Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Karl Leffme interviews Jake Lytle about the movement to unionize marijuana-related work in Chicago. And Jay Greene and Eli Rosernberg report on an all-too-rare expression of support for unionization by Joe Biden in the wake of Amazon's attempt to bully and bribe workers out of pursuing collective bargaining.

- Alex McKeen reports on a push by Canada's provincial labour ministers for a national sick leave program. And the Star's editorial board again calls for action at the provincial level as well to ensure workers aren't forced to endanger themselves and others for lack of alternative income supports.

- Andrew Meijers highlights how changes in Atlantic ocean currents may exacerbate the extreme weather expected as part of a climate breakdown.

- Meanwhile, Helen Caldicott points out how nuclear power is neither practical from a cost standpoint, nor desirable from an environmental one. And QMI reports on Quebec Solidaire's effort to convert golf courses into public green space.

- Finally, Greg Palast discusses how Texas' disastrous power deregulation was the result of conscious political choices (with the Bush family playing a prominent role). And Tom Parkin writes about the different incentives and which are leading to the NDP backing a shift to public ownership of long-term care facilities while the Libs seek to go no further than voluntarism and symbolism.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Thomas Walkom reminds us that the Libs's supposed tradeoff of climate policy for pipelines is failing as much in producing the former as the latter:

For almost two years, the Trudeau government has tried to finesse the contradictions of its climate-change policies.

On the one hand, the government has talked tough, promising to impose carbon taxes on those provinces that don’t have their own.
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On the other, the proposed carbon tax itself — $10 per tonne of greenhouse gas emissions this year, rising to $50 by 2022 — is woefully inadequate to the task of weaning Canadians from their reliance on fossil fuels.

Experts I’ve talked to estimate that a carbon tax would have to start at $30 a tonne and reach at least $200 by 2030 to do any good.

The federal government has also insisted that Canada can merrily continue to mine the carbon-intensive tarsands and still meet its international greenhouse gas emission reduction obligations, which it cannot.  

- The Globe and Mail's editorial board discusses the need to keep fighting against climate change rather than succumbing to defeatism - though we also shouldn't be fooled by insufficient incremental steps in the face of a serious global problem. And Rebecca Harris, David Bowman and Linda Beaumont write about the Australian ecosystems that are collapsing as a result of climate change.

- Gabriel Elizondo offers a reminder of the massive amount of plastic being dumped in our oceans. And Bethany McLean writes that in addition to being an environmental disaster, the U.S.' increased push toward fracking is setting up an economic house of cards.

- David Climenhaga points out that the Trump administration's depiction of an utterly feckless Canadian NAFTA bargaining team rings all too true.

- The CP reports on Quebec Solidaire's promise of a public wireless network to ensure that telecom giants can't limit access to the Internet through price gouging and selective deployment. 

- Finally, Chase Rutting discusses the urgent need for Saskatchewan to confront the violent racism in its midst - rather than catering to it as the Saskatchewan Party has chosen to do.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Paul Krugman compares the U.S.' longtime recognition that concentrated wealth can do massive social harm to the Republicans' recent efforts to claim that raising any revenue from the rich is somehow un-American:

The truth is that, in the early 20th century, many leading Americans warned about the dangers of extreme wealth concentration, and urged that tax policy be used to limit the growth of great fortunes. Here’s another example: In 1919, the great economist Irving Fisher — whose theory of “debt deflation,” by the way, is essential in understanding our current economic troubles — devoted his presidential address to the American Economic Association largely to warning against the effects of “an undemocratic distribution of wealth.” And he spoke favorably of proposals to limit inherited wealth through heavy taxation of estates.

Nor was the notion of limiting the concentration of wealth, especially inherited wealth, just talk. In his landmark book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” the economist Thomas Piketty points out that America, which introduced an income tax in 1913 and an inheritance tax in 1916, led the way in the rise of progressive taxation, that it was “far out in front” of Europe. Mr. Piketty goes so far as to say that “confiscatory taxation of excessive incomes” — that is, taxation whose goal was to reduce income and wealth disparities, rather than to raise money — was an “American invention.”

