Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Mitchell Anderson's final report on Norway's highly successful management of its oil resources puts Canada's current philosophy to the test:

Seen through this lens, how is Canada doing? Abysmally...:

1. Dependency. Even with our vast oil wealth, Canada currently relies on other countries for about 50 per cent of our supply -- so-called "unethical oil" from the volatile Middle East. Proposals to pipe unrefined bitumen from western Canada to Asia will increase this dangerous dependence since Alberta will have to import vast amounts of condensate from the Middle East to dilute thick bitumen enough for pipeline transport.

2. Staying in the red. Alberta has been unable to balance the books since 2007, burning through $17.7 billion of past oil wealth, with another $3 billion deficit forecast for the coming budget.

3. Draining at full tilt. Labour and production costs are through the roof, at least until the next employment bust. Both the Alberta Federation of Labour and the late premier Peter Lougheed have both called for slower (sic) the pace of oil sands growth. Ten proposed upgrades have been cancelled since the 2007 recession, replaced instead with pipeline proposals for unprocessed diluted bitumen. With resource values rising relative to global currencies, what's the rush?

4. Getting global black eye. The oil sands have such a credibility problem the Alberta government spends $25 million a year countering "baseless" criticism from environmental groups. 

 - Ken Coran and Ken Lewenza highlight the value of allowing unions and management to reach deals that make sense for a particular workplace, rather than having decrees issued from on high. But sadly, the only negotiations the McGuinty Libs seem prepared to accept are their own dealings with Tim Hudak and his party to eliminate workers' right to bargain collectively.

- Thomas Walkom describes the XL Beef E. coli disaster as the Harper Cons' Walkerton moment - and it would indeed seem to be about time to recognize the practical consequences of ineffective regulation. But Postmedia reports that the Cons aren't done making matters worse - planning instead to cut food safety programs by tens of millions of dollars more.

- Finally, Polly Toynbee discusses Ed Miliband's new "One Nation Labour" theme - with a particular focus on how it serves to promote cooperation rather than competition in public services:

Watch [the Conservatives] writhe as One Nation Labour encapsulates everything divisive they do, from Cameron's tax bonus for millionaires to his cruellest cuts for the disabled. Divide and rule is the Cameron hallmark, north against south, the in-work against the workless, private against public employees, young against old, exam-passers versus plebs. How clever to pilfer a Tory phrase with no intention of blurring boundaries or triangulating into Tory turf.

Subtlety is Miliband's style. So when he said to voters he understood "why you turned away from Labour", that was enough, everyone knows the reasons why. Of Cameron, he said he understood "why people gave him the benefit of the doubt" – but then he walloped him from here to kingdom come for inflicting all this pain to cut the deficit only to send it soaring higher than ever.

His words on the NHS brought the hall to its feet. A One Nation NHS means repealing the act that forces hospital to compete with hospital, instead of co-operating in common cause. Banks, businesses, schools, jobs – that One Nation phrase will suit everything Labour needs to say. It stands for the squeezed middle as well as the poor.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- L. Aaron Wright nicely contrasts the fabricated hysteria over Nycole Turmel against the choices of the Libs and Cons:

Where was the outrage when Stephen Harper tried to recruit Mario Dumont of the ADQ in Quebec, a leader of the Yes side in the 1995 referendum?

Where is the outrage at Maxime Bernier, a Tory cabinet minister, who worked for the Parti Quebecois government as an adviser to then Quebec finance minister Bernard Landry?

I don’t recall any outrage when the Liberals welcomed Jean Lapierre back into their fold. He was made minister of Transport. Mr. Lapierre was not just a former Bloc MP, but also a Bloc co-founder.

All of these politicians supported Quebec sovereignty. Ms. Turmel never has. She is a federalist.

- Kevin Drum serves up some numbers on why unions matter - reminding us why the corporatist right so fears both:

Among men, if you account only for the effect of individual membership in unions, (inequality) would be about a fifth lower (at 1973 unionization rates), which agrees pretty well with previous estimates. But if you also account for the effect of unions on surrounding nonunion employers (who often raised wages to compete with union employers and to avert the threat of unionization in their own workplace), the effect is larger: Unionization at 1973 levels would decrease income inequality by a full third...

The effect of unionization on women is less dramatic because women were never unionized at the same rate as men. For them, increasing returns to education are a bigger factor in rising income inequality than deunionization. For men, however, deunionization has had a huge impact...

(D)eunionization has allowed income inequality to rise partly because unions are negotiating wages for fewer people than they used to, and partly because unions no longer have the power to force the political system to pay attention to the needs of the middle class.

- Meanwhile, Ken Lewenza points out another corporate scam that's transferring money to the least scrupulous businesses at the expense of workers, as corporations are making a habit of simply shutting down without warning and leaving their employees out in the cold when it comes to money already earned:

The abrupt closure of three IQT call-centre operations in Oshawa, Trois-Rivières and Laval has left 1,200 workers reeling, and government agencies scratching their heads. How can a company (in this case a multi-million dollar, multi-national telecommunications contractor) simply pack up and leave, literally overnight? How can they walk away from legal obligations, washing their hands of back pay and severance? Seriously, how?

