Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your weekend.

- For much of the relatively recent past, one of the areas of relative consensus in economic theory is that productivity increases would find their way to workers. But Paul Krugman shows that hope to be utterly misplaced:

Where did the productivity go?

The answer is, it’s two-thirds the inequality, stupid. One third of the difference is due to a technical issue involving price indexes. The rest, however, reflects a shift of income from labor to capital and, within that, a shift of labor income to the top and away from the middle.

What this says is that widening inequality makes a huge difference. Income stagnation does not reflect overall economic stagnation; the incomes of typical workers would be 30 or 40 percent higher than they are if inequality hadn’t soared.

Which confirms all the more that we need to work more on redistribution, rather than on the hope that expanding the economic pie through productivity gains will benefit anybody other than those constantly angling for a larger share.

- But of course, the Cons are doing their utmost to make sure as little of the benefit of any economic growth as possible goes to mere workers. And the Star takes them to task on their efforts to push cheap, disposable foreign labour to replace Canadians who might know and act on their employment rights:

Since Prime Minister Stephen Harper assumed power in 2006, the number of foreign temporary workers admitted into Canada has grown by 40 per cent. The temporary worker stream is now larger than the stream of permanent workers intending to set down roots and become citizens.

...
When Canada introduced its temporary foreign worker program in 2002, the governing Liberals vowed never to adopt the European model route in which “guest workers” are paid less than nationals and treated as second-class residents.

But under Harper, the country is now moving in that direction.

Likewise, Thomas Walkom has this to say:

Employers could solve their labour shortages by offering higher wages or — in the case of skilled trades — by training Canadians to do the job.

But, if government is willing, it’s easier and more profitable to import cheaper, trained labour from abroad.

And this government has shown that it’s willing. It says that if Canadians don’t want to see jobs going to foreigners, they should quit whining and accept lower wages.

Which is why Ottawa’s answer to complaints made about temporary foreign workers is to toughen Employment Insurance rules.

Kenney has warned that unemployed workers who refuse to take low-wage jobs will have their EI benefits cut off. If Canadians agree to work for less, he explains, Ottawa won’t have to bring in as many low-wage outsiders.

All of this is a solution of sorts, I suppose, albeit a 19th century one. But it is a solution that threatens to bring with it the kind of agitation now seen in countries like France, Holland and Greece — where the racist right is on the rise and where far too many workers view immigrants as mortal enemies out to steal their jobs.

- Lawrence Martin asks whether we still live in a democracy - and the answer is rather disturbing. And the Canadian Association of Journalists gives the Cons their due reward for suppressing information.

- Finally, Michael Hollett suggests that anybody hoping for a more progressive and representative government get behind the NDP in order to implement proportional representation. And Brian Topp points out that the Libs' own perpetual appeals to strategic voting - which I'd note represent arguably the lone consistent note in the party's campaigns over the past decade - may end up being the greatest obstacle to their efforts to rebuild.

Parliament in Review - March 28, 2012

Wednesday, March 28 saw a final short day of debate on the Cons' minimal bank regulation bill.

The Big Issue

Peter Julian questioned the Cons' competence in rushing to force through a bill when the review period has been known for years. Hoang Mai lamented the lack of a serious look at Canada's financial system, while Robert Chisholm again noted that plenty of consumer protection options were omitted from the bill. Dany Morin followed up on the issue of consumer debt which has skyrocketed since the Cons took power.

Meanwhile, the big issue also included a massive diversion of attention as the opposition parties worked on allocating credit for the fact that Canada's banking system didn't end up the incomprehensible and unregulated mess that caused so much damage in the U.S. While the Cons' laughable claim to credit based on their demanding exactly what we avoided was easily dismissed, there was plenty of back-and-forth between Robert Chisholm, Don Davies, Wayne Easter, Elizabeth May and Geoff Regan as to the Libs' role - with the former two pointing out that it was Lib cabinet ministers who opened the door to discussion of deregulation only to be shouted down by citizen resistance, while the latter three tried to edit out that bit of history and give the Libs sole credit for the end result.

Unaccountable

Helene Laverdiere raised a point of privilege as to the Cons' refusal to actually answer her written questions - where very specific and targeted questions about the Office of Religious Freedom were met with boilerplate talking points which had nothing to do with the precise questions asked. And Peter Van Loan replied with the remarkable assertion that if his party saw fit to make a mockery of the written question process, her only recourse was...to re-submit the same question through the same process which the Cons had already sabotaged.


In Brief

I've pointed out before the seeming absurdity involved when the House of Commons holds standing votes on issues where there isn't a single dissenting MP to justify that procedure which is intended to reflect "division". And this day saw two such votes: the first on S-5, the second from Guy Lauzon including accountability of offenders as a purpose of the federal correctional system. Meanwhile, a more interesting vote took place on the Cons' flag-waving jingoism bill, with the Libs offering their support while the NDP and Bloc provided actual opposition.

Rejean Genest moved a motion on the right to housing and the need for investment to combat homelessness. Remarkably enough, the motion actually attracted the Cons' support, even as Jean Crowder highlighted their intention to utterly ignore the intent of the motion in the years to come. Meanwhile, it was the Libs who were ambivalent about their intentions.

