Covering for Recession Stephen

Shorter Stephen Poloz:

Economic reality has a well-known anti-Conservative bias. So in the interest of neutrality, I refuse to apply common terminology to reality.

On consistent preferences

Stephen Gordon (among others) took the time to point out that Jim Flaherty's attacks on the Bank of Canada are both unwise in general, and wrong in terms of economic theory. But even setting aside those critiques, the mot important message to be taken from Flaherty is that he's once again seeking to benefit the rentier class at the expense of workers - signalling that he'll happily trade off a decline in employment for higher returns on capital.

Of course, that was a dubious enough set of priorities at the best of times last weekend. But this week's added news that the Cons are failing miserably on the jobs front already only emphasizes the need for a stronger public policy focus on making better employment available to Canadians. And the more the Cons make clear that they're once again determined to make matters worse, the more obvious it'll be who bears the blame when Flaherty's influence on fiscal and monetary policy alike have their predictable effect.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- George Monbiot writes that corporate control over a political system may be a huge factor in limiting public participation - even as it makes a substantial counterweight all the more important:

The political role of business corporations is generally interpreted as that of lobbyists, seeking to influence government policy. In reality they belong on the inside. They are part of the nexus of power that creates policy. They face no significant resistance, from either government or opposition, as their interests have now been woven into the fabric of all three main political parties in Britain.
...
Every week we learn that systemic failures on the part of government contractors are no barrier to obtaining further work, that the promise of efficiency, improvements and value for money delivered by outsourcing and privatisation have failed to materialise.

The monitoring which was meant to keep these companies honest is haphazard, the penalties almost nonexistent, the rewards can be stupendous, dizzying, corrupting. Yet none of this deters the government. Since 2008, the outsourcing of public services has doubled, to £20bn. It is due to rise to £100bn by 2015.

This policy becomes explicable only when you recognise where power really lies. The role of the self-hating state is to deliver itself to big business. In doing so it creates a tollbooth economy: a system of corporate turnpikes, operated by companies with effective monopolies.

It's hardly surprising that the lobbying bill – now stalled by the House of Lords – offered almost no checks on the power of corporate lobbyists, while hog-tying the charities who criticise them. But it's not just that ministers are not discouraged from hobnobbing with corporate executives: they are now obliged to do so.

- Meanwhile, Don Lenihan discusses the elements we should expect to find in an accountable, responsive political system. And Michael Harris once again finds the Harper Cons feverishly eliminating any trace of those traits within their government.

- Taras Grescoe wonders whether Fort McMurray will soon join a long list of resource-bubble ghost towns. And Kelly Cryderman points out how the middle class is getting squeezed out of Calgary.

- Finally, Stephen Gorden finds that the federal balance sheet continues to include a structural deficit. Which naturally means it's time for Deficit Jim Flaherty and the Cons' lackeys to start hyping yet more gratuitous tax cuts (particularly ones with severe long-term budget impacts) to keep the red ink flowing.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Duncan Cameron highlights the choice between austerity and prosperity facing the governments of both Canada and the U.S.:

The economic realities faced by working people in both Canada and the United States need to be addressed. Talk about putting the fiscal house in order is code for taking money away from working people. It does not preclude giving grossly indecent fiscal advantages to corporations.
...
The debate about the fiscal cliff is important because it helps focus attention on how government policy can have negative or positive effects on quality of life, and living standards.

Getting agreement on the link between spending increases and prosperity would be an improvement over falsehoods put about in Canada and the U.S. about how austerity is necessary to reduce deficits. It is not, and will not. All austerity does is reduce the standard of living of citizens.

 - But David Macdonald worries that the Cons have already made their choice - and that they'll use an economy that's weaker than (oh-so-loudly) advertised as an excuse to make matters all the worse for Canadians. And Thomas Walkom's hope that Jim Flaherty might be merely wrong rather than outright crazy doesn't seem particularly reassuring - particularly keeping in mind that his government's response to the 2008 crash was to push austerity from day one until political calculations intervened.

