The debate begins

Earlier this week, Gary Mason asked whether there would be any serious debate over the CETA. In case there were any doubt, Robert Chisholm provides the answer:

These deals can create jobs or ship them overseas. They can foster growth that supports our social programs or put these programs at risk. They can promote human rights abroad or undermine Canadian values at home. And they can enrich our communities with new opportunities — or hollow them out.

This isn’t a "free trade" against "protectionism" debate. This century’s economic challenges compel us to move beyond the old "free trade" model of blanket deregulation alongside unfettered foreign access to Canadian resources. Instead, we need domestic policies that help us take full advantage of opportunities on the global front. Effective trade agreements can open doors for our businesses without tying our hands at home.

Our trade minister forgets how Canada became one of the world’s best places to live. We owe a great deal to progressive industrial and social policies that fostered a strong, family-supporting domestic economy — and sought to ensure its survival in a competitive world.
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New Democrats believe trade must be a priority, but every agreement should deliver a clear net benefit to Canada. This means bargaining hard for deals that open up new markets while protecting Canada’s public services; fostering quality job creation by promoting exports of value-added goods over bulk exports of raw materials; and making sure public health, environmental and human-rights concerns are front and centre.

An NDP government would ensure a full and open assessment of any proposed trade agreement’s impact on our families and communities, so we can have a vigorous public dialogue and make informed choices. Unlike this Conservative government, New Democrats trust Canadians to be part of this debate.

On revocability

Dr. Dawg has a post worth reading on the Cons' purification strategy. But let's take a closer look at part of that plan which I've only dealt with in snark form so far:

The federal government believes some 1,800 people have obtained their Canadian citizenship through fraudulent means and it intends to revoke their status, Postmedia News has learned.

After a lengthy investigation by police and the department of Citizenship and Immigration, letters have been issued to hundreds of Canadians telling them the federal government intends to revoke their citizenship.

Individuals can challenge the decision in Federal Court but if they don't, cabinet will move to void their passports and strip them of their citizenship.

I haven't seen much commentary yet on what that process actually means. So let's unpack it to see just how the Cons see Canadian citizenship.

The apparent starting point for the Cons' action is based on nothing more than what they "believe". There's no indication as to what evidence, if any, there is to support the letters of intention sent out this week - no reason indeed why the Cons couldn't simply be picking the name of immigrants out of a hat (or worse yet, targeting specific groups with no reasonable basis for doing so) in assembling their list.

From there, the onus is being placed on Canadian citizens to go to the trouble of going to court to avoid having their citizenship revoked. And it's particularly noteworthy that the Cons aren't the least bit open to considering citizens' positions at the applicant level; instead, they don't plan to even consider reversing their decisions (however unsupported) unless a court orders them to.

Of course, that will result in massive costs to anybody who wants to challenge the Cons' arbitrary decision. And it wouldn't be surprising at all if many of the immigrants targeted by the Cons have trouble proving the circumstances of their arrival and application for citizenship; after all, what reason would most have had to think they'd need to preserve evidence of how they became Canadian after making the effort to secure citizenship?

In sum, it's bad enough that the Cons think it's their job to try to slash Canada's citizenship rolls. But it's even more telling that they've chosen a process which involves zero accountability or willingness to listen to individual circumstances, combined with a maximum amount of formality and cost in trying to have any mistakes reversed. And the lesson for immigrants across the country can only be that as long as the Cons are in power, it's dangerous to think one is safe in Canada.

(Edit: fixed wording X2.)

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Jeffrey Simpson laments the Cons' evidence-averse crime policies. But it's worth noting that Simpson is off base on one point: much as he assumes that years of spin from the Cons and the media alike have pushed the public to fear for their safety at every turn and thus vote for dumb-on-crime rhetoric at any cost, it just ain't so.

- Gerald Caplan is right to note that for as much damage as they're doing at home, the Harper Cons seem downright moderate compared to some of their right-wing counterparts around the globe. But it's worth recognizing that he forms part of the same global movement - meaning that the disastrous examples abroad serve more as portents of what's to come than as evidence that Harper isn't so bad after all.

- And indeed, some small-c conservatives are coming to see the errors in their ways:

The credit crunch has exposed a similar process of how emancipation can be hijacked. The greater freedom to borrow which began in the 1980s was good for most people. A society in which credit is very restricted is one in which new people cannot rise. How many small businesses could start or first homes be bought without a loan? But when loans become the means by which millions finance mere consumption, that is different.