David Christopherson delivered the line of the day on the Cons' bad-faith dealings with Elections Canada and unwillingness to allow Marc Mayrand testify before committee at any time other than during the budget lockup:

Talk about the Prime Minister's dream democracy: an electoral process the Conservatives can manipulate, our Chief Electoral Officer with no powers and all the journalists locked up.  

Thomas Mulcair reiterated the Cons' past commitments not to cut public services in advance of a budget that broke those promises. Peter Julian noted that the Cons had already said they had all the tools available needed to protect jobs at Aveos, then asked why they apparently couldn't be bothered to use them. Even before the Cons' budget legislation was presented, Megan Leslie raised the since-confirmed fear that vital environmental legislation would be gutted through an omnibus bill. Francis Scarpaleggia commented on the need for improved public transit for Montreal's West Island. Rathika Sitsabaiesan asked adjournment questions about post-secondary education. And Jonathan Genest-Jourdain left no doubt that the NDP hasn't forgotten the mess the Cons have made of Attawapiskat and so many other First Nations in believing their only job is to cheerlead for resource development.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Paul Krugman writes a long-overdue obituary for the confidence fairy who was supposed to turn needless austerity into growth contrary to all economic evidence:

So, about that doctrine: appeals to the wonders of confidence are something Herbert Hoover would have found completely familiar — and faith in the confidence fairy has worked out about as well for modern Europe as it did for Hoover’s America. All around Europe’s periphery, from Spain to Latvia, austerity policies have produced Depression-level slumps and Depression-level unemployment; the confidence fairy is nowhere to be seen, not even in Britain, whose turn to austerity two years ago was greeted with loud hosannas by policy elites on both sides of the Atlantic.

None of this should come as news, since the failure of austerity policies to deliver as promised has long been obvious. Yet European leaders spent years in denial, insisting that their policies would start working any day now, and celebrating supposed triumphs on the flimsiest of evidence. Notably, the long-suffering (literally) Irish have been hailed as a success story not once but twice, in early 2010 and again in the fall of 2011. Each time the supposed success turned out to be a mirage; three years into its austerity program, Ireland has yet to show any sign of real recovery from a slump that has driven the unemployment rate to almost 15 percent.

...

But while the confidence fairy appears to be well and truly buried, deficit scare stories remain popular. Indeed, defenders of British policies dismiss any call for a rethinking of these policies, despite their evident failure to deliver, on the grounds that any relaxation of austerity would cause borrowing costs to soar.

So we’re now living in a world of zombie economic policies — policies that should have been killed by the evidence that all of their premises are wrong, but which keep shambling along nonetheless. And it’s anyone’s guess when this reign of error will end.

- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report on Elections Canada's continued efforts to track down the source of the best-known calls behind the Robocon scandal.

- One might think this is going too far on the secrecy front. But by the Cons' standards, isn't it only prudent to shred sports memorabilia just in case it doesn't support the conclusions in Stephen Harper's long-promised hockey book?

- Meanwhile, Tabatha Southey's form letter of apology should make for an important addition to the Cons' set of public relations tools.

- The Vancouver Observer highlights the foreign funding provided to the Fraser Institute by the Koch brothers.

- Finally, Robin Sears theorizes that Canada has added tolerance and diversity to its traditional values of peace, order and good government.

On equivocal labels

I'll agree with the commentators pointing out that Nanos' polling on party labels shows far more trouble for the Cons than for the NDP. But let's point out another part of the story that the media spin seems to be leaving out.

Plenty of the terms used in association with political parties are indeed fairly easily classified as "positive" or "negative": if anybody wants to make a case as to how "untrustworthy", "arrogant" or "useless" could be anything but unambiguously damaging to a party, I'd love to hear it.

But "socialist" - the leading descriptor of the NDP - falls among a few terms which aren't quite so easily pigeonholed. Indeed, even in the U.S. with a generally more conservative voting public, it tends to be a polarizing term which is nonetheless seen rather positively by a substantial chunk of the voting electorate (italics in original, bold added):

Of these terms, socialism is the more politically polarizing – the reaction is almost universally negative among conservatives, while generally positive among liberals.

Now, it's true enough that other labels like "progressive" might speak positively to a far larger set of voters - and the use of "socialist" so far has mostly been a matter of the Cons trying to brand the NDP for their own supporters. But if the absolute worst label the Cons can attach to the NDP is one that's still seen positively by a third of respondents, that doesn't exactly hurt the NDP's chances of starting on at least even terms against a party whose own base is in the same range.

Musical interlude

Tiesto - Chasing Summers

Friday Morning Links

This and that to end your week.

- Paul Wells comments on the NDP's new style of opposition:

When I used to ask the Liberals, when they were the Official Opposition, why they didn’t calm down a bit in QP, they would complain that gesticulating was the only way to get on the news. And indeed the calmer New Democrats are not getting a lot of space on the news. What is getting space is Bev Oda’s global OJ adventure, Stephen Harper’s 70-year digressions, and private members’ bills that seem inspired by the Danielle Smith playbook of political success. Which may explain why the NDP does not begrudge the government its time in the spotlight.

