Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Jean Swanson writes about the success of Vancouver tenants in pushing to limit the rent increases which can be forced on them. But any win for collective action will come attempts to stifle more of the same - and Dan Taekema reports on the move by a landlord in two Hamilton high-rises to wall off the common rooms which had served as gathering places for striking tenants.

- Alex Therrien reports that for the first time since the UK began keeping track, overall life expectancy is stagnating rather than increasing - with some areas seeing decreases. And Lucie Russell and Carl Packman comment on the need for fairness by design to ensure that people living in poverty don't face inflated expenses.

- Douglas Todd discusses the problem of wasted votes as one of the main issues to be solved by a proportional electoral system.

- CBC News reports on the inability of smaller, community-based liquor retailers to compete with large corporate chains due to the selective availability of supplier discounts.

- Finally, Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the pay equity victory achieved by Ontario midwives. But Andre Picard writes that there's still plenty to be done to address pay equity in health care work.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Scott Santens writes about one possible endpoint of the current trend toward precarious employment, being the implementation of a basic income to make sure a job isn't necessary to enable people to do meaningful work. And Common Dreams reports that a strong majority of lower-wage workers support both unions, and political parties and candidates who will allow them to function.

- Harvey Cashore and David Seglins follow up on the multiple connections between the Cons, the Canada Revenue Agency and KPMG even as the latter was under investigation for facilitating offshore tax evasion.

- Joe Friesen breaks the news that Stephen Harper's PMO specifically intervened to stop Syrian refugees from having their claims processed.

- Meanwhile, Harsha Walia and Dana Olwan ask whether the Harper Cons are really going to cling to power through bare racism, while Andrew Coyne notes that the forces at play are more insidious than fear alone. And Rick Mercer sums up what the election campaign is ultimately all about:


- Finally, Jason Childs and Alexander Siebert compare (PDF) the liquor retail distribution systems across Western Canada and find there's little reason to privatize anything other than to push more alcohol into citizens' hands.

New column day

Here, on how the Saskatchewan Party's manipulative consultation designed to push liquor retailing into the private sector only managed to highlight the fact that our current system is working just fine.

For further reading, the consultation materials are here, including the survey results here (PDF). And even though those don't include the thousands of people who expressed their support for keeping liquor public, they indicate little interest in a larger number of retail locations or increased hours of availability - which of course represent the main difference in pursuing a plan aimed at letting private operators open up where and when they see fit.

As a bonus, I mentioned in the column that more than a few comments submitted with the survey called out the slanted nature of the questions. The below is far from exhaustive, but it offers a sampling of how even the people who took the time to engage in the government's process recognized that it was rigged from them outset:

I don't believe that the statement regarding health care and education is accurate, where would they get the resources without having the money from liquor sales. The profit each year that the government makes on liquor sales does go back into those areas. I don't believe that Mr Wall and "his government" will take any notice of what the public wants and will privatize stores because that is what he and "his government" have always wanted. I do not want the government owned stores privatized, if I did I would be living in Alberta!!!
...
This survey has an agenda. It was very, very poorly written if neutrality was the goal. I strongly suspect Sask Party interference in the question formation. It is guiding people to dismiss public liquor stores...

"Increasing the ability for the government to reinvest in other priorities (i.e. health care, roads, education, etc.)"

We PROFIT from these stores. This question implies they are a distraction. You invest in LBS, make profit, spend that on roads etc. Just... this was a disappointing experience. My voice feels unheard because I know it's written to trick people into making certain selections that actively work against their actual beliefs. Just a waste of time the way it's currently written. For shame.
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I feel that our liquor stores are making money,...so the question of [priority] in spending is irrelevant!!
...

When detailing the idea of changing to a private liquor retailer, ensure to show the public how much profit was brought in by the current system and where the money went. For me to save $50 a year on alcohol vs having to increase my taxes due to less revenue is not that important.
...
There is nothing to indicate that the current public liquor stores are inefficient or losing money. The revenues that are earned support the building of roads, hospitals, and social services; it's important to share the risks of going to a private system with the public and the potential for increased taxes in order to fund those foundational community pieces. The issue of public liquor stores is a red herring; we need to focus on building a better province that has a sustainable future tax base. Our growth should be planned, sustained and something that we can count on...this issue is a kneejerk response to a non-existent problem.
...
I found this survey very biased towards private liquor stores. If you are going to ask for our opinions there should not be so many loaded questions. A few of the questions felt like i could not give an answer that was appropriate to my views.

On misappropriation

Shorter Don McMorris:

You might think that a publicly administered and funded consultation process would be intended to inform provincial public policy decisions, and that partisan platform development should be funded by a political party instead. But let me assure you that Brad Wall's government has no such scruples.