And when the banks that look after our money take it away, lose it and then, because of government guarantee, are not punished themselves, something much worse happens. It turns out – as the Left always claims – that a system purporting to advance the many has been perverted in order to enrich the few. The global banking system is an adventure playground for the participants, complete with spongy, health-and-safety approved flooring so that they bounce when they fall off. The role of the rest of us is simply to pay.

- Dan Gardner treats like things alike. Mayhem ensues.

- Finally, Shauna MacKinnon highlights Manitoba's Poverty Reduction Strategy Act, even while recognizing that it's only one step toward ending poverty in the province.

Deep thought

If there's any good news in the report that it's apparently impossible to keep corporate sponsorship off even the most political of public functions, it's that it should be highly entertaining to see where the trend goes next. I for one look forward to the Harper Cons responding to all media questioning with "This 'no comment' brought to you by Suncor".

Musical interlude

Massive Attack - Dissolved Girl

Same old story, slash-and-burn edition

So can Canadian progressives agree that eliminating environmental regulators is generally a short-sighted move which prioritizes a foolish focus on slashing government gratuitously over a society's long-term well-being?

Of course, I ask for no particular reason.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- As quickly as the Fraser Institute churns out corporate propaganda, Sixth Estate responds - this time nicely debunking a report encouraging yet more giveaways to big pharma:

(T)here’s a glaring lie by omission in the summary for this document: although the Fraser Institute really wants you to know that we spend about the same amount as the Americans do on drugs, what they don’t think you need to know is that, according to their own numbers, we actually spend almost 21% less per prescription than the Americans do. So government controls work, if not as well as we might hope, and the Fraser Institute wants to get rid of them anyways.

Secondly, the most interesting thing about healthcare comparisons is that Canadian brand-name drugs cost half as much as in America, but our generic drugs cost twice as much. Both are due to government price controls: our government forces prices low on brand-name drugs, but also allows generic drugmakers to charge high prices. You might think the solution, if the goal is lower drug prices for consumers, is to impose lower price controls on the generic market, or even just to let it float freely, like the Americans do.

That’s not the Fraser Institute’s solution. They say if you completely deregulate the industry, then the drugmakers will drop the prices on generic drugs, but they’ll still respect the artificially low rates for brand-name drugs. This sort of economic wizardry is exactly why we should take the Fraser Institute and dump them into the sea — an economical solution because they’re already near the ocean.

- While Andrew Jackson points out that plenty of think tanks from across the political spectrum prefer an expanded Canada Pension Plan to the Cons' gift to the financial sector, Carol Goar sums up exactly why the Cons' choice makes no sense:

(The Cons' plan) is a second-best solution and a poor substitute for strengthening the Canada Pension Plan, which covers the entire working population, is mandatory for all employers and employees, has worked well for 45 years and is actuarially sound for the next 75 years.

The only problem with the Canada Pension Plan is that it doesn’t provide enough to live on. The average annual payout is $6,150 a year. Even when that is combined with Old Age Security — the universal payment to all Canadians over 65 — the average is just $12,100, which falls roughly $6,800 below the poverty line.

That was fine when it was a supplement to the workplace pensions that most families could count on a generation ago. But today, 11 million workers have no pension. Many have no retirement savings at all.

Academics, actuaries, nonbank economists, labour leaders and seniors have urged the government since the recession to expand the Canada Pension Plan. Polls show Canadians would be willing to increase their contributions to assure themselves and others a dignified retirement.

The Conservatives are offering a less comprehensive, less reliable alternative.

- The Ottawa Citizen decries the Cons' willingness to run billions of public dollars through a shredder for the sake of posturing on crime. And Daphne Bramham notes that the prison-industrial complex is making inroads in B.C. as a result.

- Finally, Mike Smith's take on how to get anything done at the municipal level is well worth a read.

Deep thought

An environmental monitoring plan explicitly designed to improve the reputation of the industry involved is a thoroughly useless environmental monitoring plan.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Henry Farrell points out why supposedly progressive ideas which don't do anything to counter corporate power are doomed to failure:

Neo-liberals tend to favor a combination of market mechanisms and technocratic solutions to solve social problems. But these kinds of solutions tend to discount politics – and in particular political collective action, which requires strong collective actors such as trade unions. This means that vaguely-leftish versions of neo-liberalism often have weak theories of politics, and in particular of the politics of collective action. I see Doug and others as arguing that successful political change requires large scale organized collective action, and that this in turn requires the correction of major power imbalances (e.g. between labor and capital). They’re also arguing that neo-liberal policies at best tend not to help correct these imbalances, and they seem to me to have a pretty good case. Even if left-leaning neo-liberals are right to claim that technocratic solutions and market mechanisms can work to relieve disparities etc, it’s hard for me to see how left-leaning neo-liberalism can generate any self-sustaining politics. I’m sure that critics can point to political blind spots among lefties (e.g. the difficulties in figuring out what is a necessary compromise, and what is a blatant sell-out), but these don’t seem to me to be potentially crippling, in the way that the absence of a neo-liberal theory of politics (who are the organized interest groups and collective actors who will push consistently for technocratic efficiency?) is.

