Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Robert Reich suggests that government should respond to corporations who engage in anti-social activity such as moving their earnings offshore by making sure they can't simultaneously take advantage of laws torqued in their favour. And Daniel Tencer reports on the $12.5 billion bonus pool being doled out by Canada's financial sector even as it cuts front-line jobs.

- Patrick Maze discusses the importance of investing in education as preventative medicine as well as a form of economic development:

If we agree that preventing an ailment is easier than curing it, and that being proactive is better than being reactive, then we should insist that our governments also apply this in policy development. At some point we need to flip our thinking, and our actions, from responding reactively to social needs and challenges, to working toward a vision of what we want for our future society. We should commit resources to support that vision appropriately, and faithfully.

Education is a key factor in the health of both individuals and communities. Many researchers have studied the causal relationships between the level of our citizens' education, and their requirements for societal supports like health care, social services and justice. They've found that as the education levels of a society increases, access to those supports all decrease.
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When we combine these savings in health care and justice, and consider that more educated populations are also less reliant on social supports, it seems like such an easy decision to prioritize education as an investment in the health of our citizens, communities and our economy. The funding trends we have now are simply unsustainable, and at some point we'll be forced to look to sustainable alternatives. Shouldn't we want our government to be proactive, rather than reactive, when we try to take that approach with our own lives?

Let's consider a collective vision for our future. Let's plan proactively to prevent problems, instead of just reacting to new ones as they arise. Let's challenge our leaders to develop policy that addresses root-causes of the issues we care about, instead of relying on expensive treatment options like justice, social services and health care. If we flip our thinking, priorities and actions, we'll recognize that investing in the education of our children is far more cost-effective and sustainable.

- Meanwhile, Lawrence Carter and Maeve McClenaghan expose how climate denialists for hire are using their academic credentials to produce reports to fit the requests of secret corporate sponsors.

- Charles Mandel talks to Stephen Lewis about the need for Canada's new climate change talk to b backed by policy.

- Finally, Adam Dodek points out that there's reason for concern that the Trudeau Libs will back away from their promises on democratic reform. And Dave Meslin makes the case for a proportional electoral system - with particular emphasis on why the ranking and runoff systems which may be appropriate in non-partisan contexts are ill-suited to federal politics.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Daniel Tencer reports on a couple of important recent warnings that Canada is in danger of following the U.S. down the path of extreme corporatism and inequality:

Speaking at a fundraiser for the left-leaning Broadbent Institute, Reich said Canada is facing the same inequality-growing “structural problems” that the rest of the developed world is facing. Those two structural problems are globalization and automation, he said.

He noted that businesses in the digital era require far fewer employees, citing the example of WhatsApp, the messaging app bought by Facebook. At the time it was purchased for $19 billion, it had 450 million users and just 55 employees.

“This is the new economy,” Reich said.

A new report from TD Bank cites the same two factors as being causes of growing inequality, but also notes that Canada used to do a better job of equalization through taxation.

“Although Canadians take pride in the country’s more equitable outcomes [than the U.S.], Canada does less income redistribution than many think. Canada’s ranking on income equality falls from 9th place in the OECD on the basis of [income before taxes] to 19th place on the basis of after-tax and transfer income.”

- Meanwhile, Tim Harper follows up on Stephen Lewis' blistering criticism of the state of Canadian politics under the Harper Cons. And they've only added to the list of jaw-droppingly callous actions lately by refusing consent on the NDP's renewed motion to end child poverty, as well as by voting against a UN motion against glorifying Nazism and neo-Nazism.

- Barrie McKenna finds that the Cons' own supposed priorities are once again all spin and no action, as a much-ballyhooed manufacturing fund has funded exactly zero projects since it was introduced a year and a half ago.

- Diane Cardwell reports on the falling cost of solar and wind energy, as renewables have reached a price level similar to that of dirty fossil fuels. And Geoff Dembick reports on Unifor's work in highlighting the fact that environmentally responsible development and good jobs are entirely compatible goals.

