Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Just as in this year's federal election, the NDP will need to look to move voting intentions once the campaign is underway. But also just like in the federal election, there's reason to like the party's chances - particularly as it's promising to limit the sniping that's been going on for months between the other two main parties.

- The Washington Post points out that our current system of intellectual property protection - supposedly designed to encourage innovation - in fact does little but to create a cottage industry for high-tech non-inventors:

Patents were originally conceived to protect inventors—people and companies who contribute to the advancement of society by creating new products. But in the past decade, something went horribly wrong. Patents are increasingly became nothing more than financial and legal weapons, to be amassed in portfolios by “non-practicing entities” (i.e. patent trolls) and used to extort protection money from economically productive companies.
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Most of the money from patent lawsuits is going to the trolls and the lawyers. Between 1995 and 2001, practicing entities were getting higher median awards ($6.3 million) in patent lawsuits than non-practicing entities ($5.2 million). Those numbers flipped between 2002 and 2009, when the median award given to patent trolls climbed to $12.9 million, while awards given to operating patent holders dropped to $3.9 million. The trolls obviously got very efficient and found friendly court districts like the Eastern District of Texas where they could push their claims (patent trolls have a 55.6 percent success rate in cases in the Eastern District of Texas). And it is not just the trolls that are bringing lawsuits as a course of business, companies like Microsoft are getting in on the action too, using their patents as a strategic weapon against their rivals.

It’s this combination of a growing pool of patents that should have never been granted in the first place with the rise of the patent lawsuit industry that is creating huge costs for technology companies of all sizes and the economy at large. All of those bilions (sic) of dollars spent in defending questionable patent lawsuits and buying up patents that will never be used to create anything new is a terrible waste of money. The patent system has been broken a long time, but if we don’t fix it soon it will slow down one of the few engines of the economy still humming.

- It didn't receive much attention compared to the news about the CUPW's planned challenges to the appointment. But after they went out of their way to undermine the concept of collective bargaining as we know it, should we have expected anything other than for the Harper Cons to then appoint an arbitrator with as little labour experience as possible?

- Rene Najera's story looks like a particularly egregious example of an employer trampling on a worker's ability to participate in any public debate.

- Finally, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald weighs in on Tony Clement's G8 patronage and cover-up:

Auditor General John Wiersema said he had never before come across the "unusual and troubling" situation of there being "absolutely no paper trail."

But last week, NDP MP Charlie Angus turned up a paper trail of sorts.

Doing an end-run of his own, Mr. Angus used provincial disclosure laws to access minutes of municipal leaders’ meetings on G8 projects that Mr. Clement chaired. They indicate federal officials did attend some meetings and Mr. Clement’s constituency office managed an application process for projects through unofficial forms.

The government should explain how this squares with what it told the auditor general — that departments were not involved in designing the fund and selecting projects.

And Mr. Clement should explain why his office ran this process outside the auditable framework of Treasury Board rules and policies for which he is now responsible.

If he can’t do that, he shouldn’t be at Treasury Board.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- The Halifax Chronicle Herald pushes back against the Cons' and Libs' anti-Bloc witch-hunt:

For partisan reasons, involvement with the Bloc has become a game of political football. The Tories and Grits feel like they’ve scored a touchdown because Ms. Turmel’s cancellation of her Bloc membership was so recent. The NDP have responded with a field goal. After all, Mr. Lebel did quit the Bloc 10 years ago. Even if the man had ever been a sovereigntist, surely he’d be entitled to change his mind.

The only reason the Grits haven’t been scored on since this controversy began is because they don’t have a current MP whose federalist credentials are questionable. But for all their grandstanding, they too have welcomed bloquistes back into the fold — and not just any bloquiste, either.

The Liberals’ former MP Jean Lapierre, now a broadcaster, is the prototype of a federalist coming full circle. He quit the Grits after Jean Chrétien became leader, became a founding member of the Bloc, then was welcomed back years later as Paul Martin’s Quebec lieutenant.

It’s time to call off this game on account of hypocrisy. The last message we should be sending Quebecers, now that they have opted back in to federalist politics, is this: "Once a sovereigntist, always a sovereigntist, even if you were never really a sovereigntist."

- Yes, it's noteworthy that Jim Prentice at least hinted at a cap-and-trade system in dealing with Alberta's provincial government. But far more significant than the tentative behind-the-scenes discussion is the fact that even one of the Cons' supposed star ministers couldn't get the job done - and since his departure, the Cons are now running as far as possible from any attempt to deal with greenhouse gas emissions.