The sharply reduced tolerance at Langevin Block for Oda’s expense account, once it became public, and the clear signal of disapproval for Stephen Woodworth’s motion, suggests Harper is realizing he is no longer facing the ineffectual histrionics the Liberals threw at him for five years.

And it looks like there's ample reason for Harper to be worried.

- Lysiane Gagnon points out that Quebec's child care system - so often highlighted by the right as example of unsustainable spending that should be stopped through an end to interprovincial transfer payments - is in fact a smart use of resources which more than pays for itself. But that won't stop the Cons from trying to demlish it.

- Althia Raj reports on concerns that the Cons' tight time frame for comment on proposed electoral boundaries might shut Canadians out of the process. But I'd view the concern more as reason to be prepared than reason for panic - as it's still open to anybody to be heard as long as we recognize the limited opportunity to do so.

- Finally, Brian Topp cites Wildrose's campaign flop as an example of parties needing to rein in their candidates, and points to the leading precedent for the type of hypercentralization that's now seen as the default setting in Canadian politics:

Our political system tends towards hyper-centralization, and imposes a discipline on elected representatives that, at least some of them sometimes believe, disrespects and disempowers them. A “crisis of surplus consciousness” can result, in which the few at the top end up with too much to do (and therefore cannot do it well), which the vast majority of other team members end up with too little to do (and aren’t happy about it). This, to be precise, used to be said with reference to the hyper-centralized system in place in the Soviet Union. It could also be said of a number of poorly-led, hyper-centralized private corporations. It may be what parliamentary systems inherently drift into.

That said, I'd think it's worth distinguishing (as Topp does to some extent) between "bozo eruptions" that reflect poorly on a party primarily to the extent they call into question whether its candidates are fit to hold public office, and the use of respectful disagreement a political gotcha.

Parliament in Review: March 27, 2012

Tuesday, March 27 saw a day dominated by the type of serious discussion about the role of the financial sector that we should expect in the years to come - even if the basis for that discussion was less than we should have hoped for.

The Big Issue

The main topic of debate was Bill S-5, a bill on financial regulation which originated in the Senate. And it's surprising to me both how little disagreement there was on the bill, and how petulant the Cons were about the NDP's small attempt to improve it.

While otherwise noting his party's support for the bill, Peter Julian proposed an amendment on the hot-button issue of...the compellability of employees in the Superintendent's office with respect to knowledge acquired while enforcing the legislation at issue. Jean Rousseau worried that without the amendment, an "iron curtain" could hide real issues discovered by the Superintendent. Scott Brison expressed his support as a matter of transparency. But the Cons first stuck to their talking points about "trying to strengthen our banking system" rather than actually addressing the idea in substance, then tried to put on the record that secrecy is everywhere and thus to be supported.

Meanwhile, in much more substantive debate, the Cons went out of their way to highlight that the list of matters put under political control includes bank acquisitions (which will now be subject only to ministerial approval), a point which was duly criticized by Alain Giguere and Hoang Mai. Robert Chisholm pointed out the continued lack of consumer protection after multiple banks decided not to cooperate with an ombudsman's office once touted by the Cons, a point which was then echoed by Glenn Thibeault. Chisholm, Jinny Sims and Libby Davies all noted that something more than technical amendments might have been appropriate to deal with the financial sector. Giguere expressed what strikes me as the due level of alarm about having financial-sector rules set by an unelected, patronage-based Senate. Helene Leblanc suggested that the public have some say in what's done with financial-sector rules, with Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet offering the example of high credit-card rates and Mathieu Ravignat pointing to hidden fees as issues that demand action. Sadia Groguhe expressed concern about the harmful effects of debt and speculation on Canadians' financial stability, while Francine Raynault discussed the need to regulate speculation and derivatives. Elizabeth May pitched a financial transactions tax. And Olivia Chow lamented the recent imposition of account fees on seniors by two major banks.

Predictably, though, the Cons insisted that the bill absolutely had to pass by April 20, leaving no time to seriously debate whether it was worth passing in the first place as they voted down the amendment and pushed the bill forward. But while any actual gap in legislation created by that time frame would have been a severe problem (and several NDP speakers seemed to accept the premise), as far as I can tell the supposed deadline was itself supported by little more than the Cons' own PR. And if it's true that the Cons are indeed setting up legislation with a time bomb set to explode again 2017 as part of a standard five-year cycle, then that should raise a serious question about their motives in doing so - particularly since Harper's gang of Senate cronies will likely be able to block the passage of any replacement legislation under another party's government.

In Brief

Apparently Nycole Turmel's stint as NDP leader wasn't seen by the Cons as demanding quite the same level of message control as, say, Remembrance Day. And so Peter Van Loan actually moved to allow Bloc and Green speakers to join the official parties in saluting her performance as interim leader of the Official Opposition.

