Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Derrick O'Keefe calls for a mass movement to stop the Harper Cons in their tracks now, rather than waiting for 2015:

Thoughts of ousting Harper in 2015 are well and good, but not nearly sufficient at this perilous moment for democracy and social justice in Canada. Given Bill C-38 and the events of the past few months - think about the "robocalls" scandal and the F-35 cost fiasco, for starters - nothing less than an unprecedented mass movement in the streets will suffice to push back and change the correlation of forces in political life in this country.

The rapid spread of protest actions - both with the Occupy encampments last fall, and the Casseroles in solidarity in Quebec these past weeks - illustrates, I think, a yearning for unity and mobilization amongst everyone opposed to Harper and the corporate agenda. It's been incredibly inspiring to watch, for example, how quickly the idea of 'Casseroles Night in Canada' spread. These moments are signs that there is a hunger for real, substantive change. 

The experiences of Occupy and the Casseroles, however, have also revealed the limits of our capacities at present. Mobilizations spread quickly, but participation is fickle and large protests fleeting - this is inevitable without the backing and active support of big organizations, and without widespread politicization in general. 

The strength of Quebec's student and social movements has been built up over years of base-building, and exist in the context of a much more developed progressive political culture than the rest of Canada. To admit this is not to give up, but rather to take a longer-term perspective to the task at hand - it's a war of position, not an insurrection.

- Meanwhile, Jason Fekete confirms that the Cons' push for resource extraction at all costs bears no resemblance at all to what Canadians want to see. And John Geddes points out that the list of radical environmentalists who expect carbon pricing to play a part in the global economy includes the likes of the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell.

- In the "just behind the curve" department, Chris Selley speculates that a political party might be able to succeed in Quebec while challenging the sacred cow that is the asbestos industry. This surely comes as news to all concerned.

- Finally, Steve V rightly wonders how the influence of corporate advertising dollars may affect media coverage.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Cats with company.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Dr. Dawg highlights Peter Russell's take on the Cons' 2008 efforts to prevent a Parliamentary majority from actually exercising its right to vote down a government which had lost the confidence of the House of Commons. And Steven Chase follows up by noting the role that the Cons' smear machine may have played in subverting Canadian democracy.

- Meanwhile, Bruce Cox discusses how a longstanding democratic crisis has led us to the verge of environmental disaster. And as Scott points out, there's plenty of room for matters to get worse when our federal government is actively looking for ways to encourage and facilitate pollution - to which I'll add that the Cons' deliberate steps to avoid telling the truth about hazardous substances aren't hugely promising either.

- Nobel laureate Paul Krugman's blog and columns are among my must-reads - so I often presume that readers will be familiar with his take on economics. But for anybody looking for a handy starting point on Krugman's recent work, Heather Mallick provides it while reviewing End This Depression Now.

- Finally, Erin agrees with the take that we shouldn't let anybody siphon resource wealth out of Saskatchewan - but points out that it's the Saskatchewan Party's low-royalty, multi-loophole system that's actually draining money out of our province.

On importance

There's been plenty of debate about the protest which caused Joe Oliver to move a funding announcement. But I'd think there's a more fundamental question we should ask about the event, particularly when the indignant response of the event host was to the effect that "this is an important announcement!".

To wit: how exactly is it important for the Cons to be able to dictate that a public venue serve as a resistance-free backdrop for their PR efforts?

To be clear, there may be circumstances where the announcement of a policy may have a significant effect on its implementation. If the public needs to know about a service to make use of it, then by all means there's a need for unimpeded communication in some form to reach the target audience.

But in this case, the announcement itself was of zero importance to the effectiveness of the funding: money for medical isotopes research is presumably well-known within the hospital involved and among the research community without a need for anybody to play to the cameras. And so the main goal of Oliver's press conference involved a bare grab for media attention on the public dime, rather than serving any substantive purpose.

Of course, we've all too often come to accept that it's the divine right of Cons to assemble a compliant media and no dissenters wherever they please (and at our expense) to deliver talking points. And I'm sure the lesson they'll take from Oliver's press conference is that they should crack down even further on anybody who might disagree with any of their policies.

But there's a more basic question worth asking as to how publicly-funded political propaganda fits with the need for genuinely free speech. And the answer may be that we shouldn't be so ready to see our money and civil service co-opted to PR stunts in the first place.

