On test cases

Not surprisingly, Linda McQuaig's entry into the NDP's Toronto Centre nomination contest against Jennifer Hollett has set off plenty of discussion this morning. And much of the focus has been on a possible by-election battle between McQuaig and Chrystia Freeland - the authors of the two most prominent recent books highlighting the gap between the rich and the rest of us.

But I'll suggest that neither The Trouble with Billionaires nor Plutocrats figures to be the most important piece of reading material for the Toronto Centre by-election. While the campaign will hopefully raise the profile of economic inequality as an issue, I'm not sure either candidate can expect to gain much leverage against the other - and in particular, McQuaig's better-developed policy prescriptions may not stand out in a short campaign.

In contrast, McQuaig's It's the Crude, Dude offers a vital starting point for debate in the area where there's plenty of room for both clash and shifting positions among the opposition parties.

As I and others have already noted, the Cons seem determined to turn cheerleading for resource extraction into the core of their economic message. And the NDP and Libs have thus far taken significantly different positions in response: while the NDP has made the case for a more sustainable economy which includes eliminating public subsidies for pollution from the tar sands, Justin Trudeau's main line of attack has been that the Cons are putting the wrong shade of lipstick on the pig in making foreign bitumen sales the centrepiece of Canada's economy.

Now, it looks like those two positions are set to clash in Toronto Centre. And while the issue figures to be an important point of contention no matter who emerges from the nomination contests, McQuaig's presence in particular could present a direct challenge to the Libs' attempt to be the friendlier face of the tar sands.

That is, unless Freeland has enough clout within Trudeau's inner circle to try to change her party's direction to improve her own chances. But the more likely course of events looks to involve Freeland trying to sell petro-politics in downtown Toronto against an opponent who's literally written the book on the dangers of that strategy. And the question of whether the NDP can gain ground by being on the right side of that contrast may go a long way toward shaping our choices for 2015 and beyond.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your holiday reading.

- Paul Buchhelt discusses eight areas where privatization has proven to be a disaster in the U.S. - with one holding particular interest for Regina residents:

A 2009 analysis of water and sewer utilities by Food and Water Watch found that private companies charge up to 80 percent more for water and 100 percent more for sewer services. A more recent study confirms that privatization will generally "increase the long-term costs borne by the public." Privatization is "shortsighted, irresponsible and costly."

Numerous examples of water privatization abuses or failures have been documented in California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, Texas, Massachusetts, Rhode Island -- just about anywhere it's been tried. Meanwhile, corporations have been making outrageous profits on a commodity that should be almost free. Nestle buys water for about 1/100 of a penny per gallon, and sells it back for ten dollars. Their bottled water is not much different from tap water.

Worse yet, corporations profit from the very water they pollute. Dioxin-dumping Dow Chemicals is investing in water purification. Monsanto has been accused of privatizing its own pollution sites in order to sell filtered water back to the public.

- Robert Reich responds to three lies used to push for corporate tax giveaways. Bernie Sanders discusses how anti-worker employers have built their obscene wealth on effective subsidies from the public. And Chris Hedges comments on the U.S.' prison-industrial complex.

- Meanwhile, Bob Weber reports on an attempt to label a closed assembly of oil-backed governments and tar sands lobby groups as a "Pan-Canadian" discussion of pipelines. And Greenpeace's Keith Stewart offers the appropriate response:

Keith Stewart of Greenpeace said it’s telling that no environmental or aboriginal groups have been invited to help determine the group’s goals and objectives.

“Industry says, ‘Oh yes, of course we’ll engage people — after we’ve set everything up.’ The people who have been expressing concerns aren’t getting any say on setting terms of reference, the types of things that are going to be looked at, how it’s going to operate.”
...
Noting Alberta has yet to release a long-awaited report on pipeline safety, Stewart suspects the collaborative may be aimed more at public opinion than anything else.

“We’ve see this around the world, where companies who are under fire launch these types of initiatives to try and allay public concern and avoid new regulation,” he said. “They treat it as a public-relations problem rather than an operations problem.”

 - Finally, Adam Radwanski identifies the NDP as the big winner in last week's Ontario by-elections. And while Nora Loreto is rather less optimistic, she's right in pointing out how that result should help the party influence the province's wider political system:

Assuming that government holds long enough to even consider a budget, the pressure on the NDP to deliver a budget with the Liberals that reflects some progressive values will be their greatest test in nearly 20 years. The Liberals will need NDP support. The New Democrats cannot rely on weak, populist policies if they’re going to prove that they’re a viable alternative. They’ll have to demonstrate that they can play politics: make serious demands or force a general election.
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If the NDP picks their big issues now (public childcare? lower tuition fees? new energy policies?), pulling a Liberal budget to the left won’t be politically difficult.
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There are many, many months for the NDP to clean itself up internally and find the best political minds and organizers they can mine from the left. With an activist Ontario Federation of Labour, this shouldn’t be a hard task.

[Edit: fixed typo.]

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- David Atkins comments on the ever-growing disconnect between the interests of a few making a killing on Wall Street and the lives of people stuck in the real economy:

(T)the entirety of supply-side economic thinking is based on the idea that inflating the assets of the wealthy will lead to more jobs for working people. If inflating middle-class assets like housing leads to dangerous bubbles while boosting stock values that largely benefit the rich does nothing for the greater economy, the entire edifice of conservative economics comes crashing down.

But it's not just the way conservatives describe the economy. Even progressives and liberals in Congress use language that suggests the link between Wall Street and Main Street still exists, but that it has simply become blocked or frayed. "Gains on Wall Street haven't reached the middle class," one often hears--as if it should naturally happen but for some evil gremlin getting in the way.

