Thursday Afternoon Links

A bit of light reading as the week winds down...

- It didn't get a lot of attention at the time, but it's worth noting the postscript to Jim Prentice's supposed consultations on sustainable development:

More than one person with an interest in the environmental file has pointed out that the Federal Sustainable Development Act requires the government to develop a Federal Sustainable Development Strategy by June 26, 2010. There is a legally-required 120-day consultation period written into the Act.

So, says one of them, “all Mr. Prentice is doing is obeying the law and holding a consultation - late. His government forced him to break the law and miss the deadline when they prorogued Parliament, though, so the comment period closes more than two weeks after the final strategy is required to be completed.”

- Haven't heard enough over the past few days about the insane rantings of right-wing agents provocateur? Then you won't want to miss Barry Cooper's latest, in which he somehow pretends that the Cons' consistent strategy of pretending to be more-environmentally-friendly-than-thou and promising to do something about greenhouse gas emissions "next year" (or "as soon as the U.S. tells us what to do") somehow means that do-nothing denialists have won a major battle of ideas on behalf of conservatism generally. No, seriously.

- To cleanse your intellectual palate after you're done with Cooper, Murray Dobbin's piece on the Harper government's secrecy is worth a look.

- Finally, one piece of coverage from before the Saskatchewan budget looks particularly apt now, as Ken Rasmussen highlights the folly of obsessing about slashing government jobs rather than looking at actual expenditures:

Rasmussen said the Sask. Party government is taking a wrong-headed, although likely politically popular, approach by making its focus the job numbers in the civil service.

Government expenditures are a much better measure of the growth in government, he said. And in fact, while the civil service appears to have roughly doubled since 1960, government spending has increased nearly 70-fold, to $10.2 billion from $148.6 million. Spending has gone up by about $2 billion since the Sask. Party took office as resource revenues filled government coffers.

Targeting how dollars are spent first and then figuring out how it affects civil service positions is better for both government efficiency and civil servants, said Rasmussen.

"Everyone is worried about justifying their job rather than justifying their program and finding efficiencies. You create a bit of a panic," he said.