Insider tradeoffs

Postmedia and CTV have both reported on how this weekend's #skndp12 convention may shape the Saskatchewan NDP's 2013 leadership race. But it's worth noting how the major split among prospective candidates may affect the party in the months to come.

Here's CTV's juxtaposition of a couple of the putative candidates' views as to whether the NDP's next leader needs to be an MLA:

Weir doesn't think the fact that he is not in caucus puts him at a disadvantage.

"There is a big challenge ahead of re-building the NDP and that's work that has to be done outside of the legislative building, so I think it's advantageous to have someone outside of caucus," says Weir.

But some potential candidates think otherwise. MLA Cam Broten is the NDP Health Critic. He says experience on the floor of the legislature is something the membership will look for in a leader. "It's up to the party membership, but I think it's important to pick someone who has experience and can plug into what people in the province care about." 

At the same time, one of the weekend's more noteworthy presentations discussed the challenges facing the nine current MLAs in trying to hold the government to account. And if a third or more of the caucus winds up entering the leadership race, that task may only become more difficult while the leadership race is in progress.

Under most circumstances, we'd expect to see leadership contenders leave their critic roles during a campaign. But when all of the current NDP MLAs are already juggling daunting sets of issue responsibilities, it may not be realistic to expect a half-dozen who don't run for the leadership to see their own workloads bumped up by another 50% during a six-month campaign period.

Mind you, I'd argue there's a ready answer to that problem if it arises. In fact, the party needs to be building a set of high-profile critics and potential cabinet members wider than the current caucus alone - and that might involve assigning responsibility to some individuals who don't currently hold seats in the legislature. But such a move by John Nilson on an interim basis would hardly fit the message that there's a radical difference between MLAs and non-MLAs in a person's ability to reach and consult with Saskatchewan's citizens.

Finally, there's always the possibility that the current MLAs might hold onto their critic responsibilities while running for the leadership - which would be the outcome that best fits the theory espoused by Broten. But that would significantly limit the ability of MLA leadership candidates to chart their own course during the portion of the leadership campaign when the legislature is sitting.

Of course, once the campaign begins in earnest we'll surely see far more important debates than the exact significance of time spent as an MLA. But it's well worth keeping in mind that the jockeying for position among leadership candidates isn't taking place in a vacuum - and members will have every reason to watch which contenders' plans and messages best fit the resources and realities of today's Saskatchewan NDP.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for a sunny Sunday.

- Paul Wells offers some theories as to why the Cons haven't yet launched attack ads against Thomas Mulcair. But I'd think the more important aberration is the fact that they did do so against Bob Rae before he ever became the Libs' permanent leader: the purpose of the Cons' attacks has otherwise always been fairly focused on softening up Lib leaders in advance of potentially imminent elections, and I'd fully expect the Cons to test out as many possibilities as they can through less expensive means before launching their usual saturated-airwave attacks against Mulcair in advance of 2015.

- Meanwhile, I find it striking that Susan Riley seems surprised that Mulcair has been effective as the NDP's leader, particularly on the environment where his leadership campaign focused largely on exactly the experience and principles we've seen in practice:

(A)s a former Liberal environment minister in Quebec, Mulcair “gets” the issue, he means it, and he has the intellectual acuity and debating skills to fend off inevitable accusations that he is anti-jobs, anti-Alberta. 

Although he must avoid needlessly inflaming western sensitivities, the environment is one issue where an “uncompromising” approach from a federal leader — politicians are charged with safeguarding the public interest, after all, not running interference for the oil industry — is long overdue.

- Dr. Dawg spots the latest example of the Cons breaking both promises and the law - this time in withholding publicly-funded polling numbers.

- Finally, Michael Geist explores the real reason the Cons are so determined to push the TPP and other corporate trade agreements:

The price of admission was very steep – Canada appears to have agreed to conditions that grant it second-tier status – and the economic benefits from improved access to TPP economies are likely to be relatively minor since we already have free-trade agreements with four of the ten participants.

Given those conditions, why aggressively pursue entry into the negotiations? The reason stems less from gaining barrier-free access to a handful of relatively small economies and far more about using the TPP as a backdoor mechanism to promote regulatory changes in Canada.

