The Education of Tim McMillan

Saskatchewan Minister of Energy and Resources Tim McMillan has seen fit to respond to last week's column on Keystone XL and its connection to climate policy. But it's well worth noting that McMillan's argument looks to fall short on a few fronts.

Let's start with the fact that McMillan doesn't even pretend to refute my concerns that his government has done absolutely nothing on climate change over a period of years. (Which hardly serves to address the genuine concern from the Obama administration that the Canadian voices lobbying for Keystone XL have no interest whatsoever in meaningful climate change policy.)

Instead, McMillan focuses largely on repeating what I pointed to as a wild claim about the impact of Keystone XL - only unlike Wall, he helpfully offers the weasel words "up to" in saying that a pipeline might add $300 million per year to the province's coffers.

Which is probably an entirely valid claim, in much the same sense that upon purchasing a lottery ticket one's net worth might increase by up to $20 million.

But for those of us who would prefer to see policy based on reasonable assumptions, McMillan doesn't do anything to back up a number which Wall seems to have pulled out of thin air. And that's problematic since based on my back-of-the-envelope calculations the Sask Party's claim seems to involve both an assumption that upon pipeline construction there will be no gap between the price of Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate for oil sent via Keystone XL, and an assumption that every drop of conventional oil delivered via Keystone XL will come from Saskatchewan rather than adjacent oil-producing states and provinces.

That said, I haven't yet arrived at the best part...

The math is simple: the lower price of oil is costing the province up to $300 million a year. The lost revenue from 2012 alone could fund the construction of 15 new elementary schools. 

Apparently McMillan's preferred unit of exchange for public policy choices is the $20 million elementary school. So let's see how that applies as compared to some of his government's other choices.

To start with, it certainly doesn't reflect an accurate measure of how the Sask Party itself has used provincial revenues. The Ministry of Education's own talking points have the Wall government allocating $500 million in total into school capital projects over the course of five years in office, compared to total provincial expenditures of about $10 billion per year ($50 billion total).

So on average, about 1% of the provincial budget has gone to McMillan's proposed use of new revenue. Which means that if the highest and best use of provincial revenue is the construction of elementary schools, then McMillan must be a singularly useless voice for that cause within a government whose priorities are utterly wrong.

More importantly, though, the "elementary schools given away" standard surely applies equally to areas where Wall and company have chosen to slash revenue coming into the provincial treasury.

Take for instance the $200 million price tag for a 2% cut in Saskatchewan's corporate tax cuts - implemented based on the profound public policy analysis that "big biz likes free $$$!!!" By McMillan's rationale, his government is deliberately giving away 10 elementary schools every year through that single choice alone - while investing on average in no more than 2.5 schools.

And in other areas such as resource royalties, the cost of the Saskatchewan Party's refusal to collect reasonable revenue rates in the billions of dollars per year. Or by McMillan's standards, dozens upon dozens of schools left unbuilt.

Needless to say, I'd suggest that McMillan encourage his own government to focus its own choices on ensuring it has the resources to build schools (and address other public needs), rather than counting on speculative future returns from projects beyond its control. And if the Sask Party chooses to remedy its climate change neglect to facilitate the approval of Keystone XL rather than engaging in a ritualistic chant of "pipeline! pipeline! pipeline!" as its sole answer to all issues of concern, then so much the better.

he math is simple: the lower price of oil is costing the province up to $300 million a year. The lost revenue from 2012 alone could fund the construction of 15 new elementary schools. - See more at: http://www.leaderpost.com/opinion/Sask+needs+Keystone/8015309/story.html#sthash.210daD1y.dpuf

The math is simple: the lower price of oil is costing the province up to $300 million a year. The lost revenue from 2012 alone could fund the construction of 15 new elementary schools. - See more at: http://www.leaderpost.com/opinion/Sask+needs+Keystone/8015309/story.html#sthash.210daD1y.dpuf

The math is simple: the lower price of oil is costing the province up to $300 million a year. The lost revenue from 2012 alone could fund the construction of 15 new elementary schools. - See more at: http://www.leaderpost.com/opinion/Sask+needs+Keystone/8015309/story.html#sthash.210daD1y.dpuf

The math is simple: the lower price of oil is costing the province up to $300 million a year. The lost revenue from 2012 alone could fund the construction of 15 new elementary schools. - See more at: http://www.leaderpost.com/opinion/Sask+needs+Keystone/8015309/story.html#sthash.210daD1y.dpuf

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- John Moore questions the much-hyped assertions of a permanent Republican Conservative majority by pointing out that Canadian values haven't changed at all even as the Harper Cons have tried to use public money to change the channel. And Justin Ling sees the Cons as a product of elections being seen as periodic job interviews rather than tests of underlying principles.

- Frances Russell critiques the Cons' hierarchy of human rights - with protection of (some people who practice some) religions taking precedence over such trifles as life and liberty.

- Thomas Walkom is right to note that the main formal issue surrounding Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin is their lack of a permanent residence in the province they're supposed to be representing. But the more important question is whether there's any useful purpose to having a patronage-based Senate in the first place - and Tim Harper recognizes that Duffy, Wallin and Patrick Brazeau are just the latest cases in point as to why the answer is an emphatic "no".

