orders resulted in either result.

But thanks in no small part to the Village, they've managed to cling to power. Mostly competent government indeed.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Stephen Hume rightly mocks the Fraser Institute for using its tax-exempt status to whine about individuals who don't earn enough to pay income taxes. But I'll take the opportunity to reiterate a point I've made before: progressive governments in particular will do far better to consider how public resources can be used to benefit people of all income levels, rather than buying into the "get people off the tax rolls" rhetoric that only allows corporate interests to make arbitrary distinctions between "makers and takers".

- Meanwhile, Canadians for Tax Fairness catch bank officials trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public on the use of tax havens to shelter financial profits.

- Alison discusses how yet another spate of spills and tough questions has caused problems for oil industry shills. But I doubt they're complaining so long as they're still in charge of setting public policy.

- And there isn't much indication that the corporate sector will lose the ability to warp legislation in its own favour anytime soon.

- Finally, Mia Rabson, the Winnipeg Free Press, the Toronto Star, and the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix all weigh in on Stephen Harper's muzzing of his MPs (and how it reflects a deeper democratic deficit). And Tim Harper muses that the Cons may be well past their (however sad) prime as a government.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Sunbeam cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- George Monbiot proposes a basic income as one of the great ideas needed to challenge corporatist orthodoxy:

A basic income (also known as a citizen's income) gives everyone, rich and poor, without means-testing or conditions, a guaranteed sum every week. It replaces some but not all benefits (there would, for instance, be extra payments for pensioners and people with disabilities). It banishes the fear and insecurity now stalking the poorer half of the population. Economic survival becomes a right, not a privilege.

A basic income removes the stigma of benefits while also breaking open what politicians call the welfare trap. Because taking work would not reduce your entitlement to social security, there would be no disincentive to find a job – all the money you earn is extra income. The poor are not forced by desperation into the arms of unscrupulous employers: people will work if conditions are good and pay fair, but will refuse to be treated like mules. It redresses the wild imbalance in bargaining power that the current system exacerbates. It could do more than any other measure to dislodge the emotional legacy of serfdom. It would be financed by progressive taxation – in fact it meshes well with land value tax.

These ideas require courage: the courage to confront the government, the opposition, the plutocrats, the media, the suspicions of a wary electorate. But without proposals on this scale, progressive politics is dead. They strike that precious spark, so seldom kindled in this age of triangulation and timidity – the spark of hope.

- But Digby notes that it shouldn't be much challenge for a renewed set of progressive ideas to stand out in comparison to free-market doctrine - as three decades of conservative political dominance in the U.S. have led to nothing but miserable policy outcomes for anybody but the corporate elite.

- Andrew Jackson points out the connection between inequality and poor health. And Owen Jones worries that the UK's National Health Service may already be dead thanks to concerted Conservative efforts to destroy it.

- Finally, John Ivison makes the obvious point that the most important factor causing Canada to be a climate change laggard is Stephen Harper's obstinate refusal to do anything but maximize short-term oil industry profits - and even Tasha Kheiriddin tears into Harper for his constant strategy of pitting economy against environment. But the most important reminder of the dangers of short-sighted resource exploitation comes from Yellowknife, where the public is now on the hook for a billion-dollar cleanup bill as a toxic mine falls apart long after the corporate sector lost interest.

[Edit: Added Ivison link.]

On impending failures

Lest anybody see the high-profile Atlanta example of standardized testing fraud as an isolated incident, Valerie Strauss writes about how Sask Party-style mandatory testing has produced similar problems across the U.S.:

In the past four academic years, test cheating has been confirmed in 37 states and Washington D.C. (You can see details here, and, here, a list of more than 50 ways that schools can manipulate test scores.)  The true extent of these scandals remain unknown, and, as Michael Winerip of The New York Times shows here in this excellent article, it is very hard to get to the bottom of these scandals. In Atlanta, it took the will of two governors who allowed investigators to go in with a lot of time and subpoena power.

Atlanta, in fact, is the tip of a national test-score manipulation “iceberg,” according to Bob Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, or FairTest, a nonprofit dedicated to ending the misuse of standardized tests. The cause? Pressure by politicians on educators to boost standardized exam results “by hook or by crook” to meet the requirements of laws that purport to promote student achievement but don’t.

...

Anyone following school reform over the past decade knows exactly what happened. Under No Child Left Behind, president George W. Bush’s chief education initiative, and then Race to the Top, President Obama’s central education program, placed increasingly high stakes on standardized test scores. They had to go up, or else there would be negative consequences not just for students but schools and teachers and principals.

Those mandates became coupled with a “no excuse” management push by school reformers who said teachers had, well, no excuse not to raise their students’ test scores. Not a lack of materials. Not an overcrowded classroom. Not students who were hungry or sick or traumatized from living in violent communities. Nothing.

Then we started hearing story after story about so-called “miracle schools” where scores shot up, seemingly overnight. The miracles never really panned out.

Needless to say, the same message which created incentives to cheat is exactly the one being pitched by the Sask Party: that student and school progress alike are somehow better measured by one-off testing than by longer-term development which isn't so easily reduced to a single number. And this even as international testing results show early childhood development and social supports, not constant testing, to be the most consistent contributor even to testing outcomes.