Given Canada’s late entry into the TPP process, the U.S. was able to extract two onerous conditions that Prime Minister Stephen Harper downplayed as the “accession process.” First, Canada will not be able to reopen any chapters where agreement has already been reached among the current nine TPP partners. This means Canada has already agreed to be bound by TPP terms without having had any input. Since the TPP remains secret, the government can’t even tell us what has been agreed upon.
...
With Canada already surrendering negotiation leverage and few important markets at stake, our participation is less about other TPP countries and much more about us. Business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce applauded Canada’s entry into the TPP, expressing the hope that it would force further changes to Canadian intellectual property laws less than 24 hours after Bill C-11 passed in the House of Commons.

For the Canadian government, the TPP offers cover for major reforms to supply management, the combination of tariffs, quotas and price supports that increase costs for dairy, eggs, chicken, turkey and broiler hatching eggs. The system has been politically untouchable for decades, but using a backdoor approach of mandating change through trade agreement might provide the mechanism to garner the necessary popular support.

While backers maintain that the TPP will open up new markets to Canadian companies, the reality is that the agreement’s biggest impact is likely to come from major domestic legislative reforms that would otherwise face considerable opposition and serious political risk.

 [Edit: added link.]

On timeless recipes

Alice offers a thorough discussion of the ingredients behind the NDP's Quebec gains in 2011. But the most important part of the story may be that one of the key factors had in fact been in place all along - and may only help the NDP all the more in election cycles to come:

Worth as much as the values and leadership questions combined, however, were Quebeckers' positions on three key policy issues that matched up well with the NDP. According to CES researchers, issue positions rarely turn out to be the explanations of vote choice – usually it's values, partisanship and leadership. But this time was different, and three key issues drove support to the NDP in Québec in 2011 (in order of influence)

• support for increased healthcare spending
• support for increased spending on the environment
• support for higher corporate taxes

Because these were all popular positions with Quebeckers, it was a big pond for the NDP to be able to fish in, and most of the gains again came at the expense of the Bloc Québécois, especially in the first two cases.

What's only hinted at in the above explanation is that the difference between 2011 and previous elections when it came to the NDP's policies was their place as a deciding factor in voting decisions - not any apparent change in underlying support for the policies themselves. In effect, 2011 served as compelling proof of the fit between the NDP's policy agenda  and Quebec's electorate that party supporters have mused about for decades - just as long as voters actually decide based on policy in the face of far too much coverage based on other factors.

And there looks to be plenty of potential for a virtuous cycle as the party looks to consolidate its gains. The more we discuss policies which are already popular and suggest that voting decisions should be based on those rather than personality or leadership, the better the chance of both building a party policy brand that can't be dislodged by opponents, and firmly entrenching Quebec support for the NDP for a long time to come.

Musical interlude

Kaskade - Be Still

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Chantal Hebert theorizes that Canada's political scene has taken every turn Jack Layton might have hoped for since his passing last summer, while Gerald Caplan discusses what the NDP needs to do next:

As the Liberals flounder their way through the next year, and with no federal election due until 2015, the NDP has a rare opportunity to focus on the multitude of areas that must be firmed up if it’s to be taken seriously as a government-in-waiting. It won’t be easy, and nothing can be taken for granted. Three years can go awfully fast, all kinds of hardball opponents are gunning for the party, wholly unanticipated events are certain to scupper the best-laid plans, lots of money is required, and a good many public doubts need to be addressed.
...
The NDP must look at all aspects of its being and decide what else must change – policies, rhetoric, organization, strategy, tactics? – while remaining true to its enduring goals of social justice, equality and democracy. To win, as Mulcair insists, the NDP must appeal to the many progressive Canadians who have never brought themselves to vote for it before. For 80 years, the party never figured out how to do so. There’s a short three years to come up with some answers.

- But if Thomas Mulcair's speech at #skndp12 is any indication, the party looks to be on the right track in both emphasizing a wider range of concerns than the Cons are willing to recognize, and putting them in terms that cut to the core of the Cons' brand. This offers a small sampling of Mulcair's message:

"People understand what we've been saying," he said. "Some others have tried to make it into something different, but we've been saying the same thing all along. We have to take care of our responsibilities to future generations. The way to do that is to make sure that we look at the economic, the ecological and the social aspects of every problem ... something the Conservatives don't believe in and have not been doing."

In Mulcair's speech, though, the message was framed in terms of economic, environmental and social debts - which goes a step further in both highlighting the Cons' short-sightedness, and tying their well-known fiscal deficits into a wider range of issues.