- Finally, The Regina Mom points to the sudden decision to close Regina's historic Connaught school as another sad example of an alarming trend toward non-consultation - while offering a petition in response.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Angled cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Michael Harris rightly points out that a steady stream of scandals and incompetence from the Cons says plenty about Stephen Harper's own judgment (or lack thereof):

Sooner or later, the country is going to realize that there is something terribly wrong with Stephen Harper’s judgment.

And sooner or later, the Conservative party is going to realize one-man bands are great until the tuba player runs out of breath.

At the moment, judged only by his record in Senate appointments, Harper’s eye for talent appears to be made of glass.

Patrick Brazeau and Mike Duffy have become media migraines for the government. Both have tarnished the Tory brand. They were the PM’s picks. Blow the draft choices, face the consequences.
...
Like some of his appointments, the Senate itself is further evidence of poor judgment by the prime minister. Instead of the refreshing promise of reform, Harper has turned the Senate into a bank machine for the Conservative Party, using his appointees to raise money at endless fundraisers and to fiddle the system.

Harper’s broken promise is bad enough, especially the part about patronage having no role to play in the parliament of Canada. The reality check? No one has outdone the current PM in sending party hacks, bagmen, failed candidates and media sycophants to the trough.

The difference between this PM and his predecessors is that he didn’t stop at stacking the Senate with pork. He remorselessly used it as just another partisan forum, on one occasion deploying a patronage-based Senate to kill a climate-change bill that had already been passed by elected MPs. That hadn’t happened in seven decades.

- Meanwhile, Kelly McParland considers Mike Duffy to be a case in point as to how the Senate is long past its expiry date:

A senator’s primary residence would matter if the Senate still did the job for which it was originally intended, representing provincial interests in Ottawa. But the fact is it doesn’t: the provinces, led by their premiers, do that for themselves, as they have long done.

The leaves the Senate with its other mandate, acting as  a chamber of “sober second thought.”  Except it doesn’t do that either. There may be a small group of senators who add some value to the legislative process in Ottawa, but the majority are of the Duffy type, patronage appointments put there to agree with the prime minister who appointed them. For years the chamber acted as a Liberal nodding shop; more recently Prime Minister Stephen Harper has stuffed it with compliant Tory appointees, whose main job is to agree to reform themselves if and when Mr. Harper ever gets a Senate reform bill to that stage. How qualified can members be if they can’t even identify where they live?

That being the case, the situation faced by Sen. Duffy inadvertently illustrates why the Senate is no longer needed: because it has too many members like Mr. Duffy, whose consumption of public income and resources serves no purpose. Think of how much better served Canadians would be were Sen. Duffy to be retired, enabling him to spend all his time in Cavendish.

- Peter O'Neil reports that Preston Manning and Ed Broadbent have joined Kennedy Stewart's push to encourage a petition process which will at least ensure MPs consider issues of importance to citizens.

- Finally, Sid Ryan and Alex Himelfarb make the case for Ontario to look beyond the pain fixation of austerians:

Cutting our way to growth failed as a budget strategy in the 1930s and it will not work now. As economist Paul Krugman notes, government deficits are a symptom of a greater economic disease, not the disease itself. It follows then, that if we zealously tackle the symptom and ignore the disease, we risk making the situation much worse.

We need to understand how we got into deficit if we are to develop sensible, prudent policies. The evidence here is clear: loss of revenue and increased spending after the financial meltdown (although spending was not our problem before the recession and it isn’t now) and years of tax cuts that mostly benefited wealthy citizens and corporations to the tune of $15 billion while never delivering on their promise of growth and jobs.

Budgets that eliminate waste and reduce debt in good times are prudent budgets. Budgets that cut programs and services, lower wages, and maintain unaffordable tax cuts, especially when the economy is struggling, are neither prudent nor responsible.

It’s time to change the conversation on austerity, to talk about getting Ontarians back to work in jobs that pay a living wage, to talk about revenues and not just cuts, to talk about building a better future together.

#skndpldr Candidate Rankings - February 26

For obvious reasons, there's at least one change to this week's Saskatchewan NDP leadership candidate rankings. But will there be any more news other than Erin Weir's withdrawal from the race at a time when most of the voting is expected to be taking place?

1. Ryan Meili (1)

Well, Meili for one should enjoy a strengthened position, with Weir (and by all indications his key supporters) added to what already looked to be the front-running campaign just in time to combine the candidates' respective get-out-the-vote efforts. And while I'm not quite as eager as some to declare the race over, it will be a major surprise if Meili doesn't at least end up in a close final ballot.

2. Cam Broten (2)

That said, I'm not sure Broten's positioning in the race has changed all that much following Weir's departure. He'll still figure to be planning for a final ballot against Meili, seeking to gain enough of an advantage among Trent Wotherspoon's supporters (based on the familiar experience theme) to overcome any first-ballot gap. And at worst for Broten, that gap may be somewhat larger now than it appeared before.

3. Trent Wotherspoon (3)

That leaves Wotherspoon in his familiar third-place position. And while I still see a fairly close contest between the three remaining candidates on the first ballot, the down-ballot opportunities for Wotherspoon are starting to dry up.