On sucker's deals

Shorter Brad Wall:

But what you less-sophisticated, not-so-business-savvy people don't understand is this: when you pawn the furniture, you get CASH MONEY UP FRONT. How can that be anything but a great deal?

Update: On further reflection, this calls for a photoshop:

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Pat Atkinson discusses the need to make sure that Saskatchewan's boom-time spending actually sets us up for long-term prosperity, rather than fiscal disaster:

Even though the OECD report, the burgeoning federal government deficit, China's economic slowdown and America's political deadlock all advise us that now is the time for caution, the Wall government is trapped. Its political image is completely dependent upon constant economic growth or the appearance of it.

It is so cemented in its own message of a New Saskatchewan, that any deviation from it is unlikely.

From its first day in office, the Sask. Party oversold its product and cannot now risk voter wrath if the public is suddenly (and unexpectedly) informed of the government's deteriorating fiscal climate.

It is time our government started planning for tougher times, if only for the simple reason to err on the side of caution.

The Wall government and Krawetz seem equipped to ride the wave, but are ill-prepared to manage in challenging times. When the government starts believing its own hype, we're all in trouble.

- Meanwhile, Barbara Yaffe highlights the absurdity of the Harper Cons raiding tens of millions of public dollars for War of 1812 jingoism while cutting desperately-needed public programs.

- Trish Hennessy notes that Tim Hudak's ideological drive to privatize liquor sales in Ontario isn't based on any reason to think the province will do anything but lose out in the process. And of course, the same applies here in Saskatchewan.

- Finally, while Jason Warick's report on the disturbingly cozy relationship between the uranium industry and the community of Pinehouse has received some attention, this looks to me to be the most worrisome aspect of how future interests are being sold out for a modest amount of immediate funding:

Highlights of the draft agreement between Pinehouse, Cameco Corp. and Areva:

Pinehouse agrees to not make any future financial requests or claims against the companies.

Now, normally restrictions on future liability are treated with skepticism by the courts, and I'd hope this particular one would be limited to the types of claims or requests already involved in the agreement. But how short-sighted would an agreement look if it managed to get a mining operation off the hook for a future nuclear disaster?

New column day

Here, following up on this post as to the public returns Saskatchewan stands to lose if Brad Wall insists on giving away liquor profits to private operators rather than working within the proven SLGA retail model.

A few footnotes to the columns...
- The previous post applied SLGA's estimates rather than its actual data in estimating the percentage of sales that go to the wholesale cost of SLGA products. But the actual values for 2011 ($282,428,000/$571,844,000 * 100%) produce exactly the same 49.4% number.
- More importantly, the capital costs referred to as an up-front investment in my earlier post are actually included in existing store expenses - meaning that it's not clear that the cost of building or renting new facilities would actually represent any increase whatsoever in the relative capital cost of operating SLGA stores.
- Finally, the normal net profits for retail sales are drawn from here.

As for what Brad Wall in fact intends to accomplish by privatizing public services, we can draw a strong hint from the concurrent debate over the Information Services Corporation:

McMorris said that although a privatized ISC wouldn't pay profits directly back to the government, it could be a "success story for Saskatchewan."

Never mind that any such story will be utter fiction to the extent it pretends that commercial success arising out of public enterprises reflects the corporate owners who take the resulting profits rather than the civil servants who built successful operations in the first place.

Instead, the more important concern is that the Sask Party wants to separate financial success from any associated "story" - and hand the former over to the corporate sector while leaving the rest of Saskatchewan to tell tall tales as consolation.

Leadership 2013 Roundup

With a couple of weeks' worth of developments to address, I'll take a slightly higher-level look at the Saskatchewan NDP leadership race than I normally do. (And for those worried about missing out, note that we should have an opportunity to revisit new issues in detail as the debate schedule gets underway this weekend.)

Most significantly, Trent Wotherspoon released three new policy statements, covering the environment, health and the economy. Most of Wotherspoon's proposals can be safely classified as safe but effective statements of non-controversial policy within the NDP, but his small business tax proposals sets up what may be the first stark policy contrast of the campaign: where Erin Weir has suggested that corporate tax rates should be applied to more small business income in order to leave room for incentives for investment and hiring, Wotherspoon's economic plan proposes to eliminate corporate taxes altogether on earnings up to $100,000.

Weir also introduced his labour policy - which goes beyond restoring the law as it stood prior to the Saskatchewan Party's attacks on workers, but also includes additional steps to ensure that collective bargaining achieves fair results with a minimal amount of disruption:

He is calling for Saskatchewan to adopt legislation enabling either management or the union to apply for binding interest arbitration to resolve strikes or lock-outs that last more than 90 days. Such legislation has proven effective in Manitoba since it was enacted in 2004.
...
“Prohibiting replacement workers during legal strikes and lock-outs would also make these disputes less acrimonious,” said Weir. “Such anti-scab legislation would ensure that employers have an incentive to bargain in good faith rather than using replacements for 90 days until they can request arbitration.”
...
Weir would implement a construction tendering policy to prevent contractors from undercutting wages negotiated through the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council.