- Michael Geist explains how the Cons' copyright legislation will affect content creators and users.

- And Andrew Nikiforuk discusses the risks the Cons are pushing on Canada through an investment-protection racket with China.

- Finally, Paul Adams points out the significance of California voters simultaneously voting to raise their own taxes, and giving state Democrats the supermajority they need to have room to maneuver. But I'd think the even more telling sign that tax protest messages may have run their course is that even with an explicit tax increase on their ballot, California voters turned out in relatively low numbers - meaning that anti-taxers weren't able to motivate citizens to vote against it.

Juxtaposition

Ah, the memories of Stephen Harper and his bestest international buddy deciding what to do about the economic pain they've inflicted on the world:

Mr. Cameron, hailing Canada as a model of fiscal probity and pointing to his own deep spending cuts, argued that debt cutting is the only way to fix a disturbing pattern, with economic growth in Europe and the United States stalled. He said the problem is high debts of governments and individuals, and that the fear that they won’t be repaid will spark a loss of confidence and a rise in interest rates.
...
Mr. Harper said markets’ fears are at “dangerous” levels, and this situation is far worse than austerity measures would be. “This is the most immediate and pressing problem facing the globe, and it is at a perilous point, and it does have to be dealt with.”

So how's that joint commitment to making a bad situation worse through austerity measures working out?

The UK has fallen deeper into recession than previously thought, confirming that the country has officially entered a double-dip. Data from the Office for National Statistics showed that the economy shrank faster than previously estimated between October and December last year, with a decline of 0.4%.

The economy also contracted for a second quarter between January and March this year, with the unchanged -0.3% estimate confirming that we are in recession for the second time in four years.

 (h/t to Atrios.)

Parliament in Review: November 22, 2011

Tuesday, November 22 saw the Cons' refusal to debate their own government bills reach absurd levels, as Con MPs spent more time arguing against a single opposition private member's bill than they did defending some of their supposed key priorities.

The Big Issue

But then, one can hardly blame the Cons for having been distracted, as the Auditor General's report gave the opposition parties plenty of material for question period. Peter Julian pointed out the utter lack of any evidence that the Cons' much-advertised economic plan actually accomplished anything, then noted that even basic management skills involve at least some element of setting and measuring goals which the Cons completely overlooked. And Alexandre Boulerice highlighted what may be the defining feature of the Cons' government:

(T)he Auditor General's report has confirmed what the NDP has been saying for quite some time. The Conservatives have a habit of being opaque. They ignore evidence, reject the advice of experts and are not accountable to Canadians. The Auditor General said “that poor information is a widespread, chronic problem in the federal government.”

Meanwhile, John McCallum presented a grab bag of critical AG quotes. Hedy Fry and Libby Davies pointed out the failure of Health Canada to act on drug safety issues. Christine Moore criticized an evidence-free military-industrial complex. And Malcolm Allen observed that a program intended to cut down on tobacco farming had actually boosted production at a cost of $300 million.

Silent Treatment

Two government bills were up for debate. And in both cases, the Cons couldn't be bothered to actually speak up for their own legislation - a point which Mike Sullivan and Irene Mathyssen made explicitly. But the good news is that the Cons' choice not to spout talking points left plenty of time for substantive discussion of both issues.

On Senate reform, the NDP's main theme - discussed by Francois Pilon and Glenn Thibeault - was that there's a relatively easy means available to limit the cost and damage that the Senate can do as matters stand now. Here's Thibeault:

I recall one of my constituents, Craig, telling me that he did not support a triple-E Senate. He supported a single-E Senate, and that single E stands for empty.