Until this week, Wotherspoon's best chance of assembling a bandwagon at the convention looked to come from Weir's Regina base: even a subtle shift in his favour between the first and second ballots might have given him the perception of momentum and helped to turn the tide in his favour. But with that possibility no longer available, Wotherspoon's only chance is to convince Saskatoon voters to support him over a more familiar local figure on a final ballot from a standing start - and without any assurance that there will be enough votes in play to overcome a probable geographical disadvantage in the advance voting.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Andrew Nikiforuk discusses how Alberta and other petro-states have ended up destroying their treasuries and their democratic systems alike by relying excessively on volatile resource prices:

Thanks to the volatile nature of the world's most lucrative commodity, various petro states find themselves short of cash. And that's because most petro states don't know how to budget let alone govern.

Like any plantation economy, petro states operate pretty much like irrational monocultures: they know how pump oil, sell oil, talk oil and spend oil. But they don't know how to save or diversify its slippery wealth.
...
In addition to honesty gaps the size of tar sands mining pits, Alberta, like many petro states, has a dismal tax problem. The province's one party state draws, on average, 30 percent of its revenue from oil and gas projects. For more than 40 years Alberta's Tories have ruinously used these same petro dollars to distort, undermine and degrade a proper taxation system as well as enrich its cronies.

This explains why Alberta Treasury can still advertise Alberta as a fantasy honey pot with "low personal and corporate income taxes, the lowest fuel taxes among provinces, no capital tax, no payroll tax, no health premiums, and no sales tax" while the province chocks up one deficit after another and Redford cries bitumen bubble tears.

U.S. political scientist Michael Ross attributes such behavior to the pernicious "taxation effect" of oil: "When government derive sufficient revenues from the sale of oil, they are likely to tax their populations less heavily or not at all, and the public in turn will be less likely to demand accountability from -- and representation in -- their government." 

- Sarah Jordison suggests a simple strategy to deal with dumbed-down politics and politicians - which I'd supplement only by suggesting that it's equally important to highlight the exceptions to the current rule:

Responding to political spin with our own savvily crafted sound bite isn’t enough.  In fact it encourages the perception that if problems don’t have a simple solution they can’t be solved so it’s best to just not think about it.

If we’re going to succeed in building a better world with a government that is actually responsive to the needs of our people, a critical piece of our work must be to create a public appetite for deeper public policy discussions based in fact and not ideology.

This may seem like an insurmountable task, but really it starts by including a simple question when talking to the press or a gathering or even your friends and neighbours:

Does their simplistic spin really ring true with you?

- Dean Beeby neatly contrasts the Cons' bluster about openness against the entirely justified conclusion that they're getting more secretive and less responsive by the year:

The Harper government is dismissing a report that ranks it 55th in the world for upholding freedom of information, saying it has a sterling record for openness.

But a four-page document outlining the federal rebuttal took five months to release after a request under the Access to Information Act — underscoring the very delay problem that contributed to Canada's dismal ranking.

A human-rights group based in Halifax has issued three report cards since 2011 on Canada's anemic standing in the world with regard to so-called right-to-know legislation.

The Centre for Law and Democracy used a 61-point tool to measure Canada's legislation against that of other countries, in co-operation with Madrid-based Access Info Europe.

Canada's standing in September 2011 was 40th of 89 countries, fell to 51st in June last year, then to 55th of 93 countries last September, behind Mongolia and Colombia.

 - Finally, Bruce Campion-Smith finds that Pamela Wallin is included on the list of Con senators who have declared their residence to be in Ontario despite having been appointed as a representative of another province. And the more the Cons make clear that they don't see the Constitution Act, 1867 as being worth the paper it's written on when it comes to defining the required qualifications for senators, the more skeptical we should be of any claim that we're stuck with every other aspect of an elitist anachronism.

#skndpldr - Moose Jaw Debate Notes

Let's close out my review at the Saskatchewan NDP's leadership debates with a brief look at the Moose Jaw forum - which featured a fair bit of talk about specific local issues (including candidate and member questions about the closure of the Valley View Centre) in addition to a familiar set of general themes:


Perhaps the most noteworthy theme throughout the debate was that of ensuring that the corporate sector shares in the province's effort to deal with social concerns. In response to a question on climate change policy, Ryan Meili pointed out the need for large-scale businesses to pay their share of the cost of greenhouse gas emissions - potentially both through a reduced rate discount from SaskPower for industrial users, and through a carbon tax.

Erin Weir then asked Meili about the "cognitive dissonance" between his concerns about the impact of uranium mining and his intention to allow mining to continue. There, Meili recognized the need to incorporate the broader effects of the industry into our public policy decisions, but also made clear that some alternative economic plan for northern Saskatchewan would be needed if the province intended to phase out uranium mining.

In turn, Trent Wotherspoon critiqued Cam Broten's water policy for focusing primarily on residential users rather than industrial ones. And Broten both recognized the need for provincial regulators to meaningfully monitor business rather than seeing regulated businesses as its customers to be served, and highlighted the mining sector as an area of particular concern.