There's a reason that even liberal politicians won't say the chain has been broken, and a reason why the media largely refuses to even report on the phenomenon: the implications are terrifying. If helping Wall Street doesn't actually help Main Street, then the foundations of the capitalist economy are shaken to their roots. Capitalist economics is supposed to be a virtuous circle: companies generate profits which generate reinvestment, which generates employment, which boosts demand, which in turn generates higher profits. When certain industries take on too much weight or grow obsolete, or when supply outstrips demand, there are temporary but necessary corrections called recessions that keep the system in check.

But what if profits don't generate reinvestment and companies simply hold onto the loot? What if "reinvestment" takes the form of financialization rather than real product development? What if boosting productivity means mechanization that leads to job gains, rather than job losses? What if the few job gains that do accrue, happen in countries with such depressed wages that middle-class workers in advanced economies (the ones who create the demand for high-cost, profitable products) simply cannot compete?

And what if, in order to disguise this phenomenon, policy makers attempted to bribe the public with free trade agreements that lowered the cost of electronics and plastic toys while quietly destroying jobs? What if policy makers' next step in a failing wage environment was to boost asset prices like housing so that the currently middle-class homeowner could feel artificially wealthy, all while obliterating any prospect that the next generation could afford even a modest home in areas with strong job markets without help from their parents? What if the low-skill job market deteriorated to such an extent that young people needed an outrageously expensive college education or more--and only in the "right" fields--to attain any sort of job security, all while policymakers refused to lift a finger to help make that education more affordable? And what if policy makers made it easier for underwater Americans with failing wages to take on debt via credit cards, while doing nothing to prevent predatory lenders from taking advantage of them?

In that world, the virtuous circle of capitalism becomes a death spiral. Recoveries become shorter and more jobless. Recessions and depressions become longer, even as asset markets remain curiously "healthy." This happens a few times until eventually supply-side Wile E. Coyote runs out of demand-side cliff and comes crashing at terminal velocity into the canyon below.

- Thomas Walkom highlights the Harper Cons' sellout of Canadian sovereignty - including their willingness to declare U.S. police officers operating in our country to be above Canadian law:

The U.S. government wants American police agents working in Canada exempted from Canadian law. If this is a surprise, it shouldn’t be.

The secret American demand was unearthed this week by Canadian Press reporters looking into Ottawa’s much ballyhooed border deal with the U.S.
...
A 2012 RCMP briefing note obtained by The Canadian Press points out that Washington and Ottawa have been at daggers drawn over whether U.S. agents and police officers who commit crimes in Canada would be subject to Canadian law.
...
Under a 1951 treaty, even Canada has ceded some rights over U.S. and other NATO troops operating inside this country.

But the 1951 treaty does give Canada the right to arrest and try NATO soldiers or their dependants who have committed non-military crimes such as murder.

It seems now that the U.S. wants more. According to the RCMP memo, Washington is demanding that its police agents operating in Canada be entirely exempt from Canadian criminal law.

- And Dr. Dawg provides the appropriate response - if coupled with justified concern that the Harper Cons are perfectly happy to allow the U.S. to control Canada with impunity.

- Jeff Jedras offers his take on party discipline and the role of elected representatives:

I also think a larger issue is one of public perception, or misconception, about the role of the parliamentarian in our political process. Technically, we're electing an individual representative to speak for us and act on our behalf; there may be a party name on the ballot, but we're electing Joe Blow the individual. More and more though, people see the individual and secondary and irrelevant next to the party brand and vote based on the leader. This is because discipline has rendered the individual indistinguishable from their peers, further fueling the argument for discipline because the individual owes their position to the party and leader, not the people...

Several times during the debate, party leaders were called to “give” or “allow” more freedom for parliamentarians. It’s not something for leaders to give – parliamentarians have the freedom already. They just need to take it.

- Don Lieber discusses how Suncor's rip-and-ship plan includes a deliberate choice to cut down on safety checks and maintenance in order to extract as much bitumen as possible - presumably before the damage done by insufficient planning and maintenance catches up.

- Finally, Doug Cuthand criticizes the Cons' narrow focus on colonial history - pointing out the gap between a multi-million dollar campaign surrounding the War of 1812 and a complete lack of recognition of the treaty relationship between First Nations and the Crown.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Saturday reading.

- Rick Salutin writes about the need for the labour movement to better promote its contribution to the general public - and my only quibble is that I'd prefer to see a focus on what still can be (and needs to be) done rather than past victories:

(W)hy don't (unions) contest the battle for the public mind? I don't know why but they don't, or rarely do. They seem to have lost track of that tactic. It went missing in the Ontario teachers conflict this year, too. The unions made little or no effort to explain their case and enlist parents, students and citizens on their side. That left the McGuinty government with the role of defender of the taxpayers.

It's not inevitable. The Chicago teachers' union laboured for wider support and won their strike with it. This matters not just because it would be smart for unions. It's because they, for about a century, have been central to general social improvement. They provided inspiration, resources, organization: without them there would not have been public health care, universal pensions, health and safety laws, the whole panoply of the (now disputed) welfare state.
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It's a daunting challenge for unions. Today they barely exist in the public mind. A few decades ago, if you asked people to free-associate with "union" you'd get many responses: strikes, chants, acronyms, leaders, songs. Now, at least among the young, you'd probably get mostly blanks. Nothing. On the other hand, a blank slate isn't the worst place to start.

- Bill Curry reports that the federal government is studying the use of behavioural "nudges" in other countries as a basis for Canadian programs. But it's well worth questioning whether those nudges are being used to generate actual positive outcomes, or merely new profit centres for well-connected rent-seekers - and the Cons' choice to push workers toward private pensions rather than expanding the lower-cost Canada Pension Plan offers nothing but reason for concern on that front.