Pilon also noted that the Cons' plan looks to have been designed to make senators accountable to nobody before being handed massive pensions at a time when MPs' own pensions are in the spotlight. Denis Blanchette observed that Senate elections held concurrently with provincial or municipal elections to save money could result in exactly the type of voter confusion the Cons seem to want to encourage. Claude Gravelle highlighted the Senate's sad legacy of bagmanship which the Harper Cons have taken to new lows, while Marc-Andre Morin mused about its other function as a recycling ground for failed Con candidates. Pierre Dionne Labelle worried that the couple of bills passed by actual elected representatives which have already been shredded by unelected Cons may only be the tip of the iceberg, while Claude Gravelle wondered whether asbestos could be the next issue to see an unelected body block a bill which could win majority support in the House of Commons. Elizabeth May went into law wonk mode in noting the mushy language intended to allow prime ministers to ignore the results of any Senate election. Alex Atamanenko mused about how the Senate could be somewhat less of a blight if it wasn't so blatantly abused for partisan purposes. Andre Bellavance made clear that the Bloc is fully onside for Senate abolition. And Fin Donnelly worried about the unintended consequences likely to come from a partially-elected body facing even more questions about its legitimacy than the Senate already does.

On copyright, honours for the line of the day went to Olivia Chow:

It will be illegal to remove a lock, even if done so for a lawful purpose. If someone locks himself or herself out of the house, we do not drag them off to jail for trying to enter his or her locked property; why should digital property be any different?

Meanwhile, Rathika Sitsabaiesan also pointed out the Cons' obsession with locks and prisons. Peter Julian contrasted the NDP's call for constructive engagement against the Cons' utter refusal to listen to anybody other than their own spinners. Scott Simms answered the Cons' usual blather about how the right time for debate is anytime but the present by pointing out that a second-reading vote would prevent any significant changes in principle. Elizabeth May looked at the positive in the bill while pointing out the desperate need for amendment when it came to digital locks. Matthew Dube expressed concern about the bill's impact on libraries. And Kennedy Stewart drew a comparison to Mulroney-era patent reforms which made loads of money for big pharma without doing any good for most Canadians.

In Brief

Nycole Turmel called for public input into the future of health care funding just before Harper decided to rule out any such possibility. Megan Leslie wondered when the Environment Minister would notice that his government is doing nothing but harm on his assigned file, while Laurin Liu pointed out the economic risks of being a laggard on climate change. Marie-Claude Morin used National Housing Day to highlight the Cons' failings on the issue, only to be met with the response that 1.5 million Canadians with inadequate housing should be satisfied knowing that one percent of that number of residents received renovation tax credits for their existing homes. Peter Van Loan announced the latest time allocation motion, this on the single-desk Wheat Board demolition bill. Denis Coderre spoke to his bill to improve some EI benefits, only to be instructed by Mike Wallace that opposition parties should stick to presenting non-binding motions rather than bothering to try to improve legislation. Brian Storseth pretended that his bill to attack protections against hate speech was something other than a top-down, Harper-approved initiative, while Francoise Boivin noted the problems with the bill. Jamie Nicholls questioned why successive Con ministers responsible for infrastructure have all failed to show any interest in planning past the next media cycle. Malcolm Allen reiterated the need for a stronger CPP as the base of Canada's retirement system. And Francois Lapointe called out Con MPs who oppose asbestos exports for their cowardice in sticking to the party line.

Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Erin nicely challenges Brad Wall's efforts to tilt the playing field against poorer provinces when it comes to Employment Insurance and equalization.

- But I'm not sure we can expect much change to EI in any event. After all, as Dr. Dawg notes, the current Harper-created financing board may be the ultimate non-functioning public agency to reflect the Cons' inclination toward ineffective government.

- Philip Boffey points out that the source of the U.S.' disproportionate health-care costs is precisely its reliance on market pricing that so many are eager to introduce in Canada. And Tom Tomorrow rightly notes that the U.S. health-care system isn't lacking for Wall-style innovation.

- David Akin points out a striking correlation between voting locations and outcomes.

- Finally, Daniel Lick theorizes that Canada spends roughly twice as much on corporate welfare as direct social welfare.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your afternoon reading.

- Alison Loat offers some suggestions to make political parties more responsive to Canadian voters:

(H)ow can parties reorient spending to encourage a more balanced focus across their responsibilities? Political parties serve at least four critical functions: engaging citizens in politics, selecting candidates for office, aggregating policy perspectives and contesting elections.