In the end, that set of issues didn't give rise to much direct disagreement among the candidates. But it did help to flesh out some possible applications of an agreed set of principles - along with obvious areas of distinction from a government bent on elevating business interests over any other issues.

All of which is to say that for all the differences set out during the course of the campaign, the final debates offered a strong indication that any of the candidates can make a strong case for a focus on social values when aimed in the right direction.

Finally as a particular point of interest for readers, I'll point out one part of the debate which particularly strikes me as worth a look, as the responses to one member question (1:21:12 in the video) offer as strong a direct comparison as we're likely to see in evaluating the respective economic messages of the candidates.

Sunday Morning Links

That and that for your Sunday reading.

- Alex Himelfarb weighs in against gratuitous austerity by pointing out the dishonest cycle of excuses used to push destructive policy:

(T)he consequences of cuts are increasingly visible, first for the most vulnerable: aboriginal communities struggling to meet basic needs, higher tuitions and student debt, refugees who cannot get needed medicine, more unemployed Canadians thrown onto inadequate welfare because they cannot access insurance. Some consequences will play out more slowly: weaker environmental regulations, cuts to education and science, neglect of crumbling infrastructure, eroding public services will all make our economy less competitive, less fair, less sustainable. The deeper the cuts, the more public services erode, the more inequality and poverty grow, the greater the risks of social disruption and the higher the political costs. Then what?

The final refuge is to argue that all the right things have been done and now it’s up to the market. These arguments are already on the business pages of our media: when the governor of the Bank of Canada urged business to put some of the cash they were sitting on back into the economy, the austerians reacted with force. Don’t worry about “dead money,” they said. Don’t worry about the failure of the corporate sector to turn its profits — and tax cuts — into job-creating investments. Sounding eerily like old Communists clinging to the notion of inevitable revolution, their argument was pure ideology — “it’s only a matter of time,” surely market forces, as the laws of economics require, will kick in. If there are inexorable laws of economics that yield jobs and growth from cuts to taxes and government, it seems somebody forgot to tell business.

- Chrystia Freeland notes that the promise of prosperity out of free trade looks to be similarly empty within one of the largest trade relationships in the world, as the primary effect of increased U.S. trade with China has been domestic job losses:

“U.S.-China trade is almost a one-way street. This trade relationship doesn’t clearly give you the benefit that you can sell a lot of stuff to your trade partner,” Dorn said. “If you talk to someone who is somehow involved in the promotion of free trade, they may say that maybe the headquarters of Apple (AAPL.O) benefits. That may be true. But the first-order effect is of job loss.”
...
What is challenging about both of these trends, and what makes the hollowing out of the middle class a political problem as well as an economic one, is how different they look depending on whether you own a company or work for one.

Shipping middle-class jobs to China, or hollowing them out with machines, is a win for smart managers and their shareholders. We call the result higher productivity. But, looked at through the lens of middle-class jobs, it is a loss. That profound difference is why politics in the rich democracies are so polarized right now. Capitalism and democracy are at cross-purposes, and no one yet has a clear plan for reconciling them.

- Meanwhile, Laurie Monsebraaten discusses the plight of the precariat, as roughly half of workers in the Toronto area lack secure employment. And pogge rightly notes that the trend toward instability is part of a conscious set of policy choices aimed at redistributing wealth in the direction of the few at the top:

Governments over the past thirty years or so have increasingly catered to the corporate agenda while organized labour has been steadily undermined. Politicians have practically hurt themselves in the rush to sign on to so-called trade agreements that curtail their own ability to affect the economy in favour of giving more control to the private sector. They've either looked on benignly or actively smoothed the way for employers who want to rely less on full time employees and turn as many jobs as possible into temporary, contract positions with no benefits.

Wasn't the state of affairs described in this article the point? People who feel their economic position is precarious will settle for lower wages, fewer benefits and more abuse. Their employers can look forward to bigger profits on which, thanks to those same co-operative governments, they'll pay lower taxes.

- Finally, the public editor of a Bell-owned paper has concluded that there's no need for any critical look at Bell's motives or choices so long as it proclaims a story to be purely a matter of good news. I for one see no way this philosophy could possibly go wrong.

On divisions

Dan Tan has already provided one follow-up post on the sudden rash of commentary arising out of Erin Weir's decision to withdraw from the Saskatchewan NDP leadership race and endorse Ryan Meili. But I'll take my own look at how the Weir endorsement and the associated reaction from the Village (or should we call it the Hamlet for Saskatchewan?) may affect the leadership campaign.

As long as there were four leadership candidates in the race, there were several ways to try to draw dividing lines among them. And the message that's suddenly crystallized in the media wouldn't have registered as the most obvious classification schemes.
 
One could view the most important differences in the campaigns were geographical, with Meili/Broten and Wotherspoon/Weir largely representing Saskatoon and Regina members respectively while competing for other votes around the province. Or one could contrast the above-the-fray messages and statesmanship from Meili/Wotherspoon against the more conflict-oriented approaches of Broten/Weir.