- Janina Enrile writes about the pluses of a guaranteed annual income among other means to alleviate poverty:

The senator for Kingston-Frontenac-Leeds is calling for policy changes in government, following a report from the Canadian Medical Association that says bad health can be a result of poverty.

Hugh Segal said this can be helped through the implementation of a guaranteed annual income, which would alleviate concerns for people who couldn’t afford healthier food, which is often more expensive.
...
 It’s why the introduction of a guaranteed annual income would help especially, said Elaine Power, a Queen’s University professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies.

“It would cost a lot in the short term,” she said. “As a long-term investment strategy, I think it’s the most important thing we can do for the health and the fiscal sustainability of the country.”

The poor nutrition that results from a lower income adds to other anxieties, Power said.

“That contributes to your health... There’s the stress of knowing that other people have better lives than you. There’s the stress of being a parent and knowing you can’t provide for your children,” she said. “The chronic stress probably interacts with poor nutrition (and) chronic malnutrition to make things even worse.”

- Meanwhile, CBC reports on the NDP's eminently reasonable proposal to at least ensure that municipalities are informed about dangerous goods being shipped through their territory. But I'd fully expect even that modest suggestion to be met with a wave of corporatist blather about the "red tape" involved in allowing communities to prepare for the risks shippers want to impose on them.

- Finally, Enrique Mendizabal offers a concise set of theories as to how change can happen - with the choices serving as both an important set of considerations for issue-based organizations, and a set of criteria by which to evaluate our political choices.

Musical interlude

Dirty Vegas - 7 A.M.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Frances Woolley rightly challenges the conventional wisdom that there's no such thing as a popular and efficient tax:

Few taxes generate enthusiastic popular support, but some are more popular than others. Those are the ones that fill the red circle.

The area labelled "both" in the diagram above includes two types of taxes. The first is the tax that produces concrete, tangible benefits, but does not distort people's behaviour in undesirable ways. For example, carbon taxes are popular - polls (or, at least some polls) suggest that the majority of Canadians support them - because they produce benefits, in the form of a cleaner environment. To the extent that they distort people's behaviour, they do so in desirable ways.  Taxes introduced during wartime have also had widespread support (their efficiency may be more debatable). Their popularity was achieved, as this Disney propaganda film shows, by framing them as part of a patriotic war effort: "taxes will keep democracy on the march."

A second type of efficient and popular tax is one that the majority of people do not have to pay, and the minority cannot avoid. The incidence of cigarette taxes falls on the minority of Canadians who smoke, grow tobacco, or own shares in tobacco manufacturing companies. The tax is popular with the majority (for US poll numbers, see here, here, or here) because they do not have to pay it. Unless cigarette taxes are very high, they are also relatively efficient: because nicotine is so addictive, smokers often would rather pay the tax than change their behaviour. (To the extent that cigarette taxes induce behavioural change, this may be a good thing).

Taxes on resource rents are also, I would argue, a tax paid by a minority within the population - the owners of the corporations that extract those resources (Andrew Leach has a primer on Alberta oil tax royalties here). Why? As a general rule, the economic burden of a tax falls on whoever cannot change their behaviour to avoid it. A tax on call centres can be shifted to call centre employees, because call centres operations can make employees a take-it-or-leave-it-offer: "accept these wages or we'll move to a lower-tax jurisdiction." Resource extraction companies, however, have to stay where the resources are if they wish to keep on extracting them. They have few alternatives to just paying up.

But it's particularly worth noting that Con-style anti-tax ideology represents the greatest obstacle to any attempt to move toward the "both" area: to the extent the public accepts the claim that any increase in any tax must be avoided at all costs, it becomes impossible to discuss how best to rearrange our current structure to both improve efficiency and achieve concurrent goals.

- Meanwhile, Larry Rousseau comments on the cost of deregulation.

- Henry Blodget discusses why corporate control over our economy has reached the point where even people predisposed to dislike unions can't help but to see the desperate need for better labour organization. And Duncan Cameron points to public opinion as the other essential counterweight to elite control that's been far too ineffective in our recent past.

- Finally, in keeping with the theme of yesterday's column, Adam Ramsay writes about the need to redefine "progress":

If we aren't going to be motivated by a desire, which is destroying the planet, for ever more trinkets, what else can drive us?

There are of course, lots of answers to that. I hope we can all spend more time caring better for each other. I'd like all of us to be allowed to spend more time making art. But there's something else too. I am certain that our innate desire to explore and to understand is as strong as out (sic) innate desire to accumulate and consume.
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Environmentalists must re-imagine what civilisation is for, what humanity is for. Yes, that should include being inspired once more by magnificent forests and quirky plants and incredible animals. These things are wonderful.

But I think it also has to include a vast expansion in the amount of time and money we invest in advancing and disseminating all human knowledge. We ought also to care about exploring the makeup of the cosmos, and of atoms and of chemicals. Because we are humans, and asking questions is what we do best.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Bruce Livesey discusses how offshoring undermines government - and how it happens with the approval of those same governments claiming we can't afford to provide for citizens:

Today, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) claims that offshore banks globally hide some (US) $5-trillion to (US) $7-trillion from tax authorities, or about 8 per cent of the world's assets under management. Moreover, an estimated (US) $11.5-trillion is being stashed in offshore accounts worldwide for one reason or another.

Now governments talk about the so-called "tax gap" -- the difference between what they could collect and do collect -- caused by the use of offshore havens. In the U.K., this estimate ranges from £50 billion to £100-billion annually. Of that, about £20-billion sits in offshore tax havens. Meanwhile, though, the CRA refuses to make an estimate of the tax gap in Canada, but it's safe to say if they did they would find it's in the many tens of billions.