Today, most funds are directed toward elections at the expense of engaging citizens or developing policy ideas. Party financing should be structured to encourage volunteers and facilitate ways for the voices of these volunteers to be heard.
...
(H)ow do political parties encourage more citizen engagement between elections, particularly in policy development? The Study of Canadian Political Party Members revealed that fewer than half of party members engage in ongoing party activity. Six in 10 respondents said they spent less than one hour on party activity per month.

One way to address this is to establish political party policy foundations. These organizations, common in Europe, provide mechanisms for party supporters and experts to participate in developing policies that address a country’s longer-term challenges.
Political parties have the potential to touch Canadians in most communities across the country. More should be done to ensure they play a part in reinvigorating the connection between citizens and government.

- Of course, it doesn't help that the Harper Cons are indeed forging ahead with their efforts to render government as useless as possible. And if anything, Stephen Gordon is too generous in describing their impact, as they've done plenty to make sure that revenues don't rise to the level of current expenses.

- And Peter Van Loan makes it abundantly clear that listening to anybody else isn't going to be on the agenda as long as his party is in power:

Opposition parties have also complained the Tories are mechanically voting down every one of their amendments without paying attention to the substance.

In a much discussed incident this fall, the Tories refused to accept amendments to their crime bill from Liberal MP and legal scholar Irwin Cotler, only to later try — unsuccessfully — to re-introduce nearly identical amendments themselves. Cotler had sought to make it easier for victims of terrorism and their families to successfully sue the perpetrators.

Van Loan refused to say during the interview whether he thinks it is possible for an opposition party to have a good idea. He acknowledged, however, that the government had not accepted one amendment from the opposition.

- But there's some reason for hope in the latest on the NDP's leadership candidates, including Tobi Cohen's profiles of Nathan Cullen and Romeo Saganash along with Charlie Smith's feature on Peggy Nash.

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- If there's a more accurate description of the Cons' entire political strategy than "taking advantage of the prejudice that’s already there", I haven't heard it yet. And Chris Lawson is rightly frustrated that Canadian politics are being dominated by such cynical and destructive motives - though I'd argue that we should be less concerned with the Gerry Nicholls of the world who are willing to call it by name than the Harper Cons who try to pretend their minority-bashing is somehow based on the national interest.

- No, we shouldn't be surprised to see a National Post discussion on pensions devolve into a debate as to whether seniors in general or public employees in particular should be attacked first in the name of tax slashing. But it's worth pointing out that we've had plenty of opportunity to test whether throwing the federal government's fiscal capacity into tax cuts and investment incentives for the wealthy would produce the virtuous cycle of magical retirement freedom that all the Post's pundits seem to take as a given - and the fact that Canadians are less secure now than they were a decade ago would seem like rather compelling evidence to the contrary for anybody willing to look at such a thing.

- Which suggests that maybe it's time to take some advice from Seth Klein in dealing with inequality for all age groups:

(R)ising inequality hasn’t been driven by low incomes. Rather, as the Occupy movement rightly highlighted, the growing gap has been driven by the runaway-rich; the wealthiest 10% of households, and especially the wealthiest 1%, have been breaking away from the rest of us (as outlined in this CCPA report a year ago).

So if we are going to reduce inequality, we need to revisit our top tax brackets.
...
I’d argue that the BC government should not restrict itself to adjustments to the top rate alone. I think there is room to modestly increase the 3rd and 4th brackets as well (which kick in at incomes of about $73K and $84K respectively; again only impacting a small minority of taxpayers). As I noted in a blog post a couple years ago, I find my personal income tax rate to be remarkably low, given what we receive in public services, and the scope of unmet social and environmental needs.

If you too think that our upper tax brackets should be increased, may I recommend that you let our political leaders know. Too often our leaders are overly cautious, and presume we will not abide such increases. If we really want action on inequality, we need to tell them otherwise.

- Meanwhile, Emily Dee worries that the Cons have set up a ticking time bomb with their giveaways to Canadian banks.