Even for those wanting to divide the campaign into Meili/Weir and Broten/Wotherspoon groupings, there were other more sound grounds for doing so (insider vs. outsider, detailed policies vs. high-level platforms) aside from the ideological framework applied by Gormley and Mandryk. And that goes doubly since Weir's narrow focus on royalty loopholes and criticism of broader review processes could arguably be seen as less ambitious (if more certain to bring in some additional revenue) than the reviews favoured by the other candidates in establishing the fiscal basis for progressive policy.

Finally, the candidates themselves had conspicuously avoided dividing themselves into consistent groupings - as each wanted to preserve enough distinctions from potential challenges on any one set of criteria by pointing out the importance of others. Indeed, as I observed here, Wotherspoon declined what amounted to an offer from Broten to divide the race based on MLA experience.

But with the field down to three and with Meili all but cementing his place on any final ballot, most of the permutations and combinations have disappeared.

Instead, the most important question from here on in looks to be whether members vote based on the perception of three camps or two. Unless Broten and Wotherspoon's respective supporters link their interests together in a way the candidates haven't done, Meili looks to have a significant advantage. But it will be well worth watching whether the media intervention actually encourages that dynamic where it might not have developed otherwise.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Chrystia Freeland points out why productivity doesn't provide an accurate picture of economic development if it merely results in increased inequality rather than shared benefits:

Productivity and innovation, the focus of policy makers and business leaders, no longer guarantee widely shared prosperity. “Digital technologies are different in that they allow people with skills to replicate their talents to serve billions,” Mr. Brynjolfsson said. “There is really a drastic winner-take-all effect because every industry is becoming like the software industry.”

Classical economic theory isn’t entirely wrong. The danger isn’t — as it was easy to fear during the depths of the financial crisis — structural unemployment. The problem is what kind of jobs, at what kind of salaries, the shiny new technologically powered economy of the future will generate.

Lawrence H. Summers, the Harvard professor and former U.S. secretary of the Treasury, has a vivid way of describing the dystopian possibility. “As economists like to explain, the system will equilibrate at full employment,” Mr. Summers said in a public interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month. “But maybe the way it will equilibrate at full employment is there’ll be specialists at cleaning the shallow end and the deep end of rich people’s swimming pools. And that’s a problematic way for society to function.” 

- And Michael Harris comments on another obvious set of problems in developing a functional society, as the manipulation of interest rates by a financial sector left to nothing but an irrational honour system served to siphon massive amounts of wealth toward a privileged few:

The snakes in suits who think about sleazy ways of making money day and night couldn’t have dreamed up a better scam than manipulating the Libor. Anyone who pays a mortgage or struggles with a student loan feels their power. So do the people who get less of a dividend on their corporate bonds.

But for bankers and brokers with cash-register hearts, the possibilities of profit and benefit from fiddling the Libor were endless.

That’s because the rate was whatever they said it was. Setting it became a vast exercise in Scout’s Honour run amok. Floor traders who assisted in the scam increased their bonuses. The colluding banks made money by lending at a higher interest rate, knowing that they had the ability to artificially lower their costs when borrowing the same currency by driving down the Libor. Governments had the appearance of wisdom.
...
The thievery and deception went on for years. Finally, heads rolled and charges were laid. As usual, public and private regulators proved to be direct relatives of Rip Van Winkle. They bleated, lamb-like, claiming to be shocked that the world’s biggest banks had turned international banking into a private casino. In that gaming house, the cards were marked, the dice loaded, and everyone got fleeced but the guys who drove Ferraris.
...
The Libor scandal, you see, was actually aided and abetted by the government of the day and the Bank of England. No one was regulating the Wild West banking practices because they had opted for the so-called “light touch” approach to supervising banking.

People with the lightest touch usually turn out to be pickpockets. De-regulation of the banking industry unleashed 10,000 hyenas on an unsuspecting public.

Which is particularly worth noting as other areas of interest - such as, say, Saskatchewan's environment - are also shifted toward models where the specialized expertise of regulators gives way to a similar "light touch" to encourage innovative evasion tactics.

 

- Better Way Alberta emphatically refutes Alison Redford's claim that the province's budget problems are a matter of spending rather than revenue, pointing out that Alberta could raise tens of billions of dollars each year simply by applying a more reasonable royalty structure and a tax system consistent more with other Canadian provinces.

- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher offer an overview of where Robocon stands, as well as the news that Elections Canada's review of the Cons' vote suppression is still in progress but running into limitations in its own investigative authority.

- Finally, Jeffrey Simpson recognizes that the Cons' much-ballyhooed Office of Religious Freedom is intended purely for domestic political consumption rather than any plausible hope of influence around the world.

Musical interlude

Thornley - Make Believe

On responsibility

Leftdog has already weighed in on one key connection to be drawn based on the latest news about the siphoning of money from a supposed attempt to toward insiders with a sole-sourced deal to provide computers at inflated prices. But let's look at a couple more points arising out of the story.

All of this seems to contradict what Donna Harpauer, the government minister responsible, told the NDP Opposition last June.

"The contract cost was within the acceptable range for similar goods and services and the goods and services were necessary," Harpauer said at the time.

Now, Harpauer says she made that claim based on what she had been told by government members on the IPAC board.

Asked recently if it sounded like taxpayers got value for their money, she said no.