The offshore tax haven issue speaks to one of the Great Lies currently promulgated by conservative, liberal and even social democratic governments: which is that governments are broke. And hence they must lay off civil servants, impose cuts and wage restraints on the public sector. And it is why governments are desperately trying to avoid the issue: after all, they've all encouraged tax evasion and avoidance by offering corporations and the wealthy lower and lower taxes and greater tax breaks over the years. Now they are reaping what they have sown.

- And Pat Atkinson recognizes the need for tax revenue to fund the social priorities we care about most.

- Meanwhile, Frances Russell suggests that rather than buying into austerity-based cautionary tales about Greece today, we should look its past as an example of an informed citizenry able to look out for its own best interests.

- Steve Horn writes about the tactics normally used by corporate spinners to try to undermine citizens' movements. Mark Taliano focuses on the psychological manipulation techniques preferred by the Harper Cons and other opponents of social goods in Canada. And Simon Enoch highlights the City of Regina's Orwellian shift in language - as at the first hint of democratic participation, any reference to the "water" aspect of wastewater treatment has apparently been declared unfit for discussion.

- Finally, those types of messages go a long way toward explaining Henry Blodget's simple depiction of U.S. inequality in four charts - pairing unprecedented profits flowing to the top with an utter lack of opportunity for the many.

New column day

Here, on the questions raised by a sudden drop in potash prices - and why we should reconsider our economic and social priorities so that a minor fluctuation in a still-ample level of wealth isn't seen as reason to push the panic button.

For further reading...
- My discussion of Robert and Edward Skidelsky's How Much Is Enough? shouldn't be taken to suggest the book goes beyond a rough outline of the alternative to a growth-obsessed society. But I'll certainly recommend it as a starting point for discussion.
- For those interested in some recent reports on the effects of poverty on personal decision-making and life outcomes, I'll again point here, here and here. 
- And for a more personal take on hunger and poverty in the midst of plenty, I'll highly recommend A Girl Called Jack - discussed here by the Guardian - to those who haven't seen it yet.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Thomas Walkom points out that while Stephen Harper managed to push the world in the wrong direction over the past few years, he may be missing the boat on where it's headed:

The Harper government’s failure is longer-term. It still operates under the assumption that free trade and free markets will conquer all. This is an old model. It is out of date. True, the Great Depression of the 1930s was aggravated because there were too many barriers to the free movement of labour, goods and capital. But the Great Recession of the 21st century is aggravated by the fact that there are too few.

This is the lesson of the crippled eurozone. It is also the lesson of Japan, which started to do better only after it elected a nationalist (and right-wing) government willing to challenge trade orthodoxy.
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Harper and his government have seen us through some bad years. They could have made matters far worse but didn’t. In a roundabout way, they deserve credit for this.

But their overall plans for the economy are based on stale assumptions. What they do not understand is that the Great Recession is changing everything, politically as well as economically.

At some point, the Chinese won’t want to pay top dollar for oil. At some point, the Americans will conclude that jobs at home trump trade deals abroad. Then what do we do?

- The Canadian Medical Association and the Wellesley Institute have both released noteworthy studies on the connection between social ills and poor health - with the latter being traceable to the former. And Jane Gerster reports on Dr. Roland Wong's efforts to make sure that his patients aren't kept sick by a lack of healthy food:

A Toronto doctor found guilty of professional misconduct last December for exaggerating allergies to help patients on welfare access special diet allowances is allegedly still doing it — with no regrets.

“Regrets? Only that the government doesn’t help the poor,” Dr. Roland Wong told the Star Monday outside of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, where a committee is meeting this week to determine his penalty.
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John Clarke, an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, said the doctor deserves “a medal and keys to the city,” not a punishment.

A crowd of people showed up Monday morning to support Dr. Wong, shaking his hand and filling the small hearing room.

“To us, these are all rarefied legal arguments,” Clarke said. “One decent man stood up to ensure that people lacking the basic necessities of life could get nutrition and health, and to punish him would be to intimidate anyone else who might follow his example.”

- Conversely, Alex Pareene writes about the antisocial Washington consensus calling for already-poor citizens to suffer more in the name of further giveaways to the wealthy.

- Finally, Purple Library Guy neatly dissects some familiar corporatist tropes by asking an inconvenient question: if the unavoidable effect of the market is to create inequality and insecurity, then why would we be anything but pleased to see policies counter market norms?

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Flattened cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Frank Graves comments on the fundamental political choices we're facing in determining whether to continue operating based on corporatist orthodoxy - and the reality that the vast majority of Canadians don't agree with the side chosen by the Harper Cons:

(T)he devil’s trade off of more inequality, lower tax rates for the wealthy and corporations and a minimal state isn’t producing the promised trickle down benefits. Monetarism, and the bumper sticker simplicity of “lower taxes + less government = prosperity for all” has been laid bare as a cruel hoax. And the myth that inequality might be tough medicine — but that it provides a springboard for greater social mobility and economic efficiency — has also been punctured. It is now vividly clear that those places with the greatest level of inequality (which is rising throughout the advanced western world) are the places with the lowest levels of upward mobility. The Gatsby curve shows that it is the U.S. that now has the greatest levels of intergenerational reproduction of wealth and social order (along with the U.K.). Canada is moving with similar rapidity towards a more unequal society. If you want to see where opportunity expresses itself best, where the most able rise to the top, don’t go to the United States or even Canada. If you want to live the American dream, move to Denmark, which incidentally is one of, if not the top performing, Western economies in term of standard of living.
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Most of the linkages to the strong preference for a more active government are unsurprising. Quebec is more statist, and Alberta less so. Women are much more likely to favour an active government. But the most notable finding is that after nearly 40 years of being told that the merits of less government are the preferred recipe for shared prosperity, there is not a single group in Canadian society that does not clearly reject the path of less active government in the long term future. Whether this is a product of current pessimism about the future, or growing awareness that the big winners in the new world order (both democratic and authoritarian) all seem to have active state involvement in the economy, we can at this stage offer only broadly suggestive commentary. But perhaps it is time for us admit that monetarism and the pursuit of the night watchman state seems ready to be consigned to the dustbin of historical failure.

