Oh dear

The Cons describe what they're looking for in an Auditor General to replace Sheila Fraser (whose term ends this month):

Auditor General Sheila Fraser's term expires May 30, and sources say the Conservative government will announce her replacement by that date.
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Last October, the government provided a clue of what it was seeking when it published a job notice for the position. It said the next auditor general must have "integrity, tact, and sound judgment", and be a "team player."

Moreover, it said the person must "possess a constructive approach" and have the capacity to anticipate the "implications" of their actions.

So the Cons want to make sure that the next Auditor General cares more about not making waves and fitting into the Harper messaging plan than actually holding anybody to account. We know where this is going, don't we?

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday.

- Lawrence Martin points out what looks to be a highly interesting committee appearance by disgraced former Integrity Commissioner (and Harper appointee) Christiane Ouimet. But what's most noteworthy for now is that the Cons are spending the time before Ouimet's appearance making excuses for hiding key information rather than providing it as ordered:

Ms. Ouimet (rhymes with Antoinette) is the public servant who, according to Sheila Fraser’s damning report, did not do her job properly – choosing to investigate just seven of 228 complaints about wrongdoing in the public sector – possibly saving the Harper government multiple embarrassments. After failing to appear before a parliamentary committee despite being subpoenaed, she sent a rather terse message to the committee through her lawyer saying she was willing to return March 10 to face interrogators. What a show it promises to be. Given the large number of uninvestigated cases that came before her, the possibility of smoking guns suddenly appearing on the government’s doorstep can hardly be discarded.

Opposition members will be out to determine whether Ms. Ouimet was acting at the behest of her political or top bureaucratic superiors. The Public Accounts Committee has passed a motion requiring the delivery of all correspondence between her office and other government departments.
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It is also clear, said Mr. D’Amours, that there was correspondence between her office and the Privy Council Office. Given that Ms. Ouimet was supposed to be operating an independent agency, he wonders why. “And now the PCO is saying they don’t have time to get us all the documentation.”

Which would seem to be explained only by either an absolute mountain of documents that should never have existed in the first place, or by a conscious choice to spend the time before Ouimet's appearance in cover-up mode. But either way, the result would seem to bode poorly for the Cons.

- Jim Stanford points out that the relationship between minimum wages and employment levels is far more complicated than free-market dogmatists pretend:

In practice, the effect of minimum wages on employment is probably a wash. Gradual increases in minimum wages, within reasonable bounds, have virtually no impact on employment at all, in either direction. So long as levels are set realistically relative to productivity and profitability, minimum wages can be increased with no measurable damage to employment.

Perhaps influenced by this recent sea-change in economists’ attitudes, policy makers in most provinces have begun to revitalize minimum wages. After years of stagnation, the real purchasing power of minimum wages has increased markedly since 2005, boosting incomes across the lower tiers of Canada’s labour market. With business profits simultaneously reaching their highest share ever of Canadian GDP, it could hardly be argued that these modest but important increases squeezed out private sector activity. On the other hand, those higher minimum wages contributed notably to the first real wage gains enjoyed by Canadian workers in a generation.

This successful policy trend should be continued. Minimum wages (now at or near $10 per hour in most provinces) should be increased gradually but steadily in the years to come.

- Part of the problem has as much to do with the concept of endorsing a government in a multi-party FPTP system where outcomes are far more complicated than simply selected a single party from a list. But nonetheless, Declan's chart comparing voter preferences with media endorsements highlights just how far removed the corporate media is from the majority of Canadian voters.

- Finally, Richard Wolff comments on how corporations have managed to turn the tax system to their advantage.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Gerald Caplan follows up on one of the anecdotes from Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks' The Trouble With Billionaires, and finds that it's even worse than first suspected:

As it happens, two weeks after their book was completed, Ms. McQuaig received the actual Memorandum of Agreement between the Munk Foundation and the governing council of U of T, dated Nov. 23, 2009 and duly signed by both. (It’s now been made accessible by the university here.) The memorandum, which I hope will be reproduced in the paperback version of The Trouble With Billionaires, makes the book’s concerns quite plausible.
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The funds from the Munk Foundation (with generous tax reductions) are to be donated over time. Only a portion will be donated up front. After that, “the university shall provide to the Donor in each year a detailed report indicating … a description of the program initiatives and activities of the School.” Then the school’s director “shall meet annually with the Donor’s Board of Directors” to discuss these matters “in greater detail.” Beyond all this, an additional tax-deductible gift of $15-million will be handed over if the Munk Foundation determines the university has achieved certain assigned objectives. “The determination of whether the University has achieved the Objective shall be solely that of the Donor and ... shall be conclusive and binding on the University.”

The university insists these words really mean nothing. But look at them again. These are carefully sculpted clauses. Why include them at all if they’re inconsequential? Why isn’t it a reasonable interpretation that further Munk Foundation donations will depend on whether it approves the programs the new school – sorry, Munk School, as the memorandum rigorously stipulates – is running? Is this institution likely to initiate a major project on the operations of Canadian mines in poor countries? What’re the chances it might consider adding to its faculty a certain Linda McQuaig, one of Canada’s indispensable public intellectuals who’s published far more than the great majority of tenured academics?