And this invention had deep historical roots in the Jeffersonian vision of an egalitarian society of small farmers. Back when Teddy Roosevelt gave his speech, many thoughtful Americans realized not just that extreme inequality was making nonsense of that vision, but that America was in danger of turning into a society dominated by hereditary wealth — that the New World was at risk of turning into Old Europe. And they were forthright in arguing that public policy should seek to limit inequality for political as well as economic reasons, that great wealth posed a danger to democracy.

...

We aren’t yet a society with a hereditary aristocracy of wealth, but, if nothing changes, we’ll become that kind of society over the next couple of decades.

In short, the demonization of anyone who talks about the dangers of concentrated wealth is based on a misreading of both the past and the present. Such talk isn’t un-American; it’s very much in the American tradition. And it’s not at all irrelevant to the modern world. So who will be this generation’s Teddy Roosevelt?

- And Thom Hartmann Shaw points out the damaging effects of outsourcing and privatization in the U.S.

- Daniel Weinstock laments the lack of a left-wing party with broad public appeal in Canada's most progressive province. And CK makes the case for Quebec Solidaire as the best option among the parties actually contesting the current Quebec election.

- Carol Linnett points to Jim Hoggan's discussion of our polluted public discourse. Joe Romm highlights the latest IPCC report as showing the long-term costs of environmental negligence. And Jacques Leslie writes that Canada is tarring its own reputation on the international stage by attacking sane climate policy at home and abroad:

(T)he Harper government has shown its disdain for scientists and environmental groups dealing with climate change and industrial pollution. The government has either drastically cut or entirely eliminated funding for many facilities conducting research in climate change and air and water pollution. It has placed tight restrictions on when its 23,000 scientists may speak publicly and has given power to some department managers to block publication of peer-reviewed research. It has closed or “consolidated” scientific libraries, sometimes thoughtlessly destroying invaluable collections in the process. And it has slashed funding for basic research, shifting allocations to applied research with potential payoffs for private companies.

With a deft Orwellian touch, Canada’s national health agency even accused a doctor in Alberta, John O’Connor, of professional misconduct — raising “undue alarm” and promoting “a sense of mistrust” in government officials — after he reported in 2006 that an unusually high number of rare, apparently tar-sands-related cancers were showing up among residents of Fort Chipewyan, 150 miles downstream from the tar sands. A government review released in 2009 cautiously supported Dr. O’Connor’s claims, but officials have shown no interest in the residents’ health since then.

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The pressure on environmentalists has been even more intense. Two years ago Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver (who this month became finance minister) declared that some environmentalists “use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest” and “threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.” Canada’s National Energy Board, an ostensibly independent regulatory agency, coordinated with the nation’s intelligence service, police and oil companies to spy on environmentalists. And Canada’s tax-collecting agency recently introduced rigorous audits of at least seven prominent environmental groups, diverting the groups’ already strained resources from anti-tar-sands activities.
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The government could defuse much tar sands opposition simply by advocating a more measured approach to its development, using the proceeds to head the country away from fossil fuels and toward a low-carbon, renewables-based future. That, in fact, was the policy recommended by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, a nonpartisan, eminently moderate independent research group founded by another right-leaning prime minister, Brian Mulroney, in 1988. The Harper government showed what it thought of the policy when it disbanded the Round Table last year.

- Finally, Peter Loewen is the latest to weigh in against the Unfair Elections Act, with a particular focus on the many types of voters who will be disenfranchised for nothing even faintly approaching a valid reason. And Democracy Watch has some ideas as to how to change our electoral rules for the better - which are well worth some discussion even if they may not all be workable in practice.

A wide open field

Others have already weighed in on Quebec's election results. But let's note that for all the drama of an election where it was an open question whether voters could stomach any of the three main contenders, the outcome may set the stage for sweeping changes in the fairly near future.

I've already pointed out an apparent opening for a Quebec NDP to win over a large number of voters. And last night's results could hardly have been better designed for the NDP join the mix in the next election cycle - even if they figure to produce some negative outcomes in the short term.