Now, the combination of public funding and government board representation would seem to make it obvious that Brad Wall can't escape direct responsibility for the misuse of public money. But the Sask Party is now pointing fingers at its own representatives for providing false information, while trying to pretend it doesn't bear responsibility for having appointed them in the first place. (Which should put to rest any pretense that the Sask Party's communications philosophy differs at all from the finger-pointing and distraction so favoured by the Harper Cons.)

That said, if the Wall regime had been particularly concerned about any long-term results from IPAC, it presumably would have put more thought into who it appointed and how it tracked IPAC's activities. Instead, the fact that IPAC was billed for millions of dollars for little of value without anybody noticing at the time suggests that this was simply another example of Wall wanting to be able to make an announcement tangentially connected to climate change, while being at best ambivalent as to whether or not it succeeded.

As a result, the IPAC/CVI debacle serves as a case in point as to the dangers of that model based on publicity rather than results. But it's hardly the only example of the Wall government's efforts to draw confusing lines between funding and responsibility. And the combination of incompetent administration and a lack of idea what funding is intended to accomplish offers an all-too-clear invitation for abuse - leaving us to wonder just how many of the Sask Party's "innovative" announcements are really only creating opportunities for growth in the fields of rent-seeking and scam artistry.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Friday reading.

- Michael Moss writes about the amount of time and money spent by corporate conglomerates to push consumers toward eating unhealthy food:

The public and the food companies have known for decades now — or at the very least since this meeting — that sugary, salty, fatty foods are not good for us in the quantities that we consume them. So why are the diabetes and obesity and hypertension numbers still spiraling out of control? It’s not just a matter of poor willpower on the part of the consumer and a give-the-people-what-they-want attitude on the part of the food manufacturers. What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort — taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles — to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive. I talked to more than 300 people in or formerly employed by the processed-food industry, from scientists to marketers to C.E.O.’s. Some were willing whistle-blowers, while others spoke reluctantly when presented with some of the thousands of pages of secret memos that I obtained from inside the food industry’s operations. What follows is a series of small case studies of a handful of characters whose work then, and perspective now, sheds light on how the foods are created and sold to people who, while not powerless, are extremely vulnerable to the intensity of these companies’ industrial formulations and selling campaigns.

- Thomas Walkom comments on a new CCPA study theorizing that the tar sands are just the latest example of Canada's history of "staple traps":

Vast quantities of money would be spent (usually by government) on infrastructure needed to extract whatever resource was in demand. And then, suddenly, things would change.

Maybe the commodity would fall out of fashion — as did felt hats made from Canadian beaver pelts. Or maybe technology would make the staple irrelevant, as the steamship did to masts made from Canadian white pine.

In all instances, Canadians would be left paying the costs.

The Bitumen Cliff applies this analysis to the tarsands. Again, vast quantities of money are required, not just to extract the heavy oil but to transport it by rail, pipeline or ship.
Again, other economic activities are given short shrift. In this case, the high dollar created by Canada’s soaring oil exports has eaten into the ability of manufacturers to compete abroad.

And again, the political system wraps itself around the staple, with Ottawa’s Conservative government gutting environmental laws for fear that they might interfere with pipelines and resource extraction.

Can this last? Unless tarsands oil is a very unusual staple it cannot. Prices rise; prices fall. Tastes change; things happen. We are beginning to see some of that now.

- Meanwhile, Michael den Tandt wonders whether the Cons' over-the-top anti-environment spin is one of the main reasons why Canada's shameful climate change record is attracting attention abroad:

Why then, Conservatives ask plaintively, would U.S. VIPs such as Ambassador David Jacobson, or Secretary of State John Kerry, doubt Canada’s climate bona fides?

Hint to Harper brain trust: It may have something to do with the daily, mind-numbing effluvium emanating from your backbenches, vis-a-vis a “$21.5-billion, job-killing carbon tax,” ostensibly planned by Mulcair’s New Democrats. The “carbon tax” was in fact a cap-and-trade plan, proposed by the NDP in the 2011 campaign, not materially different from one offered by the Conservatives themselves in 2008. Implicit in both plans, as well as Dion’s Green Shift, was that a price be set on carbon, something every economist acknowledges is necessary to change consumer behaviour.

In beating this drum so vehemently, therefore, the Conservatives have cast themselves as do-nothing, care-nothing laggards. Environmental provisions in their 2012 budget, which gutted protections for lakes and rivers, haven’t helped.

- Bruce Johnstone writes about Jim Farney's theory that the tendency toward top-down government has made outside lobbying ineffective and restricted policy influence to political staffers.

- And finally, speaking of ill-advised policies imposed without consultation or apparent thought, Paul Orlowski points out why the Sask Party's focus on standardized testing figures to do nothing but damage to Saskatchewan's education system.

#skndpldr Roundup

Alongside yesterday's news of Erin Weir's withdrawal to support Ryan Meili in the Saskatchewan NDP leadership race (also discussed by Scott and Brian) came a few other noteworthy developments - not the least of which was the reaction of the other two leadership candidates (discussed here by Jason).

Meanwhile, Meili released a seniors policy incorporating Weir's proposal to backfill against federal cuts to Old Age Security.