- And speaking of policies the Cons want to send down the memory hole, Alison catches the Cons disappearing their previous bragging about Canadian oil investment in Syria.

- Finally, Tim Harper points out that the Cons' secrecy in negotiating yet another security deal with the U.S. is only fuelling Canadian suspicions about what they want to give up. But it's well worth noting that the public apparently isn't seen as an "important stakeholder" in the process:

Toews says his government is not going to negotiate in public.

Important stakeholders have been consulted, and the government is grappling with the question of at what point to bring the broader public into the discussion.

The signs are not encouraging.

Toews has already set up the NDP as the enemy, predicting they would merely “politicize” any public hearings because they are philosophically against any trade deals and are mired in an outdated protectionist mindset.

But, in fact, the only NDP criticism so far has centred on the secretive nature of the process.

If the Harper government is not prepared to come into the daylight at some point and tell Canadians specifically what it may be negotiating away, the NDP criticism will be the predominant Canadian point of view.

For those paying attention, it likely already is.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Erin alerts us to the possibility that one of the most appalling aspects of the TILMA might soon be law across Canada with virtually no discussion if we don't make an issue of it:

The most important objection to TILMA is that it allows business to sue provincial and local governments for up to $5 million over laws, regulations and policies that allegedly have negative side-effects on economic activity or investment that happens to cross a provincial border. These challenges are adjudicated behind closed doors by commercial tribunals, rather than through the normal court system.

This sweeping “solution” is rather extreme compared to the supposed “problem” of interprovincial trade barriers. Very few such barriers have been identified and governments have a good track record of resolving them on a case-by-case basis. The Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada estimated that interprovincial barriers cost under 0.05% of GDP in the 1980s and most have since been removed.

After failing to convince any other provinces or territories to join TILMA, its supporters have been implementing it through the back door. In July 2008, Premiers added financial penalties of up to $5 million to the Agreement on Internal Trade, which covers all provinces and territories.
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Last month’s decision was to allow business to directly sue governments over public policy. According to the press release:

Ministers agreed to undertake a more effective enforcement mechanism under the Agreement on Internal Trade for disputes brought by “persons” (individuals, businesses and other organizations) against a government. . . . The changes agreed to today include monetary penalties . . . These are largely based on the new process applicable to disputes between governments which was put in place in 2009 [i.e. the fines of up to $5 million announced in July 2008].

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The good news is that these changes are still just general proposals. The Committee of Ministers on Internal Trade plans to actually amend the Agreement on Internal Trade at its June 2012 meeting. So, we have a year to stop it.

- And Gary Mason notes that the other major free trade agreement under discussion is getting less scrutiny than it deserves:

(T)here has been little discussion in Canada about the proposed Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which is perplexing given the far-reaching implications for this country of any pact with the EU. We’re talking about a trade deal that in many ways is as big as the North American free-trade agreement and, in several instances, poses potential problems for Canadians as serious and disturbing as any in the 1994 accord with the Americans.

For starters, the deal could add nearly $3-billion a year in costs to Canadian drug plans – including $250-million in B.C. and $1.2-billion in Ontario. This is because it would delay our access to cheaper generic drugs by several years.

Among the CETA perks that Europeans are eyeing is the right to bid on government work in Canada – in other words, those contracts tendered by provincial and local governments in Canada that now mostly go to local companies. CETA would end that preferential practice.

Think about that for a moment. And then consider the many local governments across the country that use procurement as a tool to promote economic development. A reported 60 per cent of municipalities in B.C. have economic-development strategies that include local procurement and hiring.
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It all seems odd. During the NAFTA talks, Canada had an on-going national debate about the merits of that trade deal. And yet, for a trade pact that some argue is even bigger in scale, there is a deafening silence across the land. Canadians have virtually no idea of what is being negotiated on their behalf. They should. The stakes are enormous.

- Speaking of wasting money on prescription drugs, Alan Cassels points out that it's the part of our health-care system with no public-sector involvement - privately-insured prescription drug coverage - that's seen the worst cost increases:

When you put the private drug plans under the microscope, instead of seeing efficiency and cost effectiveness in prescribing -- compared to public drug plans -- you often find the opposite. A few years ago my colleague Dr. Joel Lexchin and I published an analysis of the top 10 most expensive drugs paid for by private drug plans in Canada and we found that the plans were spending about 25 per cent more than they needed to, compared to a basket of equally effective, but less expensive medications.
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In fact, according to a recent study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal if drugs in the same class as Diovan (drugs known as ARBs) had been restricted by drug plans in favour of drugs like Ramipril (a class of drugs known as ACE-Inhibitors) then the Canadian health system would have saved more than $77 million in 2006 without any adverse effects on cardiovascular health.