For at least the next couple of years, the right looks to be in the driver's seat in Quebec. The CAQ, holding a solid balance of power, will be able to control the agenda of the governing PQ. And I wouldn't be surprised to see links develop between the CAQ and the Harper Cons to make sure that any devolution of power happens only on the Cons' terms.

But if Quebec's political direction is going to be based on the common ground available between the CAQ, Cons and PQ, that figures to raise questions for a large number of voters who voted PQ based on its (however questionable) self-identification as a progressive party. And while an impending leadership race might offer an opportunity for the Libs to move into that void, it's doubtful that they can erase the memory of their most recent government within a single minority term.

Meanwhile, last night's results don't signal any huge growth potential among Quebec's smaller parties either. Quebec Solidaire added only a single extra seat to its total and fell far short of the balance of power in an election where "none of the above" options looked to have every chance of breaking through. And Option Nationale couldn't manage even that much.

So the progressive vacuum may be even more conspicuous by the next Quebec election than it is now. And a well-organized NDP should be in an ideal position to win over the same types of voters who have become staunch supporters federally.

Of course, the one catch is that a minority government means that the NDP - like all other parties - will have to be ready for an election at any moment, rather than being able to build over a period of several years. But the uncertainty of a minority government may also present some opportunities. While the parties actually represented in the Assemblee Nationale will find themselves trapped in will-they-or-won't-they confidence vote speculation, there may be all the more room for a strong new option to sidestep the fray by echoing the message of cooperation that worked so well for Jack Layton.

In sum, both last night's general "meh" toward Quebec's existing policies and the minority government that resulted may serve to set up ideal conditions for the emergence of a progressive federalist party. And it only remains to be seen whether the NDP can make its entrance in time for the next election.

Update: Margo McDiarmid reports that Tom Mulcair is instead suggesting it's unlikely a provincial party will materialize before 2015 - which looks like a significant missed opportunity to build the NDP at both levels of government if it proves correct.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- While a misleading "wealth equals health" headline seems to have been the main take-away from the CMA's health polling, Iglika Ivanova frames the issue more accurately in pointing out that the non-wealth determinants of health are the areas where Canada has far more room for improvement:

(L)ifestyle choices are a relatively small factor in shaping health outcomes, much less important than our living and working conditions. In fact, living and working conditions often constrain our choices to a very large extent. The health research is very clear (p. ix):

“Chronic disease can no longer be explained only as an outcome based on engaging in the ‘wrong’ health behaviours. There is a need to look beyond individual responsibility to understand the ways in which the social environment shapes the decisions we make and the behaviours we engage in.”

In other words, the income-related health inequalities the CMA report documents represent unfair and avoidable ill health, and it causes enormous human suffering, costs years of the life of our fellow citizens. As one of the Canadian members of the World Health Organization Commission on Social Determinants of Health, Monique Bégin points out:

The truth is that Canada – the ninth richest country in the world – is so wealthy that it manages to mask the reality of poverty, social exclusion and discrimination, the erosion of employment quality, its adverse mental health outcomes, and youth suicides. While one of the world’s biggest spenders in health care, we have one of the worst records in providing an effective social safety net. What good does it do to treat people’s illnesses, to then send them back to the conditions that made them sick?

This is a national embarrassment and we all have a responsibility to ensure that every Canadian has the opportunity to lead a healthy life.

- And fortunately, the CMA's new president recognizes the distinction:

“We need equitable distribution of health care resources and services so that – within reasonable restrictions such as geography and population [density] – everyone has equal access to important health-care services,” Dr. Reid said.

Beyond pushing for universal access to essential medical care, she said she will use the CMA presidency to raise awareness about the role of the socio-economic determinants of health, and the need to focus on marginalized groups like aboriginal people, those with mental illness and the isolated elderly.

“That’s a huge passion of mine,” she said. “I see the impact of social determinants every day in my work.”

- Carol Goar reviews Joseph Stiglitz' The Price of Inequality,  including this optimistic set of future outcomes:

Looking ahead, the economist sees two possible scenarios.