- Finally, Paul Rosenberg interviews George Lakoff about the lessons progressives still need to learn in framing public policy debates.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

 - Lynn Stuart Parramore writes about our increasingly traumatic social and political culture, along with the response which can help to overcome it:

A 2012 study of hospital patients in Atlanta’s inner-city communities showed that rates of post-traumatic stress are now on par with those of veterans returning from war zones. At least 1 out of 3 surveyed said they had experienced stress responses like flashbacks, persistent fear, a sense of alienation, and aggressive behavior. All across the country, in Detroit, New Orleans, and in what historian Louis Ferleger describes as economic “dead zones” — places where people have simply given up and sunk into “involuntary idleness” — the pain is written on slumped bodies and faces that have become masks of despair.

We are starting to break down.

When our alarm systems are set off too often, they start to malfunction, and we can end up in a state of hyper-vigilance, unable to properly assess the threats. It’s easy for the powerful to manipulate this tense condition and present an array of bogeymen to distract our attention, from immigrants to the unemployed, so that we focus our energy on the wrong enemy.
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Unfortunately, the cycle doesn’t end with you: trauma comes with a very high rate of interest. The children of traumatized people carry the legacy of pain forward in their brains and bodies, becoming more vulnerable to disease, mental breakdown, addiction, and violence. Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, an expert on trauma, emphasizes that it’s not just personal. Trauma occupies a space much bigger than our individual neurons: it’s political. If your parents lost their jobs, their home or their sense of security in the wake of the financial crisis, you will carry those wounds with you, even if conditions improve. Budget cuts to education and the social safety net produce trauma. Falling income produces trauma. Job insecurity produces trauma.
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When I do something as simple as nurture a friend in need, or let myself be drawn in by an artistic creation, or meet the eyes of a stranger with kindness, or plant a living tree, I’m intervening in the trauma and rewriting its trajectory — perhaps only a paragraph, but many paragraphs can make a page, and many pages, a volume.

The etymology of the word “trauma” is associated with the Greek word “wound.” To be human is to be wounded, and the ability to cope with our wounds is the essence of life’s journey. Without wounds, we can’t know our own strength and competence, and we can’t develop empathy for our fellow creatures. Moving from the static place of trauma to something fluid and transformative is the key. The trauma doesn’t go away, but it’s possible to bring it along in a way that helps us witness each other, hear each other, and help each other.

- And Monica Pohlmann interviews Armine Yalnizyan about the need to move past self-defeating policies:

Pohlmann: What keeps you up at night?

Yalnizyan: The way we are transforming our views about immigration in Canada. In the coming decades, nation states will be competing to attract people, not just capital. Population aging is occurring in all advanced industrialized nations. Without newcomers, the Canadian labour force would start to shrink in the next year or two. An unsettling trend has emerged in Canada. Public policy now favours a rise in temporary foreign workers over permanent economic immigrants. When companies say they face a skills shortage, all too often the solution is bringing in a foreign worker temporarily for what is often not a temporary shortage. These workers are tied to their employer, and can get deported if they complain about anything.

In such a workplace environment, it’s hard for any worker to ask for anything better. People are constantly looking over their shoulder, wondering, “Will they find a cheaper me?” It’s a recipe for growing friction between “us” and “them.”

The problem arises from a common view that low wages and low taxes are “good for business.” What may be good for an individual business is a dead-end path for society and the economy as a whole. Wages and taxes are never low enough for businesses. Their job is to maximize profits. But the continuous drive to lower wages and taxes erodes the economic heft of a country. The message to workers is “expect less,” even when companies grow and profits rise. The idea that labour is simply a cost, rather than the essential building block of performance, is destructive nonsense.

Middle-class jobs are being cut, replaced by more low-paid and some higher-paid work. Wages aren’t keeping up with costs for most people, and savings rates are falling. A rising proportion of Canadian households don’t have enough funds to last a month should they lose their pay cheques. We pay tribute to a large and resilient middle class as the mark of a flourishing economy around the world, but our own middle class is being squeezed in every way, ironically in the name of economic growth.