Weir also pointed out a spike in self-employment at the same time that actual jobs were lost in Saskatchewan - which at the very least raises serious questions as to whether the Sask Party is ensuring that a temporary boom provides as little security as possible for workers.

Ryan Meili responded to the Sask Party's liquor privatization plans with a focus on the social nature of problems caused by alcohol abuse (as found by the Parkland Institute and CCPA):

A couple of important points to keep in mind when weighing the government's recent actions:

Privatizing liquor sales leads to higher levels of alcohol consumption, which brings with it a host of social costs while increasing the burden on the health care and justice systems. Alberta, which became the first Canadian jurisdiction to privatize liquor sales in 1993, has the highest per-capita liquor consumption, while B.C., which began introducing private liquor stores in 2003, has higher-than-average consumption rates.

Private liquor stores replace quality, full-time jobs with low-paying, part-time jobs. "The studies agree there are more workers in liquor retail [in Alberta post-privatization], but they work fewer hours, have fewer benefits, and lower salaries than did Alberta government workers. So workers, by and large, are not better off."

Finally, Cam Broten offered his response to Scott's candidate questionnaire. And it's particularly interesting to contrast Broten's immediate priorities (which revolve entirely around party-building) against the policy issues he'd plan to tackle upon winning government. That hints at a noteworthy commitment to public engagement for its own sake on the path toward government - but may also provide fodder for the other candidates to question whether meaningful party-building is possible without highlighting issues as rallying points.

Down the drain

There's rightly been plenty of debate over the Sask Party's recently-announced plan to decree that all future liquor stores in Saskatchewan will be privately-owned. But there looks to me to be room to take a closer look at exactly what Brad Wall is determined to give away - so let's take a back-of-the-envelope look at the profits we can expect to lose due to the gratuitous privatization of new liquor stores. (Numbers are from the SLGA Annual Report for 2012 (PDF).)

SLGA's liquor sales to the public (as opposed to sales to its franchisees) totalled $351,808.000 in 2011 (p. 45). Dividing that by the existing 51 stores, the effective sales per store are roughly $4,453,269.

The cost of liquor was roughly 49.4% of the subsequent sales price ($271,173,000/$549,454,000, from p. 26; I didn't see these numbers broken down by retail vs. franchise), while the cost of store operation was 11.9% of sales: p. 17.

That means that costs added up to 61.3% of the value of SLGA's retail sales. In turn 38.7% of the price of liquor from SLGA stores was pure profit for the people of Saskatchewan. And based on the per-store sales (which I'll generously assume wouldn't be any higher in booming areas than the average), for each store put in private hands rather than public ones, the province will lose out on $1,723,415 per year.

Of course, there would be a capital cost up front to build each store. But even allowing for rather generous building costs, the new stores would figure to pay for themselves within a few years - then produce returns many times over in the years to come.

And likewise, any residual income to the province from corporate taxes on private sales would figure to be dwarfed by the ample return SLGA is currently getting on its investment in retail stores.

Unfortunately, the Wall Saskatchewan Party isn't interested in the return to the province if it can find an excuse to shovel money into the private sector. And the province as a whole stands to lose tens of millions of dollars based on this ideological exercise alone.

[Edit: Fixed typo, wording.]

On conflicts of interest

The big story in Saskatchewan politics over the past week was the revelation that Justice Minister Don Morgan owned hotels for which he was responsible as minister for the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority, followed by his resignation from the SLGA post. But while the talk this week has mostly revolved around the unique situation of a minister directly regulating his own private activities (which is apparently a step further than even the Wall government would defend in light of a statutory prohibition), it's worth keeping in mind that the general principle of having obviously-interested parties develop provincial plans and rules for their own industries is one that fits far too well with the Sask Party's style of government.

From paying the nuclear industry millions of dollars to produce a policy wish-list to paying a corporate-friendly group to make key decisions about the potash sector, from creating an overarching agency charged with allowing the private sector to write the province's laws to putting industry groups in charge of enforcement, the Wall government has consistently shown that it sees absolutely no problem putting public functions in the hands of big business. Which in turn has the effect of favouring not only the well-being of the corporate sector over that of the public, but also private actors on the Sask Party's list of donors and connections over anybody who doesn't get hand-picked to write their own rules.

Based on that general philosophy, it's not surprising that Morgan being placed in charge of administering his own corporation's liquor and gaming licenses wouldn't raise any red flags within the Sask Party's circles. But Morgan's resignation still leaves far too much of Saskatchewan's decision-making in the hands of parties who have every interest in directing our public resources toward their own financial benefit - and there's no prospect of that changing as long as the Wall government remains in power.