Meanwhile, Jasbir Sandhu called on the Cons to confirm Canada's opposition to the death penalty which was about to be applied in India for the first time since 2004. Romeo Saganash and Chisholm both offered their own statements about the NDP's leadership campaign. Matthew Kellway pointed out that though requirements were apparently drawn up to match the F-35s' specifications, the Cons "bungle(d) this file so badly they cannot even cheat properly" as the F-35s still fell short. Alexandre Boulerice called out Robocon as the electoral fraud that it was, while Niki Ashton noted that the last set of Cons behind an illegal electoral scheme were punished with appointments to the Senate. Jean Crowder asked why upwards of a quarter of EI claims don't receive a response within a month. Linda Duncan rightly slammed John Duncan for describing the very communities for which he bears ministerial responsibility as "socially dysfunctional" while eliminating programs to improve their conditions. Louis Plamondon introduced his motion to make the Governor General's salary subject to the general tax regime. That was met with Shelley Glover's response that the Cons are all in favour of royalty which doesn't play by the same rules as anybody else, while Mai and Stephane Dion offered less histrionic takes. And Irene Matthyssen asked once again about the Cons' failure to do anything meaningful to reduce seniors' poverty.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Paul Wells had previously theorized that the size of environmental demonstrations in Montreal might hint at the NDP's ability to establish a long-term base. So what ended up happening?

What happened in Montreal was a great big rally for Earth Day whose messaging was, in part, overtly anti-oil-sands. And it seems to have been a hit. Apparently something like a quarter of a million people marched in lousy weather.

Meanwhile, one of the Cons' leading cheerleaders in Quebec is quite explicitly trying to push "drill baby drill". Which only figures to help highlight the glaring gap between the Harper Cons' obsession with the tar sands, and the environmentally-responsible values shared by the Quebec protesters and so many other Canadians.

- It's noteworthy enough that the Cons are attacking Nathan Cullen directly for having the nerve to stand up for his constituents. But it's especially remarkable that this little tidbit seems to have passed without comment:

The Tories are promising more attacks against individual New Democrats in the “coming days.”

Which looks like about the most blatant statement yet that the Cons are neither willing nor able to do anything other than smearing their opponents. But the fact that they see the need to now get personal with anybody who dares to speak out against them might also signal just how incapable they are of defending any of their actions on the merits.

- On that front, the fact that the Cons are pushing austerity even at the expense of economic development and jobs surely places near the top of the list of topics they don't want to discuss - perhaps ranking behind only still-growing inequality. And it's great to see Kevin Page pointing out both.

- Finally, congratulations to Pat Atkinson for earning a place in the pages of the Star-Phoenix.

New column day

Here, following up on Sarah Schmidt's report showing that an outright majority of tested food products are inaccurately labeled by noting that nutrition information is just one of many areas where we're being told to take the corporate sector's word as to what's good for us.

For further reading:
- Joanna Smith reports on the gap between what the federal Cons are claiming about CFIA cuts, and what's actually being experienced by civil servants.
- And details about the planned environmental code for Saskatchewan are available here.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Jared Bernstein discusses the effect of raising taxes on the highest-income households, featuring this in particular:

Growth and jobs. History shows that higher taxes are compatible with economic growth and job creation: job creation and GDP growth were significantly stronger following the Clinton tax increases than following the Bush tax cuts. Further, the Congressional Budget office (CBO) concludes that letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire on schedule would strengthen long-term economic growth, on balance, if policymakers used the revenue saved to reduce deficits. In other words, any negative impact on economic growth from increasing taxes on high-income people would be more than offset by the positive effects of using the resulting revenue gain to reduce the budget deficit. Tax increases can also be used to fund, or to forestall cuts in, productive public investments in areas that support growth such as public education, basic research, and infrastructure.

- Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor report on EKOS' polling showing that it was non-Conservative supporters who were targeted for vote suppression in Canada's 2011 election, while Saskboy points out that it's not hard to figure out who stood to gain from Robocon.

- Craig McInnes theorizes that the Cons' bullying to ram through approval of new tar sands pipelines will lead to a serious backlash in B.C.:

the message out of Ottawa is that the government isn’t all that concerned about the environment. The message is that its primary concern is making sure that nothing stands in the way of the development of the oilsands.

The problem with the threat of an over-ride is it casts every other move the government is making to streamline the process – regardless of whether it has another rationale – as part of the headlong rush to get the pipelines built.
...
What I really don’t understand is the Conservatives’ failure to appreciate the political risks in trying to push these projects through. While it may be deemed radical for a Conservative from Alberta to be opposed to the pipelines, opposition in B.C., especially to increased tanker traffic, sits squarely in the middle of the road, cutting across all party lines.

“Radical” here more reasonably represents the people who are vowing to stop the pipeline by any means necessary. If British Columbians believe they have been given a fair hearing and lost fairly, there won’t be much tolerance for illegal acts.

But if the common experience of British Columbians is to feel we are being bulldozed by Ottawa, all bets are off.

- Meanwhile, it's ridiculous enough that Peter Kent is outraged by his own words about scientists being told what to say by political hacks. But isn't his supposed clarification even worse - if scientists are being told to "(spread) the good news of the policies of our government", rather than actually discussing scientific findings in accurate terms?

- Finally, the most foolish part of the Cons' stick figure advice for civil servants facing job losses is how easily the medium can be adapted in response.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Flattened cats.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Yesterday's Alberta election certainly proved somewhat of a shocker - producing about the best possible result short of a minority scenario that would have allowed the NDP to exercise the balance of power, as the slightly-less-right party won even as its most notorious ideologue went down in flames. But I'd still think it's a wide open question as to whether the PCs will actually govern consistently with the wishes of the progressive voters who offered strategic support (as suggested by Sheila Pratt), or whether they'll instead veer right in order to win back some of the mass of Wildrose voters - meaning that even a majority government provides virtually no certainty as to what comes next.