- In a similar vein, Robert Reich reminds us where jobs and economic development come from - and that funneling ever more wealth to the privileged few does nothing to help:



- Alison examines the "rejectionist" model of politics which has done plenty to eliminate the belief that it's possible to accomplish anything positive through our elected governments. And Jim Day discusses Stephen Lewis' sharp - but entirely justified - criticism of Canada's social breakdown.

- Finally, Carol Linnitt examines the Burnaby Mountain pipeline protest as an all-too-clear example of petro-politics taking precedence over all else.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Jonas Fossli Gherso discusses the unfortunate (and unnecessary) acceptance of burgeoning inequality even by the people who suffer most from its presence. And Ryan Meili interviews Gabor Mate about the ill health effects of an economic system designed to keep people under stress:

(T)he very nature of the system in which people live their lives is a significant source of illness. Now there are obvious factors like environmental pollution, toxins, and then of course there are the social determinants of health that you write about in A Healthy Society: the impact of poverty, the impact of inequality, the impact of history and continued racism. There’s an article in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix today about sentencing practices in the courts of Saskatchewan. People who are identified as Aboriginal are likely to get double the sentences of people who are not identified as Aboriginal. That’s going to have a health impact.

But I’m going to go beyond even that and say that even the people who are not on the wrong end of economic inequality or systemic racism are still made ill just by how we live our lives. The stress that we live under, the competition, the aggressiveness, the uncertainty, the loss of control that we experience in our lives. The gender inequalities, these are not just social phenomena, they have an actual impact on community health. The isolation people are experiencing.

- Meanwhile, Charles Smith points out how young workers are losing out as a result of policy choices designed to maximize employer leverage at their expense:

Canadian young people are among the most educated in the world. According to the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development, in 2014 Canada had the highest percentage of university or college trained population in the world. Recognizing that, Statistics Canada reported in 2010 that most OECD countries were more successful than Canada in employing individuals with university or college education.

In other words, the problem with finding full and meaningful employment is not necessarily a problem with individual young people, but a broader problem of government and private sector employers.
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Outside the classroom, students are demanding social change, pushing our organizations in new and exciting directions, challenging traditional pedagogy, and creating a new generation of community and ecological awareness.

At the University of Saskatchewan, young women are challenging traditional forms of power by creating new organizations and demanding justice in public and private life. Indigenous students are reclaiming space and demanding greater access to opportunities long denied to them.

All of this suggests that today's students are multi-talented, skilled and ready to lead. It is time that government and private employers recognized this by promoting an industrial policy designed to create meaningful full employment.

- Alan Kors reports on Stephen Lewis' advice in advocating for child care as a public good, not a benefit limited to those who immediately find spaces. And Jeffrey Simpson highlights how much work there is to be done in fixing a tax system built around the Cons' trinkets and baubles.

- Finally, Michael Den Tandt recognizes that the Cons' interest in Canadian troops goes no further than using them in photo ops. And Michael Harris notes that a direct clash between the Cons and the veterans they've left behind may make for an important piece of Canada's next election campaign.

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Thomas Walkom discusses what the Cons' attack on unions through bill C-377 is ultimately designed to do:

Finance department figures show that the tax exemption for union and professional dues does indeed cost the federal treasury $795 million in lost revenue annually. How much is attributed to unionists and how much to others unaffected by this bill, such as doctors and lawyers, is not stated.

But the same figures show plenty of other revenue losses attributable to tax breaks. High rollers paid in stock options cost the treasury $725 million. Those claiming capital gains deductions cost $3.7 billion. So-called carrying-cost deductions reduce federal revenues by $1 billion.

Yet neither Hiebert nor any other Conservative is demanding a public accounting of how these taxpayer-subsidized moneys are spent.

Why focus on unions?...

The point of Hiebert’s bill is not just to strangle unions and their locals with red tape. Nor is it simply to limit their political activity. Beyond all of this, as REAL Women acknowledged, is compulsory check-off.