- Andrew Jackson points out that even as the Canadian economy supposedly recovered in 2010, incomes for working Canadians were entirely stagnant.

- Meanwhile, the Star-Phoenix editorial board notes that a province that's boasting about current growth and projecting far more shouldn't be decreeing that education funding and services will stay flat.

- Scott Stelmaschuk writes about the role of parties in Canada's political scene.

- And finally, Andrew Nikiforuk looks behind the scenes at Enbridge's response to an oil spill - which surely can't inspire much confidence in the Cons' plans to push massive pipelines with no regard for the environment:

Enbridge's control room operators, who open and close pipelines and monitor adequate flow rates, did not know how to respond to alarm warnings or even read warnings on their console system without a trained analyst in the room. At the time they were attempting to execute a scheduled shutdown of the bitumen-carrying line.

The report documents confusion, miscommunication and indifference in the computerized control room that manages some of the world’s longest pipeline systems. (Enbridge's control room is routinely staffed by 25 personnel that work a 12-hour shift.)

At one point the report documents this dramatic scene in the control room:

"Operator B2 said he has never seen this problem before and that it was interesting. Operator B2 stated that the situation looked liked a leak, and Operator B1 stated that they could pump as much as they wanted but could never over pressurize the pipeline. Operator B2 stated that eventually the oil has to go somewhere. Operator B2 said that it seemed as if there was something wrong about the situation. Operator B2 said to Operator B1 'whatever, we're going home and will be off for few days.' Operator B1 stated they were not going to try this again, not on their shift."

[Edit: fixed typo.]

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- I wouldn't want to take Dan Gardner's conclusion as to the effects of power as an immutable truth - as he himself notes in pointing out means of minimizing its risks. But it's certainly an apt description of what's happened since the Harper Cons took power:

The government could have responded by making a show of listening to the opposition and Conservative backbenchers, picking a few innocuous amendments, and passing them. Doing that would have cost the government essentially nothing. But it may have softened the complaints a little. And, at a minimum, it would have taken away the inevitable opposition attack line of “They wouldn’t change so much as a comma! They’re treating Parliament like a rubber stamp!”

But they didn’t do that. Instead, they methodically and relentlessly voted down every single one of hundreds of proposed amendments, no matter how modest or reasonable they may be — making themselves look immodest and unreasonable and seeming to confirm that they do, indeed, expect Parliament to rubber stamp legislation.

Strictly from the perspective of the government’s self-interest, this was astonishingly dumb.

And there’s been a lot of that lately.
...

(If a) powerful person lives in a bubble, insulated from criticism, surrounded by bobbleheads and bootlickers, his judgment will only get worse. And worse. Until he is making decisions like, hey, let’s announce a plan to make ordinary people work longer to receive Old Age Security in a speech to an audience of billionaires at a Swiss resort! Or, let’s announce changes to Employment Insurance without making so much as a single phone call to the premiers whose provinces will be most affected! Or, let’s automatically reject any amendment suggested by the opposition and ram the bill through even though it would seem to confirm the nasty accusations being levelled at us! 

Power corrupts. And it makes the powerful stupid.

Smart leaders know that, of course. It’s why they disperse and decentralize power, and create checks and balances. It’s why they seek out contrary views and dissonant information, why they consult, negotiate, and compromise.

- And Errol Mendes also comments on the Harper Cons' aversion to checks, balances and accountability.

- Meanwhile, it's certainly worth noting that Dean Del Mastro's denials of any knowledge of Elections Canada's investigation aren't any more plausible than most Con spin. But the part I find most interesting is the Harper-esque relationship between the financial agent who's actually responsible for campaign finances, and the candidate who denied any knowledge whatsoever of what was happening:

Ritchie’s affidavit describes how he and another Elections Canada investigator, Al Mathews, went to Peterborough to interview Daniel Rosborough, the financial agent of Del Mastro’s electoral district association.

According to Ritchie’s sworn statement, Rosborough told them “He had contacted Dean Del Mastro after I had called him and that he was advised by Dean Del Mastro that he (Dean Del Mastro) would handle the matter with Elections Canada.”

And, Ritchie said, Rosborough told them, “He (Daniel Rosborough) would not provide access to the EDA’s records or be interviewed unless authorized to do so by Dean Del Mastro.”