In the end, then, one can't describe the Sask Party's obsession with universal testing as anything particularly new or innovative. Instead, it's a well-worn racket whose flaws have already been thoroughly exposed in the United States - and the only question for now is whether Brad Wall will lurch ahead even in the face of the evidence.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Lori Theresa Waller provides her own take on the Canadian Foundation for Labour Rights' study on labour rights and inequality:

In the 1970s, all provinces used the simple card check system, whereby an employer must legally recognize a union if the majority of workers sign membership cards. Since then, B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia have moved to requiring that workplaces also hold a vote before the union will be legally recognized.

...Studies have found that the additional requirement of holding a vote decreases the success of union organizing drives by between 9 and 20 per cent.
...
A 2012 study by five UBC economists concluded that roughly 15 per cent of the growth in income inequality in Canada throughout the 1980s and 1990s was directly linked to falling rates of unionization.

- Meanwhile, the Canadian Labour Congress offers up a handy quiz about corporate tax giveaways.

- Thomas Homer-Dixon observes that the Obama administration could do Canada a favour by rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline and encouraging some much-needed thought as to how to build a sustainable economy:

There is a less obvious but no less important reason many Canadians want the industry stopped: it is relentlessly twisting our society into something we don’t like. Canada is beginning to exhibit the economic and political characteristics of a petro-state. 

Countries with huge reserves of valuable natural resources often suffer from economic imbalances and boom-bust cycles. They also tend to have low-innovation economies, because lucrative resource extraction makes them fat and happy, at least when resource prices are high. 

...

Both the cabinet and the Conservative parliamentary caucus are heavily populated by politicians who deny mainstream climate science. The Conservatives have slashed financing for climate science, closed facilities that do research on climate change, told federal government climate scientists not to speak publicly about their work without approval and tried, unsuccessfully, to portray the tar sands industry as environmentally benign.

The federal minister of natural resources, Joe Oliver, has attacked “environmental and other radical groups” working to stop tar sands exports. He has focused particular ire on groups getting money from outside Canada, implying that they’re acting as a fifth column for left-wing foreign interests. At a time of widespread federal budget cuts, the Conservatives have given Canada’s tax agency extra resources to audit registered charities. It’s widely assumed that environmental groups opposing the tar sands are a main target.

This coercive climate prevents Canadians from having an open conversation about the tar sands. Instead, our nation behaves like a gambler deep in the hole, repeatedly doubling down on our commitment to the industry.

- And Kate Allen reports that the Cons' muzzling of scientists has earned them an impending investigation by the federal Information Commissioner.

- Finally, Dr. Dawg comments on Stephen Harper's decision to turn Canada into a hermit kingdom rather than a significant international actor. And Paul Heibecker writes that the Cons' withdrawal from the international community goes far beyond the drought treaty that's received so much recent attention:

There is a disappearing character to contemporary Canadian multilateral diplomacy. Like Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire cat, soon all that may remain of our country at the UN is a grin or, more accurately, a scowl.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Sunny Freeman reports on the Canadian Foundation for Labour Rights' study into the effects of anti-labour legislation:

The CFLR argues that [right-to-free-ride] laws would contribute to greater income disparity by undermining union strength and rights to collective bargaining, which they say leads to improved wages and benefits for employees.

The authors cited statistics suggesting that the wage premium for Canadian unionized workers over non-unionized employees in comparable jobs is between seven and 14 per cent. Workers in U.S. states that have adopted the laws earn an average of $1,500 less annually and have lower rates of employer-sponsored health and pension plans than workers in regions that have no such laws, they added.

The CFLR suggests that any such legislation would be the culmination of a trend in the past three decades that has brought an increase in anti-union labour laws.

“The attack on labour rights is being ramped up by the federal government and various provincial governments,” it said, adding that government interference in labour relations has become more prevalent.

- Mary Ormsby's expose on drug-tainted horse meat making its way into Canada's food chain all too aptly highlights how honour-system "regulation" tends to operate:

Priest signed the federal government’s mandatory Equine Information Document — a type of horse passport that must accompany all horses destined for slaughter — and stated that as owner, he had “uninterrupted possession, care and control” of Backstreet Bully for the past six months.

In fact, he had owned him for about 24 hours.

In signing the passport, Priest also attested that Backstreet Bully had been drug free for the past six months and had not been given any “not permitted” substances listed on the government’s website.

Critics of the passport system say the form is confusing and open to misinterpretation or outright fraud.

Priest, who has been in the horse business for more than 40 years, said he rescues and sells horses to good homes. He told the Star he falsely claimed he’d owned Backstreet Bully for six months because “everybody does” this on the horse documents.
...
The federal government relies heavily on the accuracy of the passports, which have been in existence since 2010 and are the first line of defence in keeping tainted horse meat from the human food chain. The government does not require owners selling a horse for meat to provide additional medical history such as veterinary records.

Dr. Martin Appelt, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s national veterinary program manager, acknowledged the government relies on an honour system and hopes that the documents are “a reflection of the truth.”

In other words, the entire regulatory system is based on hoping for vendors to accurately describe the products they're selling - even as "everybody" within the system considers false answers to be just fine. Which sounds like an ideal recipe for exactly the kind of misinformation which seems to be the norm under the Cons' anti-regulatory schemes.

- Meanwhile, the oil industry is leaking various toxic fluids all over North America. Pipeline proponents are bullying landowners while leaving communities to clean up their messes. And the Cons' latest corporatist giveaways may include the establishment of a right to frack. But it's your patriotic duty not to notice.
- Finally, Kate Webb reports on the lone charity deregistered as a result of the Cons' McCarthyite attack on progressive issue advocacy: the nuclear disarmament group Physicians for Global Survival. And we surely shouldn't miss the opportunity to criticize the Cons' war on global survival as a core governing principle.