- Keith Beardsley points out a massive opening for the NDP to make ethics and accountability into a decisive issue in the next federal election, while Lawrence Martin has some suggestions as to reach that result. Meanwhile, a new CROP poll shows the NDP with a commanding lead in Quebec.

- Brian Topp is back writing for the Globe and Mail online after the NDP's leadership campaign - and his take on the first phase of France's presidential election is well worth a read.

- Finally, Stephen Gordon breaks down the types of taxes collected by the OECD countries.

Hyer Ground

When Lise St. Denis decided last year to leave the Official Opposition to move down the opposition back benches, I noted that the most important issue was likely less her individual choice than whether it would lead to more MPs following suit. (Which of course it didn't.)

And to a large extent, the same goes for Bruce Hyer's decision to sit as an independent: the long-term effects will likely be minimal if other members facing similar choices keep working within the NDP. But it is worth noting one key background point in Hyer's decision.

It's been well noted that the one issue of caucus discipline involving Hyer took place under Nycole Turmel's interim leadership last fall. So Hyer's timing may have been less a matter of seeing anything change to his dissatisfaction under Thomas Mulcair, and more an issue of disappointment that the NDP's new leader didn't restore the party's previous stance allowing MPs to vote their conscience on the gun registry.

But it's still true that a change has indeed taken place since the last election, as MPs who campaigned on a position which was seen as consistent with party policy have found themselves facing discipline for exactly that stance. And that may be particularly important in light of Mulcair's primary leadership campaign proposal to allow for diversity of voices within the NDP.

Remember that Mulcair has (rightly) promised to encourage regional campaigns working within the party's existing policy framework in order to better address local concerns. And the leading example as to how that idea has worked in the past is...the NDP's base in Northern Ontario, which helped Hyer and a number of other MPs to get elected - in part by enabling candidates to put aside the gun registry as an issue.

Now, it could be that party members will make a decision on the gun registry that would take Hyer's stance outside the realm of party policy by 2015. But for now, Hyer's departure again highlights a question as to whether the candidates working within regional campaigns can count on the same flexibility in voting on issues after an election that they've been offered while campaigning. And Mulcair may need to clarify that point in order to encourage more regions to follow Northern Ontario's successful model.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Yes, the individual examples are worrisome enough. But the real takeaway from Sarah Schmidt's report on the CFIA's testing of food products for sale in Canada is that more often than not, consumers can't trust what's on the label:

CFIA allows for a variance of up 20 percentage points on nutrition information found on food packages to account for natural variances in ingredients or deviations in testing equipment. Anything beyond that is considered unsatisfactory.
...
CFIA's overall statistics from 2006 and 2010 involving key product categories (breads and baked goods, confectionary items, and snacks) certainly paint a picture of inconsistency. Of 621 products tested, 360 items (58 per cent) did not live up to all the nutrition information on their packaging.

So naturally, the Cons' response is...to stop the testing that's proven Canadians aren't getting what they pay for. And Statistics Canada is also on the receiving end of the Cons' gleeful axe-wielding, particularly when it comes to social data needed to serve the public interest.

- Meanwhile, Mia Rabson takes aim at the Cons for their refusal to allow Environment Canada scientists to discuss even such basic information as research on snow in winter. And Stephen Hume criticizes the Cons' plan to eliminate any meaningful review of the Gateway pipeline as an attack on British Columbia's provincial sovereignty.

- Jim Stanford schools Kevin O'Leary on how auto-sector trade actually works:



- Finally, Anne Jarvis points out that if Ontario ends up in an election campaign, it'll be because the PCs refused to make reasonable requests and the Libs refused to accept the ones already offered by Andrea Horwath and the NDP.

Parliament in Review: March 26, 2012

Having taken a bit of a hiatus during and after the NDP's leadership campaign, I'll resume looking back at what's happened in the House of Commons starting with the election of Thomas Mulcair. (I'll plan to return to the previous sitting later on.)

Monday, March 26 saw Mulcair's introduction as the new Leader of the Official Opposition. But there was plenty worth pointing out beyond the first few questions from Mulcair and associated headlines...

The Big Issue

The main topic of debate was the Cons' anti-refugee legislation - with the opposition parties particularly taking aim at the concept of mandatory detention for anybody arriving in Canada by a means designated as suspicious by the Minister of Immigration. Don Davies pointed out that similar forms of detention without review have already been found to be unconstitutional, then questioned why the Cons seem determined to break up refugee families; Olivia Chow noted that the Cons' focus on punishing refugees will not only divert resources from dealing with actual human smugglers, but actually remove the witnesses needed to testify against them; Rosane Dore Lefebvre pointed out the conditions in existing detention centres; and Elizabeth May commented on the cost of detention. Meanwhile, Harold Albrecht's response was...to deny that detention under the bill had anything to do with "prisons", while at the same time claiming we should operate under the assumption that refugees are criminals or terrorists until proven otherwise.