- And finally, Jason Warick highlights how First Nations students are being shortchanged in Saskatchewan.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your weekend.

- Bruce Anderson worries that the Cons might think they face no restriction on their ability to get away with dirty tricks. But Noah Richler suggests that the best way to fight back against the Cons' disdain for democratic debate is to treat them as a joke. And Dr. Dawg and deBeauxos start with an apt one.

- But Jeffrey Sachs reminds us that we shouldn't use justified cynicism over our current government to make the right's case to eliminate the concept of public service altogether.

- And Livio Di Matteo notes that if it weren't for the Cons' reckless tax-slashing, we'd never have faced the federal deficits which are now being used as an excuse to attack social funding.

- Finally, Bruce Johnstone slams the Cons' refusal to let farmers decide the fate of the single-desk Canadian Wheat Board.

Helpful Tip of the Day

Jim Flaherty, fresh off of five years of claiming that Canada's recession, deficits and increased unemployment levels are all the result of international forces beyond his control as a mere finance minister, is now telling Canadians it's utterly pointless to protest corporate control since we're completely free of any influences which might serve to increase inequality. Thanks, Deficit Jim!

Deep thought

I'm sure it's utterly preposterous to even suggest that it's theoretically possible that the Harper Cons might want to torch public money just for the sake of torching public money.

Monday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Once again, the NDP's popular support is holding up in the face of plenty of predictions to the contrary. But I'm sure we'll hear all about how the leadership race will do what the scrutiny of an election campaign, the transition to Official Opposition status and the death of Jack Layton didn't.

- It's sure a good thing our federal government is so well-attuned to the needs of business...

The almost unbroken flow of disappointing economic news has prompted economists at one major Canadian banking investment firm — Scotia Capital — to warn that Canada could be the first of the big industrial countries to slide back into recession.

And some other Bay Street economists, while dismissing fears the Canadian economy has — or is about to — slip back into recession, still question the wisdom of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s preaching and pushing a public austerity agenda here and abroad.

“The market’s big concern now is not the outsized budget deficits in the U.S., or Japan, or even much of Europe,” BMO Capital Markets senior economist Douglas Porter noted. “Its big concern is not inflation. Its concern is lacklustre or worse economic growth.”

- Of course the story is being spun around Thomas Mulcair's complaints rather than his proposed solution. But is there actually any argument against a party-wide push to boost the NDP's membership numbers during the course of the leadership race - other than to suggest that it shouldn't be limited to Quebec?

- Finally, Alice sets out the arguments for against the theory that the Cons benefitted from a rush of Lib voters in Ontario late in the May federal election campaign.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Carol Goar asks whether the Harper Cons learned anything whatsoever from a recession which they first deemed impossible, then minimized before acting only under political duress:

We have less manoeuvring room today than we did three years ago. Our budget is $30 billion in deficit, our employment insurance account has a $10.4 billion shortfall and we have the highest level of household debt in our history.

If Canada falls back into a recession — or if we’re already in one that hasn’t shown up in the statistics — millions of families will have no cushion.

It didn’t have to be this way. Our government had the time, had the money (it poured $39.9 billion into economic stimulus) and had the incentive to tackle these problems. Yet it brushed off calls from business, labour, the opposition parties and the unemployed to fix Canada’s broken economic stabilizers.

But sadly, the answer was already an emphatic "no" - and the EI system is only one of the many ways in which the Cons seem more interested in shredding safety nets than strengthening them.

- Andrew Coyne nicely sums up Jack Layton's last election campaign:

Much of the preposterousness of politics stems from the participants’ lunatic enlargement of the stakes, the “this is war” mentality with which they justify to themselves each appalling act. How childish these games must seem, when you are fighting for your life.

In (Layton's) last campaign, it all seemed to merge: the message of concern for the less fortunate, his personal bravery in the face of his own misfortune, the courtly, happy-warrior tone—in some ways a traditional protest campaign, but without a hint of anger. The whole was combined in the image of that cane: symbol of frailty, brandished in cheerful defiance.