One is that the mega-rich 1 per cent of the population will realize it is in their own interest to reverse today’s extreme polarization of income. No one benefits from a less productive, less dynamic and less efficient economy.

The other is that the 99 per cent will realize they’ve been sold a bill of goods by their leaders and demand change in ways governments, political parties and employers cannot brush off.

People intuitively get it, he says. They just have to muster the political will to act.

- But then, some people are going out of their way to avoid noticing the corrosive effects of inequality - with Benjamin Hale coining the phrase "veil of opulence" to describe the mindset shared by the Republicans south of the border (among other right-wing parties around the world).

- Finally, Adam Kovac wonders whether we'll see a provincial NDP develop in Quebec. And I'd have to see the prospect as far more likely now than at the start of the current election campaign, as Quebec Solidaire's gleefully hard line on sovereignty strikes me as likely to severely limit the growth potential for the main party which would otherwise have a chance to fill a left-wing vacuum.

On wedges

Greg offers up an important response to the Cons' initial line of attack on Brian Topp. But let's also note how the latest barrage fits into the Cons' broader strategy in taking on the NDP.

Remember what happened as part of the silly season of summer, when the Cons joined the Libs in trying to slam Nycole Turmel and the NDP for even the slightest perceived connection to the sovereigntist movement. After it became clear that the media wasn't about to give either of the other parties a pass on their own links to the Bloc, the Cons and their apologists came up with another position: that past involvement in the Bloc and PQ were just fine, but that Turmel and the NDP should be uniquely condemned for their links to the left-wing values of Quebec Solidaire. Which should offer a rather compelling signal that the issue was never sovereigntism, but instead an effort to prevent the NDP from daring to associate with the activists who would naturally form crucial parts of its base.

Similarly, the attack on Topp looks to be calculated less at the man than at the principle of trying to drive a wedge between the NDP and the labour base - which is even more essential to the NDP's work to build a national movement. And the right response for Topp and the rest of the leadership candidates alike is to point out the importance of bringing people together, rather than allowing the spin to push the NDP and its core constituencies apart.

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Martin Patriquin offers up the definitive response to the pearl-clutching over Nycole Turmel's Bloc membership (italics in original, bold added):

(H)ere’s the wee nuance that seems lost on the rest of the county, and one that is particularly important in the case of Turmel: the members of (sovereigntist) parties, whether they are on the left or the right, endorse this supposedly bedrock belief to varying degrees. The Bloc is/was made up of people like Jean Dorion, former president of the endlessly entertaining Société St Jean Baptiste; it’s also the former home of Jean Lapierre, who after co-founding the sovereignist party went on to be a cabinet minister in Paul Martin’s “home of the Clarity Act” Liberal government. Many, many members of the Bloc, along with the Parti Québécois and Québec Solidaire, are happy to live with Quebec’s current status as a province within a larger country. It’s a fact that vexes hardcore sovereignists and federalists alike.

And let’s have a look at Nycole Turmel’s record, shall we? First off, she was a member of the Bloc since 2006, long after BQ leader Gilles Duceppe had transitioned the Bloc from its original sovereigntist shock troop status to a hazy lefty bastion that, while ostensibly sovereignist in message, was more concerned with “defending Quebec’s interests in Ottawa.” Exhibit two: Turmel was member not of Parti Québécois—which is decidedly less whimsical on the issue of Quebec separation—but of Québec Solidaire, a left-first party whose own co-leader told me last year that “we are caught in the prison of the national question.”

Finally, and it’s amazing how few people have clued into this headsmackingly obvious point, but Turmel willingly ripped up her Bloc Québécois membership card to run for a dyed-in-orange federalist party. That alone should be evidence enough that her sovereignist credentials weren’t quite Parizeau-calibre. If anything, Turmel’s (temporary) ascension to the head of the party, like the NDP’s overwhelming victory in May, is proof positive that detaching the left from the sovereignist movement isn’t as impossible as it once was. How far we’ve come.

- Bill Tieleman points out that Canadians are poorer than they think by comparing soaring utility costs to stagnant wages.