The opposition parties also slammed the Cons for backing away from agreements reached between all parties in the previous Parliament to make the bill as harsh as possible for refugees. Djoauida Sellah contrasted the claims of working "in good faith" before against the apparent bad faith from the Cons now; Anne Minh-Thu Quach and Kevin Lamoureux wondered what the Cons have against consensus-building; and Eve Peclet criticized the Cons' galling demand for all-party support after they've cut all other parties out of any input into the legislation. Andrew Cash questioned whether the Cons' slashing of Canada's social safety net is intended to make our country less inviting to immigrants. Jean-Francoin Fortin first theorized that there's a certain logic to the Cons' policy - but only based on an underlying philosophy of fomenting fear and mistrust. Fortin also highlighted the fact that the Cons want to divide refugees into "good" and "bad" classifications while ignoring the reality that international law doesn't allow for any such division, a point which was then echoed by Anne-Marie Day. Lamoureux questioned the politicization of a "safe country" list which would deprive claimants of a right of appeal in proving their refugee status. Jamie Nicholls lamented the possibility that the bill would prove just one more chapter in a sad history of discriminatory immigration policies, with Tarik Brahmi following up on the plight of Roma minorities in countries the Cons want to label as unfailingly "safe". And Davies corrected the Cons' spin on the contents of their own bill.

In Brief

The other main business discussed was Sean Casey's motion on Old Age Security. Irene Mathyssen noted that an increase in the federal retirement age would actually create a gap between provincial programs which end at age 67 and the federal retirement income which allows less wealthy seniors to survive, while highlighting the fact that poorer seniors will bear the brunt of an increased retirement age. And the Cons signalled that they were willing to go along with the motion - just as long as it was amended to suggest that taking income away from the seniors who need it somehow represented an improvement to the sustainability of income security.

Meanwhile, Robert Aubin wondered whatever became of the committee to study workplace language rights which the Cons promised the previous fall. The Cons unveiled a lengthy set of replies to members' questions - including such gems as answers 448 and 449, where they tried to claim credit for each and every child-care space created by any province since they came to power as the result of their own lack of funding and support. And in the first set of members' statements following the NDP's leadership campaign, Niki Ashton, Paul Dewar, Peggy Nash, Nathan Cullen and Olivia Chow all spoke about the future of the NDP under Mulcair's leadership.

Sunday Evening Links

Assorted content to end your weekend.

- Brian Mason makes the closing argument for Alberta's NDP in tomorrow's provincial election:



- Meanwhile in Ontario, Keith Leslie reports that the McGuinty Libs are still dragging their heels on Andrea Horwath's entirely reasonable set of budget requests. But while Martin Regg Cohn calls on them to match the NDP's willingness to reach a deal, Adam Radwanski theorizes that based on the relative public appeal of the provincial parties' leaders and platforms, it's the PCs that have the most to lose from a possible spring election in any event.

- Scott Feschuk comments on the ongoing F-35 fiasco with exactly the level of seriousness and respect the Cons deserve in light of the news that they've known just as well as the rest of us how inaccurate their spin has been.

- And Bruce Johnstone notes that the Harper Cons' transition from a minority to a majority hasn't changed the pattern of Saskatchewan getting nothing from its 13 Con MPs.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your Saturday reading.

- As much sympathy as I normally have for Linda McQuaig, I'll argue that her premise in discussing Andrea Horwath's call for the wealthy to pay a fair share of taxes is entirely off base. Even if it is easier to discuss such ideas when there's a Warren Buffett willing to take the side of the general public, the more important conclusion is that we should be able to determine as a citizenry how our tax system should be structured - and not give the wealthiest a veto over the outcome.

- Which is also why Thomas Walkom's column on the tax treatment of charities is worth a read: we shouldn't have to depend on philanthropy to provide for basic necessities, and the tax receipt system only serves to subsidize the preferences of those with extra money to give rather than the needs of those who would stand to benefit from a more focused set of priorities.

- Erin takes on the monetary hawks looking to stop Canada's already-unimpressive economic recovery.

- Susan Delacourt echoes my question as to whether we need to push our leaders to be willing to tackle major problems on a multigovernmental basis, rather than staying on what's perceived to be safe terrain.

- No, we shouldn't be surprised that shutting down B.C.'s oil spill cleanup centre at the same time they plan to ram the Gateway pipeline down the province's throat. If anything, I'd think it's a minor miracle they're at least keeping the Quebec version alive, rather than renaming spills as "unanticipated ethical oil surpluses" and declaring them part of an economic action plan.

- Finally, I'll highlight Canadian Progressive Voices as a new blogroll with plenty of lively discussion - while making it clear that I don't intend to cut ties with the Progressive Bloggers over the few blue apples in the bunch.

On short-sightedness

Others have already drawn parallels between the Cons' plan to require Employment Insurance recipients to accept whatever low-paying temporary work might be available as a condition of receiving the benefits they've paid into, and other attacks on individual workers such as workfare and forced relocation. But let's take a closer look at what the mooted move will mean for individuals who have lost a job and are seeking to plan for the future:

The reforms would require unemployed Canadians to accept local jobs that are currently being filled by temporary foreign workers.