Well, is that so unusual? All over this country there are thousands of people confronting cancer in their own lives, with no less courage or dignity. Layton was an admirable but not extraordinary man in life: is his death any more extraordinary? Only in this respect: that he was required to act it out on the public stage. We watched, like the ancients, and learned what it is to be a man.

- And John Geddes writes about the real Jack:

If he was a born politician, Layton didn’t rely solely on instinct. He prepared. It was Ignatieff who risked many unscripted outings during the last election—and failed miserably. Layton, like Harper, stuck mostly to reading speeches from a teleprompter at well-orchestrated rallies. His signature moments were not improvised. “Bon Jack” didn’t just happen to be in a Montreal sports bar, raising a beer mug to the cameras, for the first game of the Canadiens’ Stanley Cup playoff run—a turning point in the NDP’s Quebec campaign. “Every trick in the book about getting media,” former deputy leader of the Ontario NDP Marilyn Churley once said, “I learned from Jack Layton.”

Layton’s canny, self-conscious side must be reconciled now with the frequently expressed public sentiment that he was the rare, genuine article. The two perspectives aren’t really contradictory. Layton had been smiling and campaigning for one cause or another since boyhood. That was him. He didn’t have to reinvent himself for politics. In that respect, even when he was reading a stump speech for the 20th time, or hitting his marks for a staged photo-op, Canadians were seeing the real man.

- Finally, Frances Woolley considers the difficulties facing economists who start considering actual human behaviour as reason to challenge the assumption of perfectly rational and informed decision-making that underpins standard economic theory.

Sunday Morning Links

Selected text for your weekend reading.

- Edmund Pries points out how the right sees wasted public money and gratuitous tax slashing as tools to force cuts to programs which actually serve a valuable purpose:

During the Reagan era, a friend and former colleague, a professor of American history, was invited to the deliberations of a Washington think-tank that provided policy direction for the Republican Party. As they discussed growing the debt and increasing the deficit, he was flabbergasted: “Are you not the party of balanced budgets and debt elimination?” The reply was unequivocal, “Our goal is to grow the deficit as much as possible in order to create political space to eliminate government-funded programming. Until then, we want high deficits while lobbying for a balanced budget — and promoting social program cuts as the only solution.”

To create this useful deficit, tax cuts to wealthy individuals and corporate sectors would be dramatically increased, especially to the banking, energy and military segments. In short, one would implement a transfer of the state’s revenue supply obligations from the wealthiest to the poor and middle classes in order to permit an even greater transfer of wealth from the middle classes to the rich thereafter.

The only trick was to convince the poor and middle classes to “buy in” via a mixture of patriotism and structural necessity so that they would vote in favour of cutting the very programs that benefitted them.
...
Some have pretended that the budgetary crisis is real and not manufactured. Let us be clear: our relative wealth is greater than at any time in our history. Our collective ability to build a strong, caring and inclusive society in which everyone can participate has never been greater. This also holds true for the community of nations: we have the capacity to build a just global society.

Our preparedness to do so, however, seems utterly lacking, for an extreme individualism has taken over the mindset of many. We believe, falsely, that we are best served by hoarding as many resources as possible and letting others fend for themselves. The opposite is true. We are best served when we build a society together where all, including each reader of this article, can benefit through the building of community-wide programs.
...
Have we really lost our sense of the common good? Or is each person now on his or her own? There is no apocalyptic budgetary crisis other than of our own making. The crisis is in our orientation.

- Meanwhile, Sixth Estate notes that even the corporate-friendly Conference Board of Canada doesn't buy the right-wing spin that tax slashing pays for itself.

- I'm not sure she had any reason to defer to Jason Kenney when it came to doling out sarcasm. But Tabatha Southey's warning about Kenney's attacks on Amnesty International is still worth a read:

You're excused if your first reaction on reading of the minister's “joy” is, “Who died and made you the Minister of Sarcasm?”

The concerns cited by Amnesty International are that by using the immigration system to deal with suspected war criminals – deporting them instead of charging them – Canada may allow them to escape prosecution.