- No, it's not news that right-wingers see deficits as an excuse to slash public services rather than having any actual interest in addressing them. But a reminder can never hurt.

- Nor is it particularly surprising that they're fully dedicated to ramping up a needless security state, and that cost evaluations and public consultations are no object in the effort.

- Finally, it's well worth joining the effort to share what looks to have been one of the few redeeming stories to come out of Anders Behrin Breivik's anti-left and anti-Muslim rampage.

Well said

Quebec Solidaire's Amir Khadir nicely compares the style of politics that's worked remarkably well for him with what we've become all too accustomed-to elsewhere:

How does a radical agitator like you end up being the most popular member of the most establishment of Quebec institutions? One pundit even pronounced you “rookie legislator of the year.”

Well, it was actually quite easy. There is a very cynical political culture that has been entrenched for a long time, and it’s (sic) most pure incarnation can be found in the Harper government. It’s a culture that incorporates and demands low blows, lies as modus operandi and offers mealy-mouthed evasion when one wants to avoid the lie. Just by avoiding that trap, by giving myself the freedom to speak, which most people don’t have, by acting out of a little good faith and sincerity, I look like something unusual. It seems to me it should be the norm.

A look at the ledger

Since Scott has largely pegged my reaction to the Cons' budget, I'll shift to relatively-neutral observer mode to examine who stands to win and lose politically as a result:

Winners: Quebec Solidaire, Quebec Greens
All three main Quebec parties spent today rushing to support the budget - and none figures to have won any great advantage by doing so. But the door seems to be wide open to any of the upstart parties which takes the opportunity to pursue an anti-Ottawa strategy.

Loser: Bloc Quebecois
I'll have to admit to start off that I've always had trouble seeing what the Bloc brought to the table to justify its number of seats. But after giving a pass to two consecutive Con budgets, it seems the Bloc is lowering the bar even further: not only is it structurally unable to form government to implement policy of its own, it isn't even making any real effort to influence the policy of the parties who do hold power.

Mind you, there is one caveat. If by some chance the PQ pulls out a majority government, then the Bloc will presumably find a renewed focus in the possibility of another referendum. But if not, then having endorsed the Cons' federal/provincial funding platform and with no more opportunity to campaign in opposition to Lib scandals, it's hard to see what useful purpose the Bloc could serve going forward. Which means that Duceppe's acceptance of the budget may well operate as the Bloc's death knell.

Winner: Lorne Calvert
The Saskatchewan NDP gets somewhat more money to work with, yet also gets to continue rightly slamming the Harper government (and its Sask Party proxies) for a broken equalization promise. While it would have been better for the province generally for the Cons to have kept up their side of the bargain (except to the extent that might have helped the Sask Party), the result couldn't have been much better for a government which can get by without the added money.

Loser: The Auto Industry
While the Cons' plan to create incentives toward more-efficient vehicles is a plus in general, it's striking that Flaherty doesn't seem to have any qualms about kicking the automotive industry while it's already down by planning to take in more money through the inefficiency surtax than will be provided in incentives for efficient vehicles. And while I hope the long-term effect will merely be to push the industry toward producing more efficient vehicles more quickly, the effect could be to make the current trouble in the industry last longer and get worse than it would otherwise have to.

Incidentally, this should also serve as a ready-made answer when the Cons try to accuse the Libs' "carbon budget" of being a tax grab, since it's their own auto plan that actually results in at a demonstrable cost to industry (and concurrent benefit to government coffers).

Winner: Astroturf Groups
It may be a subtle change for the Cons to remove the capital gains tax from donations of publicly listed securities to private foundations - and one which looks good on its face. But while some better-meaning people may use this to benefit legitimate charities, it's all too likely that the change will also be used to facilitate additional donations to the right-wing noise machine.

Loser: Public Ownership
It didn't make the headlines, but a full $6 billion of infrastructure spending is targeted toward P3-style gateways and border crossing, and Jim Flaherty's vision of an office dedicated solely to promoting P3s will come to fruition. Of course the winners will be the contractors involved...while the public treasury will be a long-term loser as well.