Your private plan automatically covers drugs like Celebrex, Januvia and Diovan, no questions asked. Me? I'm glad that public drug plans appropriately keep coverage of those drugs limited to only those people who need them.
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It's clear what is going on here: employees who get private, and unrestricted drug coverage are facing escalating costs. According to the Canadian Institute of Health Information, private plans are growing at about twice the rate of public drug plans. Private drug plans are often managed by insurers who get paid as a percentage of the cost of the scripts they process, so there is no incentive to seek 'value-for-money' arrangements. In the end, employers absorb those rising costs while denying the workers raises.

- Finally, the Chronicle-Herald slams the Cons' destruction of Canada's census:

(When) you fix problems where none existed, you often create a bigger mess than the illusory one you think you’ve solved.

That, unfortunately, is where last year’s boneheaded decision by the governing federal Conservatives to scrap the long-form census has left the country.
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The problem with voluntary surveys, experts explained, was that certain groups, including the poor, the rich, aboriginals and immigrants, tended to avoid filling out such questionnaires when they were not mandatory. As a result, important decisions regarding taxpayers’ money would, in future, have to be made while relying on somewhat skewed data.

The Conservatives, as we know, stubbornly refused to listen.

Now come reports that, as expected, many people asked to fill out the new National Household Survey by Statistics Canada this summer have either chosen not to do so or only partly completed the questionnaire.

This, say experts, will make the resulting data, though still usable, less reliable than information collected for many years using the old long-form census.

The impact of this disastrous decision will unfold slowly but last for many years.

Meanwhile, Statistics Canada is only now examining other alternatives for getting the needed data. That, however, should have been the first step.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Some content to help fill your weekend...

- The Chronicle Herald tears into the Cons' continued refusal to listen to reason or anything else when it comes to the long form census:

The government has been advised by its statisticians, by provinces and municipalities and by hundreds of organizations that depend on accurate census data that a voluntary census will not produce reliable, usable results. Former Chief Statistician Munir Sheikh felt it necessary to resign in order to inform us that the government’s plan would degrade the data (and to correct Industry Minister Tony Clement’s misrepresentation that Mr. Sheikh supported the plan).

A government document filed as evidence in a lawsuit that is aimed at stopping the change also acknowledges that switching to a voluntary survey will mean some data "will not be usable for a range of objectives for which the census information would be needed."

To ignore all this and to proceed with killing the detailed census is grossly irresponsible. Real people will suffer when there is poorer information about where services are needed.
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But the government had the same response for this expression of Parliament’s will as it had for science, fact and commonsense. It doesn’t care and it isn’t budging.
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(O)n it goes in a parade of unbelievably silly, trivial and discredited arguments.

The Conservatives are debating and governing with their fingers in their ears. It makes no sense and it’s not a pretty sight.

- Stephen Maher notes that whatever one's view of ministerial responsibility, the reality is that the Cons' culture of information suppression starts at the top. And that may make for the most important rebuttal to any spin as to whether to blame individual ministers or their subordinates: the Cons have a concerted effort to keep facts away from Canadians in every department under their control, and the real problem is Stephen Harper.

- Meanwhile, Kady O'Malley has posted the definitive Sebastien Togneri document dump.

- Dan Gardner writes a scathing indictment of the lack of action to protect sex workers, and notes that if the judiciary has had to step in it's only because Lib and Con governments alike have chosen to do nothing:

Let me repeat: a judge concluded that the law is helping to butcher women. Sure, it’s fun to argue about the role of the judiciary. Important, even. But isn’t the judge’s conclusion about what the law is doing to women just a little more worrying than the possibility that a judge’s interpretation of her role is excessively expansive?

Place the two issues on a scale and weigh them. On one side: an overstepping judge. On the other: thousands of bruised and bleeding women. And several hundred corpses.

Which matters more?

Now, I want to emphasize that reasonable people can look at the evidence and come to a different conclusion that Justice Himel. But what no reasonable person can do is shrug. The mere possibility that the law is contributing to brutality inflicted on vulnerable women is horrifying. A reasonable person who hears this will want to know more. A reasonable person will demand further investigation. A reasonable person will insist on getting to the bottom of this, now.

- Finally, I'll have plenty to say later on. But for commentary on the Cons' decree that anybody having anything to do with a major Canadian Islamic organization is to be shunned, the posts by Dr. Dawg, Balbulican, pogge, Dave, Greg and Cliff are well worth a look.