Finally, John Warnock offered up his latest thoughts - though I don't see his overwhelming negativity about either Meili's chances in the leadership race or the future of the NDP under Broten or Wotherspoon as bearing much resemblance to reality.

New column day

Here, on Brad Wall's off-key lobbying against action on climate change - and why we should see the bright side of having the Obama administration push us toward more sound environmental policy when far too many Canadian leaders have failed in their responsibilities.

For further reading...
- Wall's simultaneous lobbying for automatic pipeline approval and against any further Canadian action on climate change can be found here (see in particular the video clip to the right) and here.
- Jeffrey Simpson and Tzeporah Berman have made similar points about the value of the U.S.' message linking Canadian climate change policy to approvals for new pipelines.
- And on the subject of inaction at home, here's the Ministry of the Environment's climate change page - proudly left without updates since February 16, 2011. Here's the Ministry's list of press releases - with this announcement of an "equivalency agreement" presented as the only mention of climate change since the 2011 election.

On effective departures

Obviously Erin Weir's decision to withdraw from the Saskatchewan NDP's leadership race and endorse Ryan Meili looks to be one of the most important developments of the campaign. While there's still a wide range of possible outcomes among the remaining candidates, the movement of any substantial portion of Weir's support should nearly ensure that Meili appears on the final ballot - and also figures to boost Meili's odds of reaching 50% support on an earlier ballot.

But beyond the effect of Weir's endorsement, I'll also point out the shared policy statement which accompanies his support - which both highlights the importance of Weir's being involved in the campaign all along, and finds middle ground in some areas where Weir and Meili have sparred over the course of the leadership debates.

Throughout the campaign to date, all three other candidates have declined to commit to Weir's platform on resource royalies (even while often speaking of them as valuable contributions to a broader review). But Meili has agreed not only to close the loopholes identified by Weir, but also to support an overall review to shape the NDP's platform for 2015 - effectively avoiding the "blank slate" issue that Weir has highlighted throughout the leadership campaign.

Weir's other areas of obvious influence haven't been discussed in as much detail by the other candidates. But the concept of incorporating a universal child care program into existing school facilities and the idea of creating a provincial benefit to offset any federal cuts to Old Age Security have both been regular themes for Weir - and they've now been endorsed by Meili as well.

All of which means that beyond his impressive contributions to the debates, Weir's influence on the leadership campaign now also includes a significant shift in its anticipated voting outcomes along with a direct role in shaping another round of policy choices. And we'll find out before long what effect those contributions have on the final results.

#skndpldr - Prince Albert Debate Notes

One of the dangers of trying to catch up to past leadership events is the possibility that any analysis might be overtaken by more recent developments. But before we find out what's involved in today's joint announcement from Ryan Meili and Erin Weir, let's take a look at one more of the leadership debates.


At the outset, the Prince Albert forum featured journeys into a bit more uncharted territory than most of the recent debates, including specific policy questions about forestry, mental health and reproductive rights. And on each point, the candidates more than held their own in addressing relatively new issues.

Perhaps most interestingly, a question about the importance and meaning of full employment allowed each candidate to discuss some of the problems with our current measures for economic development, and their plans for alternate benchmarks. And Trent Wotherspoon particularly took advantage of the topic by noting that the quality of employment matters at least as much as raw job numbers. 

Once again, though, most of the distinction between the candidates was found in their questions to each other. And as at the Yorkton debate, Cam Broten's stance on corporate tax rates came under heavy scrutiny: Weir noted in his follow-up that Broten's deference to some future study serves as a carbon copy of the path taken by the Romanow and Calvert governments as they cut revenue before it could be used for social benefits, while Wotherspoon again highlighted the futility of facilitating the flow of profits out of Saskatchewan.

Meanwhile, Meili also faced a new round of questions about one of his policy planks, as Weir challenged him on jurisdictional questions and logistics surrounding his Bank of Saskatchewan proposal. But Meili was able to stand his ground in pointing to Alberta Treasury Branch as a similar institution that's succeeded under Canada's division of powers, while noting that there's room to ensure a Saskatchewan equivalent cooperates with credit unions rather than pushing them aside.

Meili also contributed a couple of noteworthy exchanges to the debate: his first query about Broten's "big idea" was met with a standard response about NDP membership structures, while his second round of questions to Wotherspoon gave rise to a substantive two-way discussion about providing opportunities for disadvantaged children.

In sum, the Prince Albert debate looked to offer enough new issues and different angles to give us a better understanding of the leadership contenders - even if the end result wasn't a campaign-changing performance from any candidate. And with that, we'll have to wait and see just how much the candidates' latest plans end up reshaping the race.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Heat-seeking cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Jim Stanford points out that any "bitumen bubble" will only get worse if the Cons and their provincial cousins get their way in shifting the Canadian economy even further toward immediate tar sands extraction:

(I)f the problem exists because we’re pumping out raw bitumen faster than markets can absorb it, will it really help to pump it out even faster? Few analysts believe the Keystone pipeline to the United States would solve the problem, even if it does get built; at best, it would displace downward price pressure from Oklahoma southward to Louisiana. Pipelines through British Columbia are unlikely to be built, for environmental reasons. And even if Canadian oil could reach Asia, remember that there are similar price risks there – including alternative supplies, conservation and environmental constraints. In sum, the inherent limitations of an economic strategy rooted in the extraction and export of raw resources cannot be overcome by simply finding another foreigner to sell to.