- Jim Meek points out that the government telling Canadians to cut down on their expenses is choosing not to take basic steps to allow them to do so:

Everyone from Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney to Prime Minister Stephen Harper is cautioning Canadians about their "debt problem," and asking us to fix it. We’re being told to stop spending, or risk going to the poor house.

I find this more than passing strange, inside a country whose citizens pay their fair share of taxes to debt-laden governments. Those governments, in turn, fail to take obvious steps to ease consumer debt. A good start would be tackling Canada’s high-priced credit card fees, mobile phone costs and management charges on mutual funds. (We’re world leaders in letting these sectors act like monopolies in ripping off consumers.)
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Government should clean up its own act, instead of wagging its Big Brother finger at consumers.

And while our moral prefects on the Rideau are fixing the country, here’s what they should really do about debt: Bring sane regulations to bear on the nation’s predatory credit card, telecommunications and mutual fund industries. And instead of telling Canadians how to live, government should learn to manage its own out-of-control spending. After all, Ottawa’s debt is now soaring by $124-million a day.

- Sadly, Stephen Maher is probably right in his suggestion as to what the Cons likely want out of their appointed "watchdogs":

Ouimet received 228 complaints of wrongdoing by civil servants, but launched only five investigations and found no wrongdoing, accepting weak excuses from managers over the complaints of whistleblowers. Rather than defending vulnerable public servants from reprisals, she actually launched a reprisal campaign against one of her employees because she suspected he had gone to Fraser.

Because he didn’t keep his promise to set up an appointments commission, Harper is responsible for her appointment, although the blame likely belongs with the Privy Council Office mandarins, who chose Ouimet — a lifelong public servant — likely in the belief that she would be a cautious and respectful watchdog.

Instead, though, she brought the office into disrepute. They — and Harper — would no doubt have preferred it if she behaved like ethics commissioner Mary Dawson, who creates the illusion of oversight while inventing creative loopholes for the politicians whose doings she is supposed to oversee.

- Finally, let's note the results of some of Barack Obama's fund-raising experiments - showing among other lessons that a "learn more" button does better in attracting than a more overt reference to signing up for a list. Though I'm curious as to whether the same results would apply among all types of voters, or whether they may have had something to do with the type of voters who were predisposed toward interest in a candidate like Obama to begin with.

Tuesday Morning Links

Content goes here.

- Lawrence Martin's column on the Cons' choice of integrity commissioners is today's must-read. But it's worth highlighting how Christiane Ouimet's actions fit into the Cons' overall style of government:

The Conservative government has a reputation for muzzling civil servants and lording over independent agencies and tribunals so as to crush any potential dissent. If this was their intent in appointing Ms. Ouimet, they clearly got what they wished for.
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Ms. Ouimet was part of a small fraternity of deputy ministers. According to those familiar with her work, it appears she was bound and determined to protect them as well as Stephen Harper’s ministers from any potentially harmful disclosures.

For Mr. Martel, it was unsettling that one of the first people she went off to see when she began her job was Kevin Lynch, then Clerk of the Privy Council. The Integrity Commissioner’s office is an independent agency, and is not answerable to the all-powerful Clerk of the Privy Council.
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(I)f some of the cases she didn’t take up, such as Mr. Bruyea’s, are shown to be serious, the Conservatives could have a major problem on their hands. What better symbolizes ethical rot than the massive irony of having an integrity commissioner up to her eyeballs in cover-ups.

- Slowly but surely, the reality that high application barriers to social programs tend to result in more trouble than they're worth seems to be sinking in:

Thousands of low-income seniors who lose out on benefits every year because they don't realize they qualify could receive their payments automatically without even applying.
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Daniel Jean, the deputy minister who led the review, offered a rare glimpse into the closely guarded review at a recent Conference Board meeting on public service transformation. He said improving seniors' access to benefits would be a "home run" in the drive to transform service. Not only would the proposal improve service for seniors, it would get rid of a cumbersome application process, reduce duplication and deal with some of the aging technology Auditor-General Sheila Fraser has sounded the alarm over, Jean said.

- James Travers chimes in on the Cons' politics of fear. But on the bright side, it's worth noting that his examples don't look to be cases where the Cons have actually managed to draw much support:

Never mind the absence of evidence that packing prisons makes citizens safer, that spending at least $16 billion on cold war stealth fighters is a national defence priority or that vandalizing the census is anything other than a feel-good placebo with sickening side effects. Clinging to federal power is now an exercise in appealing to the gut, not the brain.

If nothing else, that helps explain another loudly shouted Conservative warning. High on this capital’s list of preferred bogeymen is the spectral threat of a post-election coalition.

- Finally, the Hill Times takes a look at the federal political scene in Newfoundland now that Danny Williams' ABC campaign won't serve to overwhelm the efforts of the national parties. But while at least a couple of seats in the province figure to return to their pattern of being two-way races between the Libs and Cons, the riding with the most variables has to be St. John's South-Mount Pearl.

There, the Hill Times largely glosses over the NDP's chances in the next federal election. But Ryan Cleary managed to win 40% of the vote in 2008 - and more importantly, his raw vote total of 13,971 would have been enough to take the riding as recently as 2004 thanks to what was already a developing three-way vote split.

So there's plenty of reason to think that any of the national parties could come away with the seat. And to the extent there are any lingering effects from Williams' campaign, the smart money would seem to be on the Cons starting the race from a fairly distant third-place position.