(Edit: fixed label.)

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading...

- Tabatha Southey delivers a thoroughly entertaining smackdown of Stockwell Day's antics over the past week:

I mention all of this as context for my reaction to Stockwell Day’s press conference this week in which he explained that the government must spend $13-billion on prisons, despite statistics showing that crime is down in Canada, because of an “alarming” increase in “unreported crime.”

I'm having trouble sharing and understanding his particular personal vision. I'm not sure that prisons are a good “if you build it, they will come” investment.

In fact, I thought the Treasury Board President looked pretty crazy and scared. I felt like I was watching a man light himself on fire.
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The strength of the Conservatives for so long was their ability to get inside the heads of ordinary Canadians. Lately, it’s as if they’re bored with that, so instead they are getting inside the heads of the most bashful of property-crime victims and some Cold War re-enactment enthusiasts.

- It's great to see John Rafferty's work on pensions getting some positive media attention. And while I'm less optimistic than Rafferty seems to be about the prospect of getting much done in a Con-controlled Parliament, it's definitely worth working getting C-501 passed to make sure that workers aren't left out in the cold when an employer goes under.

- I've mentioned before that it strikes me as entirely too narrow a focus to view the Cons' gutting of the census as merely a communications issue. But Bruce Anderson is still worth a read from that angle:

(T)he long-form-census debate is almost case-study worthy, as communications goes. Before the announcement, there was no effort to rally interest in the problem that the government felt needed to be addressed. The blow-back was predictable, but from the get go, it seemed that the government kept bringing rhetorical pen-knives to a gun fight.

After the blow-back became a source of political anxiety for the Conservatives, two or three different lines of argument were inflated and trial ballooned, none of which have soared. Net-net, the Harper Conservatives added a public-opinion risk with no reward anywhere in sight. If they wanted a debate about which party best respects your privacy, there is little evidence or prospect of this happening now. The more likely question vexing centrist voters is whether the Harper government prefers ideology over information as a way to make decisions with their money and about their services.

- Which is why the Cons may want to take another look at the Chronicle Herald's suggestion:

In the past month, while Mr. Harper has been largely unseen and unheard, the government has been anything but focused on the economy. It has stirred up a national backlash over replacing the mandatory long-form census with a voluntary one that will cost more and yield less reliable data on which to plan government services and make economic policy. It has expended energy talking "tough on crime" and arguing the need for more prisons even in the face of falling crime rates.

Although the PM has left his ministers to conduct an inept defence of both these diversions, the policies clearly come from his office and wouldn’t be getting their misplaced prominence if he didn’t want it that way.
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Mr. Harper should accept the compromise he’s been offered on the census and get his attention back where he says it belongs: on economic management.

- Finally, while I've mentioned the Saskatchwan NDP's candidate nominations as they've happened, it's worth noting that the Sask Party has also been carrying out plenty of nominations. And their acclamation of Paul Merriman in Saskatoon Sutherland looks to reflect two of the party's major weaknesses: not only does the free ride for a familiar name play into concerns about connections mattering more than substance, but the fact that this is the second Sask Party-held riding where Wall and company couldn't even find a second interested candidate plays into the perception that they're little more than a Potemkin party.

More reviews are in

Might the Cons be hoping for their gutting of the census to simply fade into the background as an issue? If so, they may want to read...

Haroon Siddiqui:

Instead of Munir Sheikh resigning as head of Statistics Canada, Tony Clement should have quit the cabinet. It was his dishonest suggestion — that he had the agency’s support in replacing the compulsory long census form with a voluntary one — that prompted Sheikh to depart.
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It was heartening to hear such principled civil servants.

By contrast, Tory politicians have been reprehensible. Harper has been mute, while his minions put up lame defences.
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It is a measure of Harper’s intransigence that he has dug in his heels despite the four-week-long non-partisan national uproar during the summer holiday season when Canadians normally have better things to do than pay much attention to politics.

The forms for the census in May next year must go to the printers within days. Yet Harper is holding the census hostage to his ideology, while also leaving Statistics Canada leaderless and rudderless.

James Travers:

Behind closed doors and without meaningful consultation, Harper and his cabinet rubber-stamped a pre-conceived conclusion. They are now characteristically defending it by grotesquely distorting facts.