- Simon Tremblay-Pepin points out the disproportionate corporate focus on dividends in recent years - particularly in light of the 2008 crash.

- Kevin Drum writes that austerity forced by Republicans has cost the U.S. 3 million jobs. And Linda McQuaig documents Stephen Harper's role in spreading the blight of gratuitous economic destruction around the globe:

By early 2010, Keynesianism was losing ground on the international scene. But it was the G20 summit in Toronto later that year which “above all” resulted in the world’s rich nations changing course and embracing austerity, according to a recent article by British financial journalist Martin Wolf in the New York Review of Books.

Harper played a key role in that lamentable change of direction. At his urging, the G20 nations agreed to commit themselves to halve their deficits by 2013 — a draconian approach that returned the developed world to obsessing about deficits and ignoring unemployment.

(Ironically, the high unemployment produced by austerity reduces tax revenues and increases social spending, making deficit-reduction difficult. Much to its embarrassment, the Harper government has had to revise its deficit estimates upward. So far this year, Canada’s deficit is rising, not falling.)

But the fixation on deficits, which has dominated public discourse for much of the last 30 years, has helped divert attention from the fact that austerity is part of a larger agenda (including tax cuts and privatization) that’s redistributed money toward the top.

- Josh Eidelson continues to discuss the spread of fast-food and retail strikes in the U.S. as workers seek a reasonable living wage.


- And finally, Ralph Surette puts involuntary testing on hungry First Nations Canadians into context as another ugly aspect of our history.

On coopting

Paul Wells offers a note of warning for the Libs in recruiting Chrystia Freeland as a candidate. But I see a greater problem for Freeland herself in pursuing the role.

It's not hard to see how Freeland might seem appealing as a means of papering over the Libs' disconnection from the general public:

Chrystia Freeland, winner of the 2013 National Business Book Award for her book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else (Doubleday Canada), has confirmed her foray into federal politics.

The race to replace MP Bob Rae in the Toronto Centre riding is gaining momentum as the Thomson Reuters editor and managing director has confirmed she will be seeking the Liberal party nomination. 

But it wasn't long ago that an opposition party similarly looked to press its advantage in a perceived area of weakness for the incumbent government - with little regard for whether it intended to follow through on its assurances. And that didn't exactly work out well for the star candidate involved...

Years after a nondescript public servant wouldn’t play ball with institutional sleaze (and became a national hero in the process), Allan Cutler still has Canada on his mind. He is as troubled now as ever he was when Jean Chretien had his name embossed on golf balls to keep Quebec in Canada.

“I had hoped after Gomery that things would change. If anything, it has gotten worse. We have an epidemic of corruption at the federal level. Whistleblowers are even more unwelcome now than they were then.”

...nor for the writer whose criticism was seen to define the problem:

Savoie's passionate condemnation of centralization didn't slow it down. In an odd way, it may even have contributed to it.

"An adviser to a prime minister asked me if I'd sign a copy of Governing from the Centre," Savoie says. "I leafed through it and I noticed that he had read it, he had underlined a few things. And I said, 'Now you're going to do things differently?' He said, 'No, no, no. We use it as a manual.' "

Now, I have no doubt that there are plenty of Libs hastily grabbing copies of Plutocrats for their summer reading. But given that the actual direction of the party under Justin Trudeau has involved backing the Cons and corporate interests at every turn, there's little reason to think Freeland's call to serve "everyone else" is being treated as anything other than a cookbook - nor that the Libs see an expose about the global elite as much besides a manual to gain entrance to the club.

We'll see whether Freeland herself manages to gain any traction on the Canadian political scene. But all indications now are that she's mostly being used to brand continued plutocratic rule with a large red "L" - and the rest of us shouldn't see that as an improvement.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Bill Gardner discusses the effect of inequality and poverty starting at birth:

There are three important facts packed into this slide. First, the lines stack up in order of increasing age, meaning that older people reported worse health than younger people. Second, all the lines slope downward, meaning that the poorer you were, the more likely you had poor health.

These facts are unsurprising, until you notice how powerful the income effect is. The leftmost point of the youngest (turquoise) line is above the rightmost point of the oldest (purple) line. This means that the poorest teenagers reported themselves as less healthy than rich middle-aged people.

- The Council of Canadians catches Enbridge trying to put off compliance with basic pipeline safety measures - in what's surely an example of the corporate sector adequately managing its own risk by operating under the assumption that, say, a power outage and a natural disaster couldn't possibly happen at once (or based on a common cause):

NEB inspectors discovered that the required back-up power supplies were missing in dozens of pumping stations during an inspection in October 2011, and ordered Enbridge to submit a corrective action plan. Eighteen months later, when Enbridge finally submitted its plan, the company requested that the NEB keep the details secret.
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“It is indefensible for Enbridge to delay the installation of safety equipment that should have been in place decades ago. They don’t even seem to grasp why the safety equipment is necessary.”

From the Enbridge cover letter regarding its corrective action plan:

“It is only in the event of a power outage and an emergency situation occurring simultaneously that the alternate power source would be called upon to isolate the station. In that regard, Enbridge still has questions with respect to the need, from a practical perspective, for installing power generation of this nature.”

- Meanwhile, Jessica McDiarmid reports on the combination of deregulation and wage suppression that looks to have contributed to the Lac-Mégantic rail explosion. And Les Perreaux takes a closer look at MMA in particular.