The two men had arranged to interview Rosborough about the association’s finances two weeks in advance of their Dec. 15 meeting, but when they got to his Peterborough office, he refused to be interviewed and told them to talk to Del Mastro directly.

- Robert Skidelsky points out that the long-promised link between corporate-owned technology capable of replacing difficult work and greater leisure time has never materialized.

- Finally, Jonathan Douglas discusses the link between library services and poverty alleviation in the UK - a particularly important connection at a time when appointees who don't seem to have any interest in the latter are showing their lack of interest in the former:

Libraries have always had a bias to the poor. It sat at the heart of their founding vision. In the past fifteen years this has been rediscovered in the context of social inclusion policy. The challenge is to put this into practice at a time when libraries’ resources themselves are being savagely cut in many places.

However the prize is great: If libraries can effectively work with individuals and the communities most at risk of poverty, they can turn lives round, boost relative social mobility and even stop the newly enlarged poverty footprint in the UK becoming intergenerational. They will also demonstrate their indispensible role in UK policy. They will demonstrate that their statutory role is no whim, but recognition of how libraries make society fairer and richer, in every sense.

The evidence  for libraries’ impact on poverty is compelling,  particularly in combating the inequalities associated with child poverty.  The Effective Provision of Preschool Education research and more recently the Avon Longitudinal  Study of Parents and Children have demonstrated the power of libraries in closing the one year gap in school readiness that exists between rich and poor children and which lays the foundations for many later inequalities.

However the effectiveness of libraries against the poverty agenda is dependent on the extent to which they commit to this audience as a priority, and the extent to which they provide services which  tackle poverty. Learning and literacy need to be at the heart of this approach.

New column day

Here, on why we shouldn't limit the range of possible contenders in the Saskatchewan NDP's leadership race - and the number of supporters an outside candidate might need to reach in order to find a place on a final ballot.

Demographics from the column are found here (as to Saskatchewan's Aboriginal population) and here (as to the urban/rural numbers).

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Jeffrey Simpson criticizes the Cons for killing off the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy as punishment for telling the truth about climate change at its own request:

In a letter to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE), Mr. Kent said it was in a “unique position” to offer advice on sustainable development. The government had asked the NRTEE in the past to “conduct research and provide advice on key and emerging issues.” Now, Mr. Kent was asking the NRTEE, with its “unique position,” to conduct a comprehensive review of provincial climate-change plans.

A year after the request and the nice comments about the NRTEE’s past work, however, the Harper government killed the agency in the 2012 budget.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird lashed out at the NRTEE, saying it had repeatedly called for a carbon tax that Canadians had rejected. That statement, typically partisan given the source, was completely false. No matter, the Harper government killed the agency, quite likely because it isn’t much interested in sustainable development.

The NRTEE goes out of business next March, but it did complete the assignment it was given by Mr. Kent. Its report, released last week – the most comprehensive study of where Canada is at in reducing greenhouse gas emissions – suggests why the Harper government wanted to close it.

 - But then, Michael Harris notes that the environment is just one of many casualties of the Cons' stay in power:

With the specter of the Parliamentary Budget Officer taking the Clerk of the Privy Council to court, a momentous question looms over our public affairs: will the Harper government answer a single legitimate question about its conduct of Canada’s public business?

Or is the government’s message that we can all go pleasure ourselves until 2015?
...
As everybody knows, the vast majority of C-38 has nothing to do with the finances of the country. That makes it a legislative stealth attack, a fraud upon the democratic system. Yet those in the indentured press are already rhapsodizing about the PM’s political acuity. For passing C-38? That’s like praising a firing squad for getting the job done — after all, the target is blindfolded, tied down, and unarmed.

- And Andrew Coyne writes that some of the Cons' supposed core ideals are among the most obvious casualties of the Harper spin machine.

- Meanwhile, Michael Hurley points out that the Ontario Libs' own omnibus budget included loosening the rules on P3 disasters just like the ORNGE scandal that's already caused so much trouble for McGuinty and company. And Thomas Walkom observes that the "trojan horse" criticism applies just as much to Ontario's budget bill as the federal one.

- Finally, Canadians for Tax Fairness rightly highlights the widespread public support for the type of financial transaction tax that the Cons have deliberately blocked on the international stage.