In addition, “Canada's international human rights obligations are clear,” Amnesty's letter said – “no person should be deported if he or she faces a serious risk of such grave human rights violations as torture, extrajudicial execution or enforced disappearance.”

In the mildest terms, it urged the minister to “reassess” the government's approach.

That's part of Amnesty's mandate. And far from “squandering the moral authority accrued” in campaigns that Mr. Kenney sees as legitimate, the group would more likely lose some credibility if it failed to raise this issue.
...
The tone of Mr. Kenney's letter to Amnesty, which was posted prominently on his ministerial website (yet is oddly signed only in his capacity as an MP, not as a minister), never gets less sarcastic. It feels personal. It reads like the kind of letter we sometimes write when we feel wronged, but then delete before sending. The tone makes sense only if Mr. Kenney recently broke up with Amnesty International. Prior drafts may well have contained the line, “And Violet Hill was never ‘our song' – it's my song.”
...
He could simply have said, as he sort of did – although not simply, never simply – that prosecuting these accused criminals in Canada would be too costly, complicated and likely ineffective (this may well be the case).

Instead, he called Amnesty's position “poppycock” and claimed that their professional, innocuous letter contained allegations that are “sloppy and irresponsible” and “precisely the slander you wrongly accuse the government of directing at the deportees.”

It doesn't. But what the letter does contain is a request that the government be tougher on war criminals. It's strange that this suggestion, made to a tough-on-crime minister, didn't merit a restrained, less caustic answer.

- Finally, with housing looming as a major issue in this fall's Saskatchewan provincial election, let's note that the Tyee has been going into detail on the issue from a Vancouver perspective - and coming up with some suggestions which the federal Cons unfortunately want to ignore:

Both the City of Vancouver and Dickie's CFAA expressed support for Bill C-304, a private member's bill introduced by NDP MP Libby Davies in 2009, calling for a national housing strategy. Such a strategy, the Vancouver MP says, would establish long-term funding for housing.

But while the last election may have advanced the NDP to Official Opposition status, the party that won a majority in Parliament seems to believe it already has a housing plan.
...
Groups like the Federation of Canadian Municipalities raised concerns that funding for AHI and RRAP expired on April 1, 2011. The federal, provincial, and territorial ministers responsible for housing officially announced continued funding for those programs on July 4, when they announced a $1.4 billion investment under a new Affordable Housing Framework for 2011 to 2014.*

To Davies, long-term, stable federal assistance is necessary when the private market fails to provide housing people can afford. "The reality is that the marketplace, even when it's operating at full tilt, even when it's doing everything that it's meant to be doing cannot meet 100 per cent of the need that there is for housing," she says.

Juxtaposition

An unnamed person with some clue about economics:

Pundits, Very Serious Politicians, and more have spent the past two years plus doing everything they can to make the deficit the center of public discourse, to focus all our fears on the attack by bond vigilantes that was supposedly just over the horizon.

And now it turns out that what really terrifies the markets, let alone the suffering unemployed, is the prospect of a second Great Depression — a prospect that has become much more likely thanks to the utter wrongness of elite policy priorities.

Great work, guys.

Update: And more:

(M)arkets were signaling, as clearly as anyone could ask, that unemployment rather than deficits is our biggest problem. Bear in mind that deficit hawks have been warning for years that interest rates on U.S. government debt would soar any day now; the threat from the bond market was supposed to be the reason that we must slash the deficit now now now. But that threat keeps not materializing. And, this week, on the heels of a downgrade that was supposed to scare bond investors, those interest rates actually plunged to record lows.

What the market was saying — almost shouting — was, “We’re not worried about the deficit! We’re worried about the weak economy!” For a weak economy means both low interest rates and a lack of business opportunities, which, in turn, means that government bonds become an attractive investment even at very low yields. If the downgrade of U.S. debt had any effect at all, it was to reinforce fears of austerity policies that will make the economy even weaker.