- Yes, the Cons have been told that environmental protection is important, including for economic reasons. No, they don't care in the slightest. Yes, this is a scandal.

- But then, maybe the Cons are just too busy looking for corporate money-making opportunities to act on what they know about the environment. And who won't feel better knowing that search-and-rescue operations are being carried out by the lowest bidder?

- Finally, it's great news that SaskTel will be connecting 28 First Nations communities with high-speed Internet and wireless coverage. But to fully appreciate the importance of the step, it's also worth highlighting how long the same connections would likely have taken if the private sector were left to its own devices.

New column day

Here, on how the TILMA's regressive trade rules are spreading across Canada in other forms.

For further reading...

- I've posted several times before about just some of the problems with the TILMA and the arguments made in favour of it, while also comparing it with the AIT as it stood a couple of years ago and highlighting how it's been replicated in the NWPTA.

- And for more recent commentary, I'll link again to posts by Erin (X2) and Alison.

Frequently-quoted answers to simple questions

Pogge asks:

Is (Brad) Wall so uninformed that he doesn't know about (federal subsidies for the oil sands)?

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

This has been a first edition of frequently-quoted answers to simple questions.

Unclear on the concept

Quick, try to make sense of this passage from Postmedia's coverage of the Cons' plans to reintroduce gun registry legislation this fall:

In October 2010, the bill was killed by an opposition motion, which passed by a slim margin of 153-151. The motion was supported by 75 Liberals, 48 Bloc Quebecois and 30 New Democrats. Two Independent MPs sided with the 143 Conservatives.

Six NDP MPs broke with their party and voted with the government to scrap the registry. This occurred because NDP leader Jack Layton allowed his caucus to vote their conscience by not "whipping" the vote, or compelling them to vote according to the party line.

So never mind the explicit recognition that NDP MP's weren't compelled to vote according to a party line at all. If the story demands that one be made up in order to declare that some MPs "broke" it, then so be it.

But have no fear. This mixup will be corrected by...outsiders decreeing that independent MP thought will not be tolerated in the future:

Hicks said Layton can't afford to allow much internal disagreement on the issue because he must demonstrate to Canadians he can control his caucus.

"When you're leader of the Opposition, your ability to control your caucus becomes a test of your competence as leader," he said. "Now that Jack Layton lives at Stornoway, this is something he has to tackle in a way he didn't before."

Of course, the Libs were able to allow free votes on the gun registry not only in opposition, but also while in power. But now that the NDP has improved its place in Canada's political party standings, the rules have changed - apparently based on little more than spin from the parties who have been left behind.

And all this while the Cons have the votes to push through their legislation without any opposition party support. Suffice it to say that once they've rendered the issue moot by doing so, this kind of hackery won't be missed.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Jeffrey Simpson has a bit of trouble recognizing that inequality applies at all rungs of the income ladder, not merely as a matter of resolving poverty. But otherwise his latest is well worth a read:

The Conference Board of Canada, hardly a bastion of far-left thinking, just reminded Canadians about the growing income inequalities in their society.

The richest group of Canadians, those in the top fifth of income earners, saw their share of national income rise from 1993 to 2008. Within that fortunate group, the biggest gainers were the super rich, the top 1 per cent. And they got even richer not so much from investments but from basic salaries of the kind paid bank presidents and company CEOs.

From 1980 to 2005, the earnings of the top group rose by 16.4 per cent, while middle-income Canadians’ incomes stagnated, and earnings for those in the bottom group slid.
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So why are we a more unequal society? That’s the subject of fierce debate. Other countries’ income inequalities are also growing, albeit to varying degrees, and the inequalities in big developing countries such as China, India and Brazil are much higher than anything in Canada or Europe.

It’s argued that globalization rewards some of the highly skilled (and people who can manipulate other people’s money, as in hedge funds, banking and financial services), while leaving others behind. Clearly, the struggles of manufacturing in North America and Europe have robbed those societies of millions of good-paying, often unionized, jobs. Some of these have been replaced by better-paying service-sector jobs; most have not.