- Cory Doctorow writes that the only safe home burglary is one carried out under the authority of a bank.

- Finally, Stephen Gordon suggests that public training money should be allocated to individual workers, rather than being used solely as a subsidy to employers. And while that policy might create some distortions of its own (with the link between income subsidies and reduced wages looking ripe for employer abuse), it points toward the guaranteed annual income concept which would provide genuine security and choice for Canadians in determining what training or other options to pursue.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Peter Buffett rightly questions the trend toward making the provision of basic necessities subordinate to a corporate mindset, rather than putting human needs first:

As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering” — feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity.

But this just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place. The rich sleep better at night, while others get just enough to keep the pot from boiling over. Nearly every time someone feels better by doing good, on the other side of the world (or street), someone else is further locked into a system that will not allow the true flourishing of his or her nature or the opportunity to live a joyful and fulfilled life.

And with more business-minded folks getting into the act, business principles are trumpeted as an important element to add to the philanthropic sector. I now hear people ask, “what’s the R.O.I.?” when it comes to alleviating human suffering, as if return on investment were the only measure of success. Microlending and financial literacy (now I’m going to upset people who are wonderful folks and a few dear friends) — what is this really about? People will certainly learn how to integrate into our system of debt and repayment with interest. People will rise above making $2 a day to enter our world of goods and services so they can buy more. But doesn’t all this just feed the beast?

I’m really not calling for an end to capitalism; I’m calling for humanism. 

- And Moises Velasquez-Manoff discusses the inherent and destructive stress involved in living in poverty:

Although professionals may bemoan their long work hours and high-pressure careers, really, there’s stress, and then there’s Stress with a capital “S.” The former can be considered a manageable if unpleasant part of life; in the right amount, it may even strengthen one’s mettle. The latter kills.

What’s the difference? Scientists have settled on an oddly subjective explanation: the more helpless one feels when facing a given stressor, they argue, the more toxic that stressor’s effects.

That sense of control tends to decline as one descends the socioeconomic ladder, with potentially grave consequences. Those on the bottom are more than three times as likely to die prematurely as those at the top. They’re also more likely to suffer from depression, heart disease and diabetes. Perhaps most devastating, the stress of poverty early in life can have consequences that last into adulthood.
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A nurturing bond with a caregiver in a stimulating environment appears essential for proper brain development and healthy maturation of the stress response. That sounds easy enough, except that such bonds, and the broader social networks that support them, are precisely what poverty disrupts. If you’re an underpaid, overworked parent — worried, behind on rent, living in a crime-ridden neighborhood — your parental skills are more likely to be compromised. That’s worrisome given the trends in the United States. About one in five children now lives below the poverty line, a 35 percent increase in a decade. Unicef recently ranked the United States No. 26 in childhood well-being, out of 29 developed countries. When considering just childhood poverty, only Romania fares worse.

-Vanessa Brcic calls for British Columbia to restore the Therapeutics Initiative as a sorely-needed fair arbiter of drug effectiveness. The Star pleads for somebody to take on long-term responsibility for the Experimental Lakes Area. And Stephen LaRose points to Winnipeg as a prime example of the (nonexistent) returns when a civic government prioritizes big-money sports and entertainment over actual needs.

- Finally, Haroon Siddiqui holds out some hope that Chris Alexander might revisit some of Jason Kenney's most damaging moves as Minister of Immigration (though I'd add "employer-driven" to his overall freeze proposal):

Kenney’s changes have not been popular, have not worked, have not reduced backlogs and have not improved the system — indeed, have made a mess of it.

We are bringing 250,000 immigrants a year and tens of thousands of guest workers when 1.3 million Canadians don’t have jobs, another million are underemployed or have given up looking for work, and the unemployment rate for both the young as well as new immigrants is twice the national average. Of the immigrants who do have jobs, three in four are not using the education and skills for which they were picked as immigrants.

Perversely, the temporary foreign workers program (which brought in at least 500,000 workers) grew even as the economy slowed down. Kenney’s mantra of “skills shortages” has been shown to be a bit of a fraud. As the Star’s Nicholas Keung reported Tuesday, for example, Canada imported more than 6,000 temps as chefs and cooks in 2011, when Canadian colleges are churning out culinary graduates in record numbers.
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All this brings me, Mr. Alexander, to ask you this:

Tell us why you should not freeze immigration until the job picture improves, both for them and Canadians; axe the temporary foreign workers program; restore health benefits to refugees; stop the shameful treatment of the Roma; and why your government that emphasizes family values is being so punitive toward the family reunification of immigrant families.

Sunday Morning 'Rider Blogging

Just two games ago, I noted that there was still one major question facing the Saskatchewan Roughriders: whether the team's offence could function without Darian Durant at the controls. But at most one week later than might have been ideal, we seem to have our answer.

No, Drew Willy isn't anywhere close to Durant's comfort level in the 'Riders' offence. In fact, Willy's performance yesterday served largely to highlight some of the most important elements of Durant's game which won't be duplicated by any backup: his comfort level with multiple 'Rider receivers, his ability to prolong plays by finding the right angle or the right fake to slow down onrushing defenders, and his command of a full array of offensive weapons.

But if Willy obviously isn't up to Durant's standard, he showed yesterday that he can still do enough to earn a win for the 'Riders in a game where the team's defence and special teams play up to a reasonable standard.

In particular, Willy's willingness and ability to stretch the defence after a tentative start worked wonders throughout the game. In the second quarter, he piled up three passing touchdowns to give the 'Riders a lead they wouldn't relinquish - and in the second half, a couple of deep throws that didn't quite connect nonetheless served to keep the Ticats guessing and opened up opportunities for Kory Sheets to run down the clock.