Weeks have gone by but no one, as of yet, has any real answers to these questions.

Governments appear incapable of even tracking down basic information about the company, who’s in charge and whether or not they’re actually bankrupt.

There’s an assumption among Canadians that there must be rules and regulations holding corporations to account. But this latest fiasco is a rude awakening.

Indeed, we’ve seen this storyline many times before. In 2009, 2,400 non-union auto parts workers at Progressive Moulded Products (PMP) in Toronto faced a similar ordeal — returning from vacation only to learn that their employer had fled town, taking their separation payments with them. CAW members have seen it first-hand, too, at companies like Collins & Aikman in Scarborough, Aradco and Aramco in Windsor, and others.

Each case prompted a public outcry and a spontaneous fight back. Workers demanded what was legally owed to them. But after fighting long and hard, they inevitably end up with less than they are owed.
...
It is both immoral and economically counterproductive to allow deadbeat corporations like IQT to commit these wrongs with impunity. As a society, we must take a hard line with employers who think they’re beyond the greater good.

- Finally, the National Post rightly notes that recognition of both human rights and the negative consequences of gratuitously draconian policy is particularly important in dealing with targets who lack any public defenders. But it'll take plenty of reminders on that point to counteract the Cons' deliberate moves to shield themselves from criticism for analogous actions by declaring that nobody should care about the victims anyway.

Sunday Morning Links

A variety of content for your weekend reading.

- The Lethbridge Herald nicely points out who figures to have a problem with Stephen Harper's decision to have the Canadian public pay tens of thousands of dollars to send him to Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals:

(P)erhaps the flap over Harper's appearance at the game was a tempest in a teapot. Nevertheless, some Canadians saw it as a slap in the face; an unnecessary extravagance at a time when the government is looking to trim some $4 billion per year from federal programs and services. If you're one of the people who stand to be affected by those cuts, perhaps seeing the prime minister among the crowd in Boston was a galling reminder that some of us are having to tighten our belts while those in government can still enjoy the high life.

Petty? Maybe. Perhaps it all depends on whether you're one of the haves or the have-nots.

But it's worth extending the have/have-not distinction a step further. For Harper, the $50,000 served as the different between watching a hockey game at home, and watching a hockey game from the rink. For have-nots far from Harper's line of view, the same sum of money could have served to bring multiple families out of poverty for a year.

And given that contrast, Harper's conclusion that his choice of location for a touching family moment can possibly takes precedence looks all the more inexcusable.

- Meanwhile, the Imagine What We Could Do campaign is raising some even more important either-or choices between handing free money to the corporate sector and funding social priorities, with a particular focus on Saskatchewan resource royalties.

- But as Ken Lewenza notes, after decades of stagnant wages and top-heavy development it'll take plenty of pushback to ensure that working Canadians share in any future economic gains.

- A proposed research project for Jim Flaherty or anybody willing to take up his latest tax-flattening crusade: identify a single person above Canada's bottom tax bracket who's wholly unmotivated to do additional work at current tax rates, but would leap to do more based on the marginal tax reduction of 3% or 4% that would result from bracket elimination.

Of course, we'll instead see Flaherty justify a more regressive tax system with nothing but faith-based assertions that such a thing exists. But my guess is we'll discover the confidence fairy before an actual example of the supposed rationale for what the Cons have in store.

- Finally, Bruce Johnstone points out the leading example of what we can expect to happen if the Cons follow through on demolishing the single-desk Canadian Wheat Board:

(N)umerous studies by agricultural economists have shown the CWB earns a premium price for producers through its market clout, timing sales to catch market peaks, ensuring both the quality and quantity of grain delivered and getting volume discounts on shipping and handling.

So, what happens on Aug. 1, 2012? Well, no one can say for sure, but the Australian Wheat Board, which lost its monopoly in 2008, provides a pretty good example.

Despite having been in operation for more than 20 years, within a year of the removal of the single desk, the AWB's share of the export market dropped to 23 per cent. Since then, the AWB was taken over in a $1.1-billion bid by Agrium, which sold the commodity marketing arm of AWB to Cargill for $175 million.

So, who benefits? Grain companies, for one.

Viterra CEO Mayo Schmidt said he supports the removal of the single desk by the Conservatives and "intends to actively participate in the process to promote an orderly transition with positive, sustainable change for the benefit of the Western Canadian agricultural industry."

Given the success of Viterra's takeover of the Australia's former barley marketing agency, ABB Grain, Schmidt must be licking his chops with the prospect of getting a piece of the CWB's business.

So, who loses? The majority of Western Canadian farmers who support the CWB, of course.