The Conference Board notes that government transfer programs flatten out some inequalities, but not as effectively as 20 years ago. Unemployment benefits go to fewer people; welfare rates haven’t always kept up with the cost of living.

Many of the Harper government’s tax cuts, for example, have disproportionately benefited those better off, since they’re not geared to income – as in all those itsy-bitsy bribes for sports equipment, the GST cut and the child benefit cheques than come through the mail every month.

- Apparently the Cons can't even hold a photo-op for their pension giveaway to the financial sector without somebody pointing out the more viable solution:

Retired graphic arts worker Rene Walti, who relied on saving inside an individual Registered Retirement Savings Plan, said he would be pleased to see his four children benefit from the pooled plan option.

“You try to instill in them that you start when they are 18, and save 10 per cent at least of every cheque. Then they have other ideas, as we had other ideas at their age, too. And, that’s the problem. People start too late in an RRSP.”

So, he said, the “the general expansion of the Canada Pension Plan should also take place, because some people don’t have the discipline to save. With a mandatory CPP deduction that is a bit higher than it is now, at least we can keep them out of poverty.”

Menzies said an expanded CPP “certainly hasn’t been taken off the radar screen,” but provincial finance ministers agreed the pooled plans would be the fastest way to offer Canadians a better savings option.

- Dan Gardner is right to note that the Cons' dumb-on-crime strategy is neither entirely new, nor based on a direct attack on historic sentencing principles. But aside from the hope of a shift back in the longer term, is there really much value in avoiding changing the principles used in exercising discretion (in both sentencing and parole) while severely limiting the outcomes that are actually available?

- Finally, David Sirota points out why fast food is cheaper than healthier alternatives - with a heavy emphasis on subsidies for major components of the less-healthy food.

Deep thought

I know I can't think of a higher priority for Canada at the moment than to declare war on citizenship.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Flattened cats.

Be a commenter

Susan Delacourt points out some fascinating research on voter turnout - with the key finding being that citizens are more likely to turn out when prompted to think in terms of "be(ing) a voter" rather than merely voting as a one-time action.

And I have to wonder whether the effect might also apply when it comes to other positive types of self-identity. For example, might encouraging people to "be a citizen" do more to promote public involvement (both in terms of initial responses, and a self-image which can build over time) than transactional appeals for money, signatures or links?

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Sixth Estate examines which party's candidates have violated the Canada Elections Act in recent elections. And it shouldn't be much surprise that Canada's supposed law-and-order party doesn't have much respect for either when it comes to its own campaigns:

In addition to the in-and-out fraud cases against the Conservative Party and several of its former senior officials, including two current Senators, Elections Canada has made 23 “compliance agreements” since 2006. In each case, the accused confesses to a violation of the act, usually excuses it away as inadvertent or well-intentioned or the like, and promises to make some trivial amends. In total, during the past five years 7 Conservatives, 1 NDP, 2 Liberal, and 1 unidentified party agent have signed compliance agreements.
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Here’s a sample from the Elections Canada records:

* During the 2008 election, Winnipeg Conservative candidate Kenny Daodu’s campaign negotiated a $1000 kickback on a lease similar to the Goodyear agreement described below. Once again, there was no apparent punishment.
* Also in 2008, Conservative MP Bev Shipley and canditate Yonah Martin (now a Senator) exceeded their campaign spending limits. Their punishments: none apparent. Still in the same year, Liberal MP Blair Wilson failed to report $9000 in expenses; his punishment was “a notation… on the Elections Canada audit file” (oh, no!).
* In 2007, now-science minister Gary Goodyear’s staff confessed he had solicited an almost $2000 donation as an illegal kickback on the minister’s campaign office. His punishment: none apparent.
* One campaign agent in the 2006 election, not identified, offered gift certificates in exchange for donations. His/her punishment was to mail out a form letter advising that the gift certificates could not be provided and confirming that the donors wished to go ahead with their donation anyways.

I wish I could say all parties were equal offenders, because I did start out wanting to write a piece about politicians’ sense of entitlement. And there are offenders in every major party. But it has to be said that only Conservatives have been caught negotiating kickbacks, and they are responsible for a majority of the cases. Maybe the others are just better at covering their tracks, but given that the Conservatives are also in court for party-level electoral fraud, I do have to wonder about this party’s commitment to the rule of law.