“Nova Scotia province-wide has 10% unemployment, but the only way Christmas tree operators can function in the Annapolis Valley is to bring in Mexicans through this agricultural worker program,” he said, also pointing to the increased number of Russians working in Prince Edward Island fish processing plants and Romanians working at the Ganong chocolate factory in New Brunswick.

“Even on the north shore of New Brunswick, which has the highest unemployment in the province, the MPs keep telling me the employers definitely need more temporary workers. What’s going on here?”

Now, the obvious answer would figure to be that workers have a strong personal interest in not getting trapped in a cycle of temporary jobs, especially when those jobs are unrelated to any field the worker could possibly want to pursue. And anybody who saw value in Canadians being able to plan for the future and consider the best possible career outcome in the longer term - including preparing to pursue work that isn't merely seasonal - would recognize that forcing people into whatever low-paying, menial labour might be available at a given moment is a move in exactly the wrong direction. Indeed, it would ensure that human capital is put to its lowest use rather than being developed for eventual growth.
 
In addition to setting the worker's new entitlement to EI at a lower baseline (and perhaps none at all - remember the Cons' restrictions on eligibility based on minimum numbers of weeks worked?), then, Kenney's plan is to make sure that anybody who loses a job through no fault of his or her own is also deprived of any opportunity to plan for the future. Which makes for a short-term gain for the employers eager to pay the lowest possible wage for menial work - but ultimately figures to result in just as much productivity loss for the broader economy as for the worker affected.

So is it any better for temporary foreign workers to perform the jobs? At worst, it would seem to make sense that individuals who actually want to accept the work might be a better fit than those who might otherwise be able to pursue better long-term options if their social safety net hadn't just been shredded beneath them.

But the more obvious systemic issue is that we shouldn't be biasing our labour system in favour of insecure temporary work in the first place. That is, unless one's long-term goal is to set up the largest possible gap between a privileged few and a powerless mass of workers with no capacity to organize or plan.

The Cons have apparently made their choice on that front. But the rest of us shouldn't accept a system that stunts the career prospects of Canadian citizens solely to cater to employers who see worker desperation as a plus. And indeed, we should take the cue to argue for just the opposite: individuals need enough income security to be able to make meaningful decisions, rather than being deployed solely at the whims of the most exploitative employer willing to ask for some wood to be hewed or some water drawn.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Tim Harper gets somewhat closer to the mark than most pundits in recognizing that any talk an NDP/Lib merger is neither timely nor particularly well-placed. But the "one more time" message is a little bit off: again, we've still run precisely zero election campaigns in which the NDP was treated as anything but a novelty party at the outset, which means that we should see 2015 as the start of a new opportunity rather than a continuation of previous trends. And both Barbara Yaffe and Lawrence Martin point out some of the reasons for optimism about the NDP's chances.

- Meanwhile, Andrew Coyne and Dan Gardner have both commented on the Libs' dire straits. And it looks like Thomas Mulcair's election as NDP leader has effectively forced the Libs' hand in deciding which path to pursue in 2015 and beyond - as any hope of re-emerging as a default government based solely on habitual support and conventional wisdom looks to be fading by the day.

- There have been plenty of new Robocon developments, with the sworn evidence of one of the Cons' own callers serving as a rather compelling indication of deliberate efforts to mislead voters. Meanwhile, CBC conclusively refuted the Cons' claim that their deceptive calls were somehow related to changes in polling stations; Alison pointed out another series of obfuscations by the Cons and their service providers; and pogge rightly questioned the Cons' spin about their CIMS database.

- I'm pretty sure this just proves that the B.C. NDP made a huge mistake in electing a progressive leader like Adrian Dix - as with a Lib-lite, it would undoubtedly have won both by-election seats several times over.

- Finally, Charles Smith and David McGrane make the case for truly urban ridings in Regina and Saskatoon:

On top of identifying with different communities, residents of Saskatoon and Regina have different interests than fellow constituents in neighbouring towns and rural areas.

The residents of the two large cities are concerned with municipal infrastructure (such as bridges), settling new immigrants, urban sprawl, public transit, homelessness and accommodating a growing off-reserve urban aboriginal population. Rural residents are concerned with agricultural issues, access to information technology, the maintenance of highways, recruiting doctors and building relationships with on-reserve aboriginals.

It is unfair to ask a single MP to represent the interests and identities of such varied constituents. In fact, it is bad for democracy.
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The commission should create two ridings each exclusively within the city limits of Regina and of Saskatoon. Depending on how the rest of the map is redrawn, the size of remaining ridings neither would be unmanageable nor fall outside the established norm for rural ridings in Canada.

Instead of having MPs whose attention is split between their urban and rural constituents, rural residents would have more MPs exclusively devoted to their concerns than at present. In turn, urban residents would also have MPs who are more focused on their interests and concerns.

In short, a new electoral map will be a win for the city and the country, and improve democratic representation in Saskatchewan.

Musical interlude

Luigi Lusini - Who We Are

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Paul Buchhelt offers five reasons why the extremely wealthy should pay more in taxes. But if we can anticipate some conflict over that idea, there's stronger evidence than ever that the public is rather united behind one side.