Tony Clement’s fear-mongering about census scofflaws dragged away in chains and Stockwell Day’s bizarre suggestion that it’s really about discovering if your neighbour is Jewish would be funny if not so frightening. After making the wrong decision in the wrong way for the wrong reasons, Conservatives are resorting to the Big Lie in hopes of being mistaken for defenders of the little people.
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Harper’s government climbs opinion polls when Canadians are content that the country is being competently managed. It slides down them when ideology and incompetence disturb the national reverie of political indifference.

Jarred into wakefulness by the sound of summer gunfire, Canadians are confronted by the spectacle of a wounded prime minister leading a gang that can’t shoot straight.

Lawrence Martin, albeit with the inevitable "blame Giorno" attempt to salvage Harper's personal reputation as a strategist:

In addition to several other control-freak eruptions, social conservatism came to the fore with abortion funding left out of the maternal health initiative, funding cuts for Toronto’s Gay Pride day, a planned employment equity review and, most important, the decision on ending the long-form census.

The upshot has been no change in the government’s image and zero improvement in its popularity numbers. Unable to score through these times, Tories must be wondering whether they can ever score.

When he became PM, Mr. Harper wanted to gradually enlarge the Conservative tent. That required his having a team that could curb his raw appetites and fashion an appeal to the mainstream. He had people like that initially. But then the yes chorus came, the ideological shackles tightened, and the tent got smaller.

And the Chronicle-Herald editorial board:

(T)o anyone with a sense of proportion, the Tories’ heroic self-image of saving Canadians from oppression by making the "intrusive" long-form census voluntary just doesn’t square with reality.

But Industry Minister Tony Clement isn’t conceding the non-existence of incarcerated census objectors. Testifying at a Commons committee Tuesday, Mr. Clement repeatedly evaded the question when asked if anyone has been jailed. Retired chief statistician Ivan Fellegi later did supply a factual answer: No.
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The Tories’ indulgence in this melodrama shows we have more cause to worry about the ninny state than the nanny state.

Mr. Clement wants to spend $30 million to convince people to voluntarily answer questions that he and other ministers have spent weeks trashing as silly and invasive, often in misleading terms.
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So let’s take the advice of the cool heads on this issue. Scrap the unused and over-the-top jail sanction, set reasonable fines, ensure every question has a valid purpose (and tell people what it is). But protect the quality of the data by keeping the long form mandatory.

And spare us the melodrama. The Bastille is empty and the emperor has no clothes.

Update: Scott rightly notes that C.E.S. Franks should be added to the list:

In his letter announcing his resignation as Canada’s chief statistician, Munir Sheikh said he wanted to take the opportunity to comment on “a technical statistical issue” that had become a subject of media discussion. The question was whether a voluntary survey can become a substitute for a mandatory census. The answer: “It can not.”

Five days earlier, Mr. Sheikh’s minister, Tony Clement, had told the press that he asked Statistics Canada if they were confident they could do their job with a voluntary survey, and their answer had been that, provided extra steps were taken in advertising and enlarging the sample size, “Yes, we can do our job.”

These two statements fundamentally contradict each other. There are only two possibilities for explaining the difference: Either someone is not telling the truth, or Mr. Sheikh’s and Statistics Canada’s views on the usefulness of a voluntary survey have changed.

Mr. Sheikh’s and Statistics Canada’s views and advice to the government on the usefulness of a voluntary survey did not change.
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Quite likely, Mr. Sheikh discussed his resignation and the contents of his public letter with the clerk. Perhaps they agreed on his description of a major policy change as a technical issue in order to allow Statistics Canada’s views to be made public. But if a deputy minister is compelled to resign every time a minister misrepresents the advice given by the public service, Canada would soon run out of competent and independent-thinking senior public servants. Something stinks in this entire affair, and it is not Mr. Sheikh or Statistics Canada.

The reviews are in

The Chronicle Herald lends its voice to the cause of reversing the Harper and Charest governments' shameful insistence on exporting asbestos even while acknowledging that it's not fit for use at home:

Not surprisingly, there’s virtually no use of asbestos in construction anymore in this country.

But for many years, Canada, to its shame, has led an ugly and hypocritical campaign to keep asbestos markets open wherever possible worldwide. Worse, Canada has even fought to keep information on the abundant dangers of asbestos from being distributed — via the UN-sponsored Rotterdam Convention — to countries importing the substance. More than 50 countries have banned the use of asbestos.
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As the Quebec government pondered a $58-million loan guarantee to revive an old asbestos mine, a group of international health experts issued a stinging rebuke to governments worldwide that have failed to ban the material, despite "overwhelming agreement" that no safe level of exposure exists. It was published last week in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

The politics behind continued production — entirely in Quebec — and export of asbestos is killing people.