Meanwhile, the rest of the 'Riders can best be seen as filling their roles in a game where everybody else needed to step up slightly to account for a less experienced quarterback. Of particular note, Geroy Simon had his first huge game for the team - nicely replicating a pattern which helped the Lions for so long where even newcomers who couldn't find any other receivers open always seemed to connect with Simon. The defence didn't corral the Hamilton offence as well as in the previous game, but made up for it with a bevy of sacks and turnovers. And the 'Riders' special teams once again reduced an opponent's return game to rubble.

Now, Durant gets a couple of weeks to heal; Willy can spend the bye week processing what he saw in his first successful CFL start; and the rest of the team mostly needs to keep up and build on what it's done already. And while the odds are that 'Riders will have some tougher games ahead, we can't ask for much more at this point in the season.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Marc Lee takes a high-level look at the absurdity of our destructive economic choices:

Exhibit one: the North Pole at the moment is a one-foot-deep aquamarine lake. After reaching record low ice cover and thickness at the end of summer 2012, an ice-free arctic in the summer is coming sooner rather than later. All of that blue water absorbing solar radiation instead of ice reflecting it back to space will compound global warming. And as it melts it releases the greenhouse gas, methane, which will further increase warming in one of those bad feedback loops scientists have been warming about for decades. A new study puts the cost of this methane leakage at $60 trillion, a number hard to fathom but close to the world’s GDP in a single year.

Exhibit two: extreme weather is doing some major damage. It’s going to take a while for final numbers to come in, but damages from the Calgary and region floods are estimated in the $3-5 billion range. In Toronto, total damages of $1 billion or more seem plausible. It is important to note that some damages are covered by private insurance, but there are the uninsured too, and even for those with insurance, there are deductibles, caps and fine print. Private insurance notably does not cover replacement of public infrastructure, either. Insurance coverage can be less than 20% of total damages from a natural disaster. In central Europe, flooding caused about $16 billion in total damages back in May, amid a very wet spring. Flooding is a big theme this year, but extreme heat is also a problem: the “heat dome” recently burning up eastern North America, and drought conditions across the plains. All of a sudden, air conditioning is a human right.

Exhibit three: extreme energy development is making a mess. The train derailment, explosion and spill at Lac Megantic is obviously top of mind. Pipeline spills have also been much in the news (even as pipeline companies aspire for new capacity via Keystone XL, Northern Gateway (through northern BC) and Trans Mountain (to Vancouver)). But breaking news includes spills as a result of new extreme tar sands processing, with “unstoppable” leaks from in situ extraction that injects steam below the surface to heat and pump out the bitumen.
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(O)ne has to think that all of this damage, from climate change and business-as-usual for the fossil fuel industry, portends political change. Perhaps not this year, but our collective denial of the costs of our fossil fuel addiction has to come crashing down at some point. Or not. Such is our choice right now: is humanity a plankton bloom, here for a good time not a long time, or can we stitch it together to become something more long-lasting on this planet. Life on planet earth will go on, but what will become of the great human drama that has unfolded over the past hundred thousand years? It’s our collective choice to make, so time to roll up our sleeves and build a social movement that will push our political class to action.

- And it's well worth adding Halliburton's coverup of its role to the list of appalling actions which should cause a major rethink of our assumptions about how much we can trust our corporate overlords - rather than giving rise to a paltry fine.

- But as Democracy Watch notes, Canada's premiers apparently can't hold a meeting without turning it into a corporate-branded event.

- Rick Goldman challenges Andrew Coyne's attempt to redefine poverty out of existence. Laurel Rothman and Bill Moore-Kilgannon make the case for a national strategy to combat poverty (while recognizing that nothing of the sort is coming from the Harper Cons),

- Instead, the Cons have of course focused on boutique tax baubles which serve little purpose but to drain the federal treasury to ensure nothing useful is done with public money. And Carol Goar points out that even the C.D. Howe Institute recognizes the futility of that choice.

- Finally, Alison links together the Cons' inner circle to highlight the implausibility that payoffs to Mike Duffy wouldn't have been familiar to Stephen Harper and his office. And Lana Payne discusses the need to rebuild social trust in the wake of Harper's "binders full of enemies" attitude toward the majority of Canada:

The list of "enemy stakeholders" (which encompasses pretty much anyone who disagrees with or has disagreed with the Harper government) did serve to highlight once again this government's colossal insecurity and bullying personality.

But for most political watchers the fact that the Prime Minister's Office would keep a running list of enemies merely confirmed what they already knew.

This is a government that has taken divisive politics to new and dizzying heights. This is a government that lacks the will and, perhaps, the ability to seek compromise and consensus.

Instead, it prefers to create enemies and then abuse its power in an effort to punish those so-called enemies.

And the list is long. Long enough to fill binders.

Feminists. Environmentalists. Doctors who care about refugees. Academics and scientists for giving a darn about things like evidence and data and real research. Unions. Civil society organizations. Self-identified progressives. The Parliamentary budget officer, or specifically, Kevin Page. The premiers. Senators who don't toe the line and rubber stamp bad laws. Federal civil servants who blow the whistle when their government lies about government policy, as was the case with an EI fraud investigator recently. Bureaucrats with an informed opinion trying to offer good policy advice, rather than us-vs-them warnings.
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As we know, every government runs it course. They get old and tired. The Harper government is looking like that now, despite the attempt to put a new face on cabinet.

Capitalizing on the unpopularity of the federal Conservatives without acting to rebuild both social and political trust with Canadians might result in short-term political success for those who displace them, but what will it really mean for the country?

As Himelfarb points out, social trust is quite different from political trust. Both are needed, but it is the loss of the first that is the bigger concern.