Burning question

Jim Flaherty is taking credit for saving consumers money by tightening mortgage insurance rules. So how many extra thousands of dollars did he cost Canadian homeowners when he loosened precisely the same rules before?

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Dan Gardner draws some parallels between the Cons' attacks on Europe and the well-worn (and entirely false) Reagan-era "welfare queen" line of spin. But I wonder whether the Cons are making matters somewhat more difficult for themselves by trying to negotiate a free trade agreement with exactly the enemy they're otherwise trying to vilify.

- Mia Rabson and Tim Harper both wonder how efforts to unite against the Harper Cons might play into the Libs' leadership race. But I wonder whether the question of how a "natural governing party" reacts to falling to third place may in fact demand more than a single candidate seeking to cooperate.

Instead, I'd figure that the Libs' contenders will need to supplement the usual leadership questions of "who are you?" and "what is your vision for Canada?" with another core form of definition: "why do you think a Liberal party is needed to achieve your vision?". And if nobody offers a sufficiently compelling answer to the third question, then it won't much matter who runs for or against cooperation.

- Adam Radwanski expands on my theory that Tim Hudak has been let off far too easy for his complete lack of principle.

- Finally, Nathan Vanderklippe and Carrie Tait report on the latest pipeline spill - this one from Enbridge as it seeks carte blanche to decide what protections are needed for a Gateway pipeline. But as David Suzuki notes, the news of a spill really just means it's a day ending in "y".

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Cats on the outs.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Roy Romanow rightly notes that Canada's federal government needs to take a lead role in building our public health care system, rather than abandoning the field to the province.

- Now that the Cons' budget has raised the question of whether we can afford to do even less to protect against oil-related environmental disasters, the list of pipeline spills receiving public attention continues to grow - with Mike de Souza pointing out 100 spills and accidents under federal jurisdiction alone over the last two years.

- Mary Agnes Welch reports on the latest study (this one based in Winnipeg) showing the effects of inequality and income disparity on health.

- Katherine Norton writes about Saskatchewan's impending federal boundary redistribution.

- And finally, Paul Dechene laments Regina's complete failure to do anything about a housing crisis that's been festering for years.

Draft Erin Weir

No, Saskatchewan's NDP leadership campaign isn't officially underway. But Jim Stanford and a lengthy list of distinguished Canadian economists have a suggestion as to who might deserve a look once the race begins:

We, the undersigned economists, write to encourage you to nominate Erin Weir for your provincial leadership. He is a committed social democrat with an extensive record of articulating public policies to ensure that all Saskatchewan people benefit from economic development. Having a prominent economist as leader would strengthen the NDP’s credibility on fiscal and economic issues.

We also note that Premier Brad Wall has emerged as a vocal critic of national social programs and of the federal NDP. The province and the country would be well served by a Saskatchewan NDP leader able to engage Wall and advance a progressive western perspective on national economic issues.

So far, most of the leadership discussion has been based on an expected contest between current MLAs Trent Wotherspoon and Cam Broten, with a significant X-factor in the possibility that 2009 runner-up Ryan Meili might join the fray. But the addition of Erin's name to the mix should nicely expand the range of options in time for this weekend's policy convention - not to mention shaking up what we might have expected for next year's leadership vote.

Update: For those wondering whether there would be a more organized Draft Erin Weir movement, the answer is yes.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Tom Korski nicely captures the essence of the Cons' omnibus attack on the environment (along with anything that stands in the way of a cheap and dirty buck):

C-38 is a gift for oil and gas lobbyists.

It repeals 20 years of environmental case law; it eliminates some 90 per cent of all federal environmental assessments, by one estimate; it tilts the rules for industry where studies are unavoidable; it deliberately fails to define “significant effect” of industrial projects. Might that be, say, a tailings pond in a lake? An open pit mine on a trout stream? “That omission is deliberate,” one lawyer told me. “Once you define ‘significant effect,’ you have to start saying ‘no.’ ”
...
No one can explain what vexing environmental problem C-38 aims to solve. One federal study rated Canada as second only to Chile with the fewest environmental barriers to investment—and that was before C-38...

Who wrote C-38?

The authorship is anonymous, though it is worth noting Lobbyist Registry records show Cabinet members had 81 meetings with oil and gas lobbyists before the bill was introduced.  The meetings were private. Joe Oliver hosted lobbyists 44 times. Asked once who complained about environmental assessments, Oliver told a reporter: “When I was in China – and I’ve been there a couple of times, once with the prime minister, we heard that there was a tremendous interest on the part of Chinese investors in Canadian projects.…However, they were concerned about the delays they have seen.”