The sheer waste and irrationality of the Canadian discount should be addressed with alternative measures. Instead of extracting and exporting raw commodities, we should strive to add more value to our resources right here in Canada. Upstream, we could use far more Canadian-made equipment in resource projects. Downstream, we could upgrade and refine the resource instead of saturating export markets with raw output. Even better would be to use Canadian petroleum refined at home to displace the expensive crude currently imported from Britain and Algeria.

Yes, this would mean slowing the pace of bitumen expansion, since there’s not enough demand in Canada, to absorb all the new bitumen the industry wants to pump. But we would extract much more value from each barrel. And we’d stop cheapening the value of our own non-renewable resources with this mad rush to export.

- Meanwhile, Stephen Leahy takes note of the Cons' effort to brand environmentalists as terrorists in order to silence dissent from the oil-at-all-costs extraction policy. Saskboy reacts with due outrage here at home.

- And Heather Scoffield reports that the Cons' supposed commitment to monitoring the environmental impacts of the tar sands has led to precisely zero public reporting so far - while any future reporting will be based less on the neutral and accurate presentation of actual results than a concerted effort to fit any result into the party line:

The hope is to start releasing data through a publicly accessible portal soon — perhaps by the end of the month, although no date has been made final.

Some types of data would be streamed continuously as scientists produce it. Other data would be released at periodic intervals of three or six months. And other categories would be released more holistically, presented in a way that would prevent analysts from coming to spurious conclusions based on a partial picture, Dodds said.

- Finally, speaking of complete failures, Amy Minsky and Mike Le Couteur took the time to check on the Cons' spin about reviewing ministerial expenses - and found that eight out of nine departments who responded (including Bev Oda's) featured absolutely no effort to determine whether expenses claimed were actually legitimate.

#skndpldr Candidate Rankings - February 19

While there's been plenty of news in Saskatchewan's NDP leadership campaign over the past week, there's hasn't been much evidence to suggest the campaign's shape has changed to any great degree. So rather than explaining why this week's rankings stay the same, I'll include a comment on pluses for each candidate which haven't received much attention so far.

1. Ryan Meili (1)

While Meili has understandably focused on his apparent lead within the leadership race, he may also enjoy an advantage over his opponents when it comes to shifting gears once all the votes are in.

In particular, the "healthy society" theme used throughout the leadership campaign looks to be no less valuable as a matter of contrast against the Saskatchewan Party within the province's general political conversation. And so Meili will be able to build on his leadership campaign message from day one.

In contrast, each of the other candidates would have more work to do in transitioning from leadership campaign messages to themes intended to resonate with the general public. Neither Cam Broten's emphasis on experience and party-building nor Erin Weir's focus on presenting a plan figures to serve as a particularly useful point of distinction from the Saskatchewan Party in the eyes of the general public. And while Trent Wotherspoon's focus on well-being might offer the best alternative framework within the leadership campaign, he has some distance left to go in developing that message.

2. Cam Broten (2)

The extended set of Saskatchewan NDP leadership debates has not only allowed many different people to see the candidates in action, but has also enabled us to take a look at some skills and strategies which might not be obvious absent that regular interaction. And Broten has shown plenty of comfort with one of the key public roles of an opposition leader, using a "variations on a theme" questioning style to expand on preferred topics during the course of the debate schedule.

That's important due to the reality that stories often don't filter into the consciousness of the general public without first being subject to weeks of media discussion - even as the media is hesitant to discuss the same story for more than a news cycle or two (and normally has loads of distractions thanks to a constant flow of glossy government press releases).

As a result, an opposition party looking to get its message out needs to be able to find new angles on a basic story in order to turn it into a lasting issue. And while I haven't always agreed with Broten's choice of issues, he's been highly successful at building themes while asking questions even as he pushes respondents in unexpected directions.

3. Trent Wotherspoon (3)

I've talked somewhat before about Wotherspoon's ability to rise above the fray within the leadership campaign, but it deserves another mention here.

One of the iron laws of Canadian politics is that whoever auditions for the role of leader of the opposition in a general election tends to get it. And based on that theory, the relative combativeness of Broten or Weir in particular might limit the NDP's growth potential - at least until after another election cycle leads to a change in style and strategy.

Meanwhile, Wotherspoon has stood out from the pack in staying positive and friendly even while challenging his competitors in areas of disagreement. Which means that if there's any way of avoiding the trap set up by Wells' Rule #4, Wotherspoon may be the best positioned to find it.

4. Erin Weir (4)

Finally, while I've criticized Weir's campaign at times for being a bit too quick to promote his every media appearance, I'll acknowledge the flip side to that point.

While the other candidates have worked mostly to build within their own networks of supporters rather than focusing on media outreach, Weir has spent plenty of time (and applied plenty of media savvy) in making sure that NDP values get heard by a broader range of readers and viewers. And that figures to be a valuable contribution to the party's effort to reach the general public at a time when the Sask Party/corporate line all too often goes unopposed on key issues.