Musical interlude

Chicane - Don't Give Up

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Bill Curry reports on the Cons' continued refusal to provide accurate information to the PBO - with the end result being that an office intended to provide a fully-informed, unbiased perspective in evaluating government action is now being forced to make Access to Information requests in an attempt to do its job.

- If it's seldom easy to unite Canada's provinces behind a single cause, the Cons can at least take credit on that front - as their no-consultation, poorly-thought-out jobs grant has managed to win unanimous disapproval from our premiers. And Matthew Mendelsohn discusses a few of the problems:

The programs that the federal government plans to cut — delivered under the Labour Market Agreements — are those that fund training for Canadians who are not eligible for Employment Insurance. These workers are typically the most vulnerable and hard to serve. Many of the programs that could be cut are those that support the essential literacy and numeracy skills that are critical for unemployed Canadians to re-enter the workforce.
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The federal government is proposing to use the $300 million diverted from the Labour Market Agreements to create a new program called the Canada Job Grant, which would pay employers to train workers through educational institutions. Employers would have to kick in one-third of the funds, and provincial governments would likewise have to come up with an additional third.

This would act as a windfall subsidy to employers who already provide the type of training covered by the program — mostly large employers — who could see their training bill fall by two-thirds. But it would probably be too complex and bureaucratic for many small and medium-sized employers to access.

Given that the maximum grant from the federal government would be $5,000 per trainee for short-duration programs, it is hard to see how this would actually help provide workers with the advanced skills they need to take the high-skill jobs where there really are labour shortages. There is simply no evidence to suggest that these small subsidies to large firms would be more effective than the current programs that provinces and communities have been building over the past decade to help unemployed people get jobs.

- Meanwhile, Jeff Jedras makes the case against the Cons' attempt to exercise control over access to the Internet. And Lee Berthiaume reports on their push to turn Canada into an arms dealer.

- Finally, Ish Theilheimer argues for a Marshall Plan aimed at improving the lot of people living precarious lives around the globe. And Mark Bittman sees some hopeful signs in the movement toward a living wage in the U.S.' fast food and retail industries.

New column day

Here, on Regina's wastewater referendum as just the first step in encouraging regular citizen engagement in the decisions that affect us all.

For further reading...
- Again, Hugh Mackenzie's analysis of the cost of private financing is here (PDF). And Barrie McKenna's take on the hidden price of P3s is here.
- The Star Phoenix' editorial board points to Regina's wastewater options as a prime example of higher levels of government limiting the freedom of action of municipalities.
- The City's information on the sewage treatment plant is here - with no indication that the referendum is about to change the use of public resources to present what amounts to the "no" side.
- Finally, CBC documents Regina's past votes on infrastructure projects. And it's particularly worth noting the contrast between consistent citizen engagement over a period of over 50 years, and the complete absence of any votes since 1988.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- John Myles discusses the Cons' war on evidence:

The mandatory Census was the lifeblood of almost all social and business planning. It provided key data for studying things like income inequality and poverty since both low- and high-income households were required to report. The quality of Census data and the accessibility of the data to non-government users had improved exponentially since the 1970s. As a result, its importance as a tool for monitoring the effects of government policy was on the rise. Because it collected data on such a large sample (20 percent) of Canadians, it was able to shed a light into dark corners of Canadian society that no other data source could do.

One of the most important functions of the Census was to monitor what was happening to Canadians over time. Are current governments doing a better or worse job than their predecessors? Breaking the Census series in 2011 means we can’t answer this question any longer. Transparency was the issue, and transparency lost.

But killing the mandatory census was not the only important entry point for data suppression. The 1990s were an important period of data innovation at Statistics Canada. Longitudinal studies – of children, young adults, and the labour force – were introduced. By the 2000s, Canadian researchers were just beginning to master the complex data these surveys produced on important questions such as the duration and consequences of poverty, unemployment, and the like. The longitudinal surveys are now gone, a result of budget-cutting.

- Lest we needed any explanation for the hostility, Daniel Tencer reports on Jim Stanford's findings that the Cons' actual record on jobs looks poor both on its face and in comparison to other governments around the world. And the Conference Board of Canada notes that temporary foreign workers spiked even as the number of jobless Canadians hit new highs, while Nicholas Keung reports that the Cons approved thousands of temporary foreign worker applications in positions where Canadians could plainly have been trained if employers weren't determined to drive down wages.

- Meanwhile, Michael Harris sees an inflated, cash-grabbing Mike Duffy as the definitive symbol of the Harper Cons. And the Ottawa Citizen has had enough of the Cons' publicly-funded propaganda.

- Bryce Covert finds that the rich don't feel "wealthy" if they have less than $5 million in assets. Many tears will surely be shed over the plight of the mere millionaire, particularly given the lavish lifestyle and social respect enjoyed by those struggling to make ends meed.

- Finally, Paul Hanley nicely summarizes Harald Welzer's take on consumer culture:

For pre-industrial craftsmen and their clients, the object was to create a specific object. The work was done once the product was completed and remuneration based on exactly that product.

Industrial production, on the other hand, is a system in which continuous work generates an essentially infinite series of products for the creation of surplus value, which is invested in the expansion of the product range in order to push the system's horizons toward infinity. Nothing is ever finished; the work never stops.

Work and money become the ends, the products and their production mere means.

Work becomes an unlimited, endless activity that does not have a specific, limited, product-related objective, but is dedicated to the ceaseless creation of value - consequently the never-ending production of "growth." Just as work becomes incessant, each stage in the sequence of life's events and every dollar in the bank becomes merely a preliminary to the next stage and the next dollar.

This is the root of the idea of limitless growth that is essential to furnishing the infinite universe of consumable objects.