An unnamed government with no clue whatsoever:

"Markets right now are being pretty clear that debts and deficits are the problem - that's why we're moving to eliminate the deficit - because we don't want that to be a problem here.

"If the NDP's out there calling for bigger deficits and more debt, that's the problem."

[Edit: fixed wording.]

On warning signs

Shorter Jim Flaherty:

Of course economic trouble elsewhere in the world will have negative consequences for Canada. But we won't let that stop us from pushing the same bad advice that's done so much to cause it.

On innumeracy

Yes, we know that math isn't Deficit Jim Flaherty's forte. But could it be that he's still less numerically challenged than the rest of his cabinet colleagues? Let's check in with someone who's supposed to be one of the Cons' brightest lights...

"We don't obviously want to over-read this. People's political opinions change based on circumstances and from election to election, but fundamentally I think what we see is the development of a mainstream conservative consensus among most Canadian voters," Kenney said.

Of course, it could be that the Cons have been provided with an internal set of election results in which their Glorious Leader was elected with 110% of the vote (following a shift to a presidential system to ensure that his name would appear on every ballot). But if Kenney can't tell the difference between a consensus mandate from "most" voters and the actual election results in which the Cons' support was under 40% following their declaration that a vote for anybody else was a vote for a united set of opposing values...well, then his math skills are on par with his party's typical level of competence.

Juxtaposition

Stephen Harper describes his party's view of the type of environment needed for any industry to plan for the future and create jobs:

“Protecting and creating jobs and ensuring economic growth in all regions remains our Government's number one priority,” said Prime Minister Harper. “We will continue delivering the stability needed for the economic well-being of hard-working families, small business owners and entrepreneurs..."

Jim Flaherty describes how his party plans to treat Canada's cultural community:

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has a warning for cultural institutions that have come to rely on regular government funding: don't count on it.
...
On Monday, SummerWorks, an acclaimed Toronto indie theatre festival, announced it had lost its federal funding. The festival made headlines last year after staging “Homegrown,” a play about a convicted terrorist, a member of the group known as the Toronto 18.

In a note posted on its blog, the festival said it had received federal funding for five straight years — totalling $140,000 — and was surprised to learn it would not get more money this year.

But Mr. Flaherty says arts organizations should not set their budgets assuming they'll get government funds.

So having run an election campaign on the theme that no industry can succeed without a stable foundation from which to plan, the Cons have made it clear that they're demolishing any trace of stability for the arts and culture sector. Which would seem to speak volumes about how little they value Canada's cultural sector - while at the same time making it all too likely that they'll succeed in undermining it.

On downturns

Sure, it might seem like reason for concern that it's only the type of government spending which the Cons are determined to slash that allowed Canadians in general to somewhat avoid a significant economic collapse over the past few years:

In 2009, average earnings fell from $39,100 to $38,500 due to the steep rise of unemployment and an increase in short-term jobs. (Median earnings fell from $29,600 to $28,700 or by 3%.) This fall in average earnings happened even though the earnings of those who were steadily employed actually rose over the year.

The number of Canadians working full-time year round decreased rapidly. In 2009, 8,916,000 Canadians were working full-time year round, compared to 9,593,000 in 2008, a decrease of 677,000 full-time, full-year jobs over a year.

Mainly because of reduced earnings for those hit by the downturn, the average market income of families fell from $63,500 to $61,900.

However, this was offset by an increase in government transfers. from an average of $3,900 to an average of $5,100. Since taxes also fell slightly, the average after tax income of families was actually unchanged at $59,700.
...
Despite the increase in EI and other income transfers, the poverty rate for all persons rose from 9.4% to 9.6% in 2009 compared to 2008, and the child poverty rate rose from 9.1% to 9.5%.

This increase in poverty is disturbing since the 2009 reading really takes us only to the mid point of the recession, which continued into 2010. Even today, we are far from where we were before the recession in terms of the number of workers in steady full-time jobs.

But take heart: while Canadians in general may have lost ground in the market, the top just-under-1% is right back where it started [update: and feeling bullish]. And isn't that what really matters?