New column day

Here, on how we should expect our leaders to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report (PDF) on residential schools - and what we've seen from the Cons instead.

For further reading...
- PressProgress offers the video of Bernard Valcourt sticking out like a sore thumb in his refusal to consider missing and murdered indigenous women to merit any action. And Lucia Lorenzi points out that the Cons are blocking action to deal with violence against women in any form.
- CBC reports on the federal parties' respective responses to the Commission's report, while the Hansard text of Stephen Harper's evasion (click on the "Oral Questions" link) is particularly striking in showing that the Cons think that the report actually constitutes change (rather than merely a first step toward achieving it).
- Finally, Karl Nerenberg writes that Harper has made it abundantly clear that reconciliation won't be happening on his watch. CBC provides a summary of the Commission's findings. And Betty Ann Lavallee, Wab Kinew, Tim Harper and the Ottawa Citizen offer a few of the noteworthy responses to the Commission's report.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Lana Payne writes that the great Canadian revenue debate is well underway, with far more leaders willing to push for needed taxes than in recent years:

There is new political space to talk corporate taxes again, to talk about raising them. Rachel Notley, the new NDP premier of Alberta, won on a platform that promised fair taxation, raising corporate taxes, and getting a fair share of resources for citizens.

Newfoundland and Labrador must have the same conversation and review of resource royalties.

Even the federal Liberals have realized that the tide is turning and have been forced to talk tax fairness — or their version of it. They recently released their so-called middle class tax cut coupled with a promise to cancel some of the Harper government’s tax breaks to the wealthiest. The federal NDP has also been firmly on record about tax reform and tax fairness.

The conversation is started. Let’s keep it going. The kind of Canada we want for our kids depends on it.

- Scott Santens looks at the trucking industry as a prime example of how there's plenty more automation yet to come in our economy - and how we need to ensure people can make ends meet without menial jobs which can be shed in favour of machines.

- Scott Klinger discusses the tendency of U.S. conservatives - like their Canadian cousins - to hand out free money to the wealthy while simultaneously decrying the standard of living of people who are scraping to get by.

- Tavia Grant and Janet McFarland report on the problems with payday lenders - and the efforts some cities are making to at least reduce the damage they cause to citizens. And Gillian White points out the connection between underfunded transit in poorer areas and the inaccessibility of needed services. But on the brighter side, Jim Silver and Carolyn Young observe that Winnipeg's Lord Selkirk Park housing complex offers a needed example as to how to turn neglected buildings into an again-thriving community.

- Finally, APTN reports that Bernard Valcourt knows nothing about his responsibilities for First Nations, other than that he thinks he has none. And PressProgress provides the video evidence.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Gerald Kaplan discusses how the privileges of power have contributed to the utterly callous response to the Lac-Mégantic rail explosion by Stephen Harper and Ed Burkhardt:

For me, of all Burkhardt’s outrageous statements nothing surpasses his public accusation that the train’s engineer, Tom Harding, was responsible for the disaster, suspending him without pay. Among the victims of the train derailment, Tom Harding must now be included.

In truth, of course, Burkhardt had no more clue than you or I or Lord Acton how the derailment happened and who might be responsible. Indeed, his own company policies have very pointedly been questioned. Yet he simply invented the culprit, because I suppose that’s what rich and powerful people are able to do.
...
Prime Minister Harper is the other powerhouse who showed last week that he knows he can get away with just about anything. First, he named Pierre Poilievre as his new Minister of State for Democratic Reform, an oxymoron by any standard. Globe columnist Lawrence Martin describes Poilievre as “one of [Harper’s] most belligerent, thuggish, MPs”. Next to the Prime Minister himself, with his obsession about “enemies”, no member of this government has demonstrated contempt for the spirit of democracy more than Mr. Poilievre. As Lawrence Martin wrote, this was one of Mr. Harper’s well-known “in-your-face moves.”

Second, Mr. Harper appointed to the sensitive post of Canadian ambassador to Jordan (with responsibility to Iraq) one Bruno Saccomani, who until that moment was his bodyguard, or, more formally, the RCMP man who headed his security team.

It is surely not too much to expect a Canadian ambassador to know something about the complex world of diplomacy and all that entails. And if you’re being assigned to be our country’s chief representative in two turbulent countries in a dangerously volatile region, shouldn’t you have a soupcon of background in the area? Or is that just me?

- Meanwhile, Miles Corak points out the disturbingly tight relationship between family background and economic outcomes in the U.S. And while Canada serves for now as a contrast, it's well worth noting that the Harper Cons are doing their best to push us down the same path of walled-off wealth for a few and a precarious living for the rest.

- Paul Krugman highlights the dishonesty and anti-worker bias behind the Great Pension Scare. Which, needless to say, is presented a propos of nothing.

[Update: Let's add Doug J's take:

The war against public pensions reminds me of the Iraq War. Even if one accepts that there is/was a big pre-existing problem in either case, the constant stream of lies is troubling.]

- Also, the Cons make clear what happens to honest civil servants who allow truth to undermine their deliberately false talking points. 

- The Ottawa Citizen recognizes and laments the shameful exploitation of hungry First Nations Canadians for experimentation. Bernard Valcourt isn't so big on shame, and considers the matter closed by an apology for other monstrous attacks on First Nations culture.

- Finally, Susan Delacourt comments on why the Cons' departmental enemies lists may go far beyond politics as usual - particularly if information intended for government use only is being illegally loaded into CIMS for partisan purposes.