- Lawrence Martin points out one of the Libs' old tactics that the Cons have happily taken up, as their supposed accountability watchdogs have proven to be utterly useless:

The Conservatives have learned well. Remember in the old days when they used to holler about the performance of Jean Chrétien’s ethics counsellor, Howard Wilson. Watchdog Wilson, they charged, was a great boon to the Liberals. Present him with allegations of wrongdoing, they said, and inevitably he would find no evidence of wrongdoing.

But if the Conservatives thought he was a soft touch, they might want to check the record of their own ethics commissioner, watchkitten Mary Dawson. In four years on the job, working with inadequate legislation, her pursuit of malfeasance has been so relentless and unyielding that on only two occasions has she found that a politician violated ethical standards. That’s from a caseload of allegations numbering in the hundreds.Of the two cases her merciless team of investigators moved on, neither reflected poorly on the government. One was against a Liberal MP. Another was a decision last week against former Conservative MP Helena Guergis for using her position to further the business interests of her husband, Rahim Jaffer. The verdict tended to vindicate Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his decision to dump Ms. Guergis from caucus last year.
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Ms. Ouimet’s work was such that even former auditor-general Sheila Fraser, who witnessed a lot over the years, was aghast. More than 200 allegations from whistleblowers came before Ms. Ouimet’s office. Nary a one led to redressal. Ms. Ouimet was pilloried in an A-G’s report and left the government with a $500,000 payout and a gag order not to talk about what she did.

What she did could hardly have displeased the governing party. Of the hundreds of cases handled by her, who knows how many might have constituted breaches of the public trust. Not to be forgotten is the work of another officer of Parliament, Karen Shepherd, the commissioner of lobbying. Her less than avid record of enforcement must bring smiles to many politicos as well.

- All of which works extremely well for a government which is obviously more focused on perception than reality. Though from the first link, Campbell Clark nicely calls out the Cons' self-glorification:

The (Canadian Tourism Commission), funded with $95-million a year in federal money, is an arms-length body with a board of directors and a mandate to promote Canadian tourism. Their mandate does not specifically include promotion of the minister.

- The CCPA highlights income disparities for each Canadian province in slideshow form.

- Finally, Alison weighs in on the connections between the TILMA (now being spread across Canada under the guise of the Agreement on Internal Trade) and the CETA.

On stretches

Shorter Barbara Yaffe:

Of course we can find good news for Liberals - just as long as we get creative in defining the term!

Update: Actually, there's a serious point to be made here. While it's disingenuous enough to conflate the B.C. and Quebec Libs with the national brand, there's also a key common thread which looks to completely undermine Yaffe's attempt to paint them as good news for the federal party.

In both cases, the success of the provincial parties is based in large part on their not having to face a united right - in B.C. because most federal Libs and Cons have made common cause under the Libs' banner, and in Quebec because the province's politics tend to be divided based on factors other than ideology. And the exceptional nature of politics in those two provinces really only serves to highlight the rule that a mushy-middle party is ineffective against a Harper-style right-wing assault.

Only part of the story

Yes, it's absolutely appalling that federal prison costs have already shot up by 86% under the Harper Cons (by well over a billion per year), and only figure to escalate further.

But let's keep in mind that today's news only covers a relatively small part of the story, as some of the more unjustifiable of the Cons' policies (e.g. mandatory minimum sentences) impose costs primarily on the provinces rather than the federal prison system. Which means that while today's news may reflect some of the costs of being dumb on crime, it only scratches the surface as to how much money the Cons have set on fire for the sake of sheer politics.

On correlations

This summer has seen plenty of crowing from the right over a connection between "economic freedom" (as defined by various corporate think tanks) and GDP levels. But for those of us who see obvious problems with treating GDP as the sole measure of a society's accomplishment, that raises an obvious follow-up question: how do the measures of economic freedom stack up against a society's inequality (which of course has much more to do with social well-being than GDP levels)?

We're probably a long way from conclusively answering that question. But let's take a quick first look.

The chart below contains information from three sources: the most recent UN data on inequality as measured by Gini coefficient (from 2007-2008), and the 2008 economic freedom indices from the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation. The country set is identical to the one used by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level.


I'll leave it to others more statistically-inclined to look at the question in more detail. But based on at least a first back-of-the-envelope chart, there appears to be a small but direct correlation between inequality and the type of corporate-friendly policy that's constantly pitched as somehow necessary to support social gains. And if we can say that decisions about "economic freedom" in a developed country are based on a trade-off between equality (which has been shown to correlate to scores of key social outcomes) and GDP (which hasn't), then there's ample reason to think the right is on the wrong side.