The unstated aim of this bill is to provide ammunition to politicians, like Ontario Tory Leader Tim Hudak, who would scrap the Rand formula and introduce U.S.-style right-to-work laws designed to sap unions.

- But Priya Sarin notes that the right's reactionary moves to attack labour rights through legislation can be answered at least in part by successful court challenges.

- Meanwhile, the latest in Con cartoon villainy saw the governing party vote down a bill to make drugs available to the developing world at no cost to the public - when even big pharma didn't have any concern with the bill. Which leads to Stephen Lewis' well-deserved response:

“It’s that they just don’t want to be seen to be supporting generics when they are spending so much time negotiating extended protection for pharmaceutical patents,” said Mr. Lewis. “So in the great choice in life, they have chosen patent protection over the lives of children. And that’s about as perfidious as you can get as a government.”

 - Which is particularly noteworthy since, as Andrew Coyne points out, drug patent giveaways look to be the biggest problem with the CETA in the form the Cons have chosen to develop it:

I said earlier the concessions we are asked to make at the negotiating table are “almost always” not concessions at all. But there is one exception that comes to mind: Europe’s demand that Canada accept longer patent protection for the pharmaceutical sector. That would make drugs more expensive in this country, at much cost to provincial drug plans. It might be worth standing firm on this one, then, or at least using it to extract concessions from the Europeans.

So it’s fascinating to learn the government’s actual strategy. “The leaked EU memo says Ottawa [is] preparing to at least partially concede on drug patents,” CP reports, “in order to protect supply management.”

- Finally, the CCPA has released an Environics poll showing broad-based support for upper-income and corporate tax increases, as well as significant public willingness to pay more personally in order to support a wide range of social priorities.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Aaron Wherry takes a look at how the NDP caucus has responded to Jack Layton's death and the resulting outpouring of public sympathy:

After Jack Layton had departed Parliament Hill for the final time last week, his flag-draped casket loaded into a waiting hearse and driven away as a large crowd applauded, those NDP MPs who had gathered to see him off fanned out to greet and thank the well-wishers and mourners. “What I kept on saying to people over and over again,” says Libby Davies, one of Layton’s two deputy leaders, “without even thinking, it was just instinct, was, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to keep working.’ ”

While they mourned their leader, New Democrats could hardly ignore the many questions left in his absence: about their viability, direction and meaning as a party without the man who seemed to define them. But if, in the wake of Layton’s passing, there was a certain fear for the future of the NDP—raised by any number of pundits who now deem the party doomed—New Democrats themselves claim only resolve.
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A sense of solidarity was already said to have taken hold amid the June filibuster that delayed passage of back-to-work legislation for Canada Post employees. The loss of their leader and inspiration is now said to have united the caucus all the more. “When you go through a tragedy like this—it’s that old saying, ‘What doesn’t kill you is going to make you stronger,’ ” says Comartin. And in this case, there is, strengthening that resolve, a clear sense of responsibility. “Every single caucus member that I’ve spoken to, there’s the same absolute, resolute feeling that we are united, that we’re together, that we have to carry on Jack’s work,” says Davies.

When it came time for McGrath to sign one of the books of condolences for her departed boss—a man she had spoken to nearly every day for the last three years—she chose to put her commitment in writing. “I love you, I miss you, I know what you want from us,” she wrote, “and we’re going to do it, you can count on us.”

- And Linda McQuaig notes that Stephen Lewis' eulogy has resonated well beyond the NDP's caucus and membership:

Allowing Layton a state funeral was probably Stephen Harper's most generous prime ministerial act. But it led to a nationally televised scene that will likely haunt him and surely inspire progressives for years to come: Stephen Lewis, the iconic elder statesman of Canada's social democratic movement, standing in front of Canada's most right-wing prime minister ever, speaking truth to power.

Determined that the event be more than just a tribute to the goodness of one man, Lewis used the heft of the occasion, as Layton would have wanted, to drive home Layton's social democratic vision for the country.

With the Conservatives' new hammerlock on power — accomplished with a mere 40 per cent of the national vote — here at least was one joyous moment in which we could watch the country's most powerful orator confront a prime minister who had no choice but to stand every time the rest of the room rose in rapturous pleasure at Lewis's inspiring call for a more equal and generous Canada.

- Meanwhile, Erika Shaker theorizes as to the source of the Cons' constant rage:

I think the rage comes from a place of fear. I think the Conservative bunker mentality requires their constant vigilance to squash anything that vaguely resembles a differing point of view, or even a reminder that although the election is over, the opposition is not going away. Because when that opposition is coherent, passionate, and persuasive, and is accompanied by action…that’s when things get scary. Particularly when those unpredictable youth are involved.

And when political awareness and action is an ongoing process rather than the equivalent of something that resembles a cross between Groundhog Day and Leap Year (you know, when Canadians crawl out of their houses once every four years, haul themselves down to the polls to do their civic duty, then return home to shake their collective heads about how the old boss looks an awful lot like the new boss…but hey, whatareyagonnado?); when those whose sense of order relies on low voter turnout and an uninformed electorate realize that, for a lot of people, democracy is a way of life and not just a spectator sport….then it’s time to panic.
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(Layton's) vision as he articulated it was powerful; it resonated because it felt authentic, and because it was expressed authentically. His closing sentence has already become a mantra because it speaks to a vision of Canada, a way of life, and a set of priorities that people see in their best selves. Within hours, love, hope and optimism blew the “Conservative Values are Canadian Values” ad campaign out of the political and social water.
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Words to strike fear into the hearts of those who like their politics predictable, their youth apathetic, and their worldview uncomplicated by all this “making a difference” or “democracy is a way of life” nonsense. And I think being confronted with a different set of political and social principles that resonates deeply and authentically among a variety of communities only feeds the fear that drives the fury.

- Finally, Nik Nanos points out both why any talk of an NDP/Lib merger misses both the impossibility of completely combining the two parties, and the lack of any particular need to do so.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.

- Chris Selley nicely summarizes Jack Layton's celebration of life today:

I can just hear people kvetching: Was this a funeral for a great man, or a rally for his party?

But again, this is surely to miss the point. Mr. Lewis said, son Mike and daughter Sarah confirmed in a lovely joint eulogy, and no one has plausibly disproved the concept, that for Jack Layton, “the private man and the public man were synonymous.” And that man was a New Democrat — for 40 years. He took his colleagues to unimagined new heights, rightly feared a tumble, and attempted to rally their spirits with his final words. We rightly lament the dearth of authenticity and sincerity in our politicians. Here was one displaying both in the most trying circumstances imaginable, and some of us turned up our noses.
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Frankly, it’s easy to imagine many of the complainers mourning Layton’s conservative equivalent just as passionately as Canadians mourned Layton — if only it was possible to imagine a conservative equivalent of Jack Layton. I only met Layton once, in his final and finest office on Parliament Hill. Judging by the stories and anecdotes I saw this week, in print and in voice and in chalk, two million or so Canadians knew him better, and believed he was genuinely interested in their lives — “a man of the people who made everyone feel special,” as Shawn Atleo said. Love him or hate him, this is pretty much what politics is supposed to be.

- Meanwhile, Stephen Lewis' stirring eulogy is here.

- The Leader-Post editorial board slams the crowded jails resulting from the Cons' dumb on crime policies, while Chris Putnam criticizes a similarly short-sighted publicity stunt on a smaller scale in the form of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's attacks on video games in youth facilities.

- Finally, Errol Black and Jim Silver serve up some fast facts as to who's pushing for perpetually-increasing inequality and why.

In all fairness...

It's only half right to say, as Stephen Lewis did today, that the Harper Cons had no clue what they were doing when it came to their failed bid for the UN Security Council.

Far more accurate to say instead that the Harper Cons don't have a clue what they're doing the bulk of the time - with the Security Council vote serving as just one more glaring example.