- Bob Hepburn notes that there's plenty of work to be done to save Canadian democracy from the Cons' toxic and unaccountable politics. John Ivison slams the Cons' secrecy surrounding their choice to obliterate any pretense of independent review of resource projects. And Kevin Page rightly challenges the false spin that the Cons can't let Canadians know what services they've slashed until a year after the cuts are made.

- Joe Couture put together a couple of reports worth noting this week - first discussing the contrast between the Sask Party's willingness to boost MLA pay based on changes in the cost of living as a matter of course and its refusal to do the same for the minimum wage, then highlighting the concerns of Saskatchewan's Children's Advocate Bob Pringle about the Wall government's decision not to count children when it comes to assigning electoral weight.

- Finally, while I have some concerns about his insistence on a progressive narrative which seems to cede an awful lot of ground to exactly the interests we need to counter, Jared Milne's guest post at pogge on the need for a new progressive narrative is worth a read.

On shadow boxing

Aaron has already listed and commented on Thomas Mulcair's shadow cabinet assignments. But there are a few additional points worth adding into the mix.

First, while others have pointed out Nathan Cullen's promotion to House Leader, the exact choice of positions is very much worth emphasizing. As the leadership candidate whose message centred on how to approach other political parties, Cullen has been put in charge of...approaching other political parties, at least to the extent of managing business in Parliament. And if "cooperation to defeat Harper" continues to be Cullen's guiding principle, then it will be well worth watching whether that habit has some impact beyond Parliament Hill.

Second, the choice of Linda Duncan as critic for Public Works and Government Services may make for a neat bit of strategy. A strong Alberta figure charged with criticizing patronage, waste and mismanagement should serve to raise serious questions among the Cons' base- and that may not only help to shake loose populist votes on the prairies, but also put at least somewhat of a dent in the Cons' fund-raising and activist networks.

Third, while it's a bit surprising not to see Nycole Turmel assigned any particular policy area, her effectiveness in keeping the NDP's caucus united through trying times looks to fit nicely with her new role as whip.

Finally, it's worth noting which MPs have somewhat less responsibility in the shadow cabinet than one might expect based on their profile and experience - including Niki Ashton (assigned the Status of Women portfolio), Yvon Godin (who sees Labour removed from his responsibilities), Tyrone Benskin (moved from Heritage critic to deputy Official Languages critic) and Rathika Sitsabaiesan (going from Post-secondary Education critic to outside the shadow cabinet structure altogether). But there's plenty to be done in building toward government beyond criticizing the incumbents - and it wouldn't be surprising to see all given important organization-building responsibilities to accompany their work in Parliament.

New column day

Here, on how we should look to all levels of government to find ways to work through jurisdictional barriers - rather than accepting them as an excuse for regressive policies.

(And lest there be any doubt, I don't write the titles.)

Wednesday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- In an excerpt from the Occupy Handbook, Paul Krugman and Robin Wells discuss how a right-wing obsession with exacerbating inequality led to the U.S.' disastrous response to the 2008 crash:

How did America become a nation that could not rise to the biggest economic challenge in three generations, a nation in which scorched-earth politics and politicized economics created policy paralysis?

We suggest it was the inequality that did it. Soaring inequality is at the root of our polarized politics, which made us unable to act together in the face of crisis. And because rising incomes at the top have also brought rising power to the wealthiest, our nation’s intellectual life has been warped, with too many economists co-opted into defending economic doctrines that were convenient for the wealthy despite being indefensible on logical and empirical grounds.
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(T)he role of rising inequality in creating the economic crisis of 2008 is debatable; it probably did play an important role, if nothing else than by encouraging the financial deregulation that set the stage for crisis. What seems very clear to us, however, is that rising inequality played a central role in causing an ineffective response once crisis hit. Inequality bred a polarized political system, in which the right went all out to block any and all efforts by a modestly liberal president to do something about job creation. And rising inequality also gave rise to what we have called a Dark Age of macroeconomics, in which hard-won insights about how depressions happen and what to do about them were driven out of the national discourse, even in academic circles.

This implies, we believe, that the issue of inequality and the problem of economic recovery are not as separate as a purely economic analysis might suggest. We’re not going to have a good macroeconomic policy again unless inequality, and its distorting effect on policy debate, can be curbed.

- Meanwhile, in a Progressive Economics Forum guest post, Robyn Allan points out the deception behind the supposed benefits of a resource-driven economy. And Mike de Souza reports on how the Cons' latest attacks on Environment Canada will weaken environmental protection, while Mike McCarthy and John Ibbitson discuss other ways in which the Cons plan to make environmental oversight less effective.

- The Vancouver Observer digs into the work done by Front Porch Strategies for the federal Cons. And the four examples of candidates who didn't report their expenses look to me to be one of the stories crying out for further exploration, particularly since some of the expenses at issue in Robocon were also laundered through other people or entities.

- Naturally, needing to build prisons to house has left the Cons short on money for actual rehabilitation. But on the bright side, that should at least make increased prison capacity into a genuinely long-term investment.

- Finally, the CCPA finds that not surprisingly, the Cons' OAS cuts will disproportionately harm poorer seniors.