So, Parliament repealed its own environmental practices to please Sinopec directors in Beijing.

- Meanwhile, David Climenhaga laments the fact that our sad track record of regular oil spills hasn't had much impact on public perceptions. But if anything, I have to wonder whether C-38 may help to change the tendency to move on from what are otherwise perceived as unconnected incidents by providing an obvious framework for future reporting.

- Miles Corak points out yet another vital piece of Statistics Canada research being shredded by the Cons - this time the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics which traces individual labour status over time. And it surely can't say much for where the Cons expect Canadians to be in the years to come if they're looking to destroy the information that would allow us to answer the question, "are you better off now than before we took power?".

- Finally, pogge highlights yet another example of how "free trade" agreements in fact serve to do nothing but prioritize corporate demands over the public interest.

Sunday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Sunday reading.

- It's a few months old, but the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy's comparison of U.S. states with a zero personal income tax to those with the highest tax levels looks like one of the most clear refutations yet of the idea that there's any real economic benefit to be had in handing yet more money to those who already have the most.
  
- Andrew Mitrovica criticizes Chuck Strahl's qualifications to oversee CSIS, and not without some valid points about Strahl's lack of knowledge and experience in the area of security oversight. But I'd think the most important problem is this: somebody whose most recent public job responsibility was to say "yes, Mr. Harper" at every turn probably shouldn't be in charge of keeping tabs on abuses of state power.

- The Cons' attempt to run over parliamentary democracy with an omnibus budget bill has even managed to lose Lorne Gunter. Yes, that Lorne Gunter.

- Finally, Paul Krugman points out that the limited amount the U.K. Conservatives have been willing to put into stimulus when it's most sorely needed has consisted of little more than a breeding ground for cronyism.

Pathologies revealed

Paul Wells is right to point out the parallels between the McGuinty Libs' environmentally-destructive, all-or-nothing omnibus bill and the similar legislation being rammed through Parliament by the Harper Cons. But there's an even more telling connection between Ontario and federal politics.

At the time they presented their 2008 FU to a country headed into a recession, the Cons had a theory as to how they might manage to maintain their hold on power:

(According to "various and sundry Conservative pundits, both official and unofficial"), the Conservatives are counting on the NDP eventually coming around to their point of view, on the theory that Jack Layton and company’s almost pathological desire to destroy the Liberal Party forever will override any short-term concern over losing a few million dollars a year.

Needless to say, the bet that the NDP would be more focused on attacking the Libs than policy outcomes proved a disastrous one. But it also strikes me as one of the most important windows on the Conservative soul we've seen since the party took power. After all, since the expectation that a party would be willing to vote against everything it stands for solely to make life difficult for the Libs obviously wasn't based on the actual NDP, it presumably reflected the Cons' own mindset.

And in Ontario, we now seem to have confirmation of that fact.

By all rights, the PCs would have been expected to reject the NDP's amendments - which in aiming to preserve public services and environmental protection run contrary to both the PCs' own values, and the exact policies being implemented by their federal cousins. But unlike Jack Layton's NDP, Tim Hudak and his MPPs apparently have no qualms about voting against everything they believe in for the sake of making life difficult for their neighbourhood Liberal party.

Of course, Layton's principled stand helped to lay the groundwork for the NDP's rise to the forefront of federal politics. And one might hope for the converse to prove true as well, with Hudak paying a steep price for his party's complete lack of principle.

But there's one problem with that prospect, as the McGuinty Libs seem utterly tone-deaf as to whose position deserves to be attacked. Faced with two opposing parties - one genuinely trying to improve legislation in accordance with its own values, and another manifesting pathological hatred which overrides any values it could otherwise claim - McGuinty and his henchmen have somehow decided to target only the former. 


That figures to let Hudak off the hook for what would otherwise be a flashing neon warning sign about his unfitness for office (not to mention an opportunity to turn much of the corporate community against the PCs). But hopefully it will also serve to highlight the distinction between Andrea Horwath's efforts to make things better and McGuinty's insistence that no such thing is possible - which at least at the federal level was exactly the combination which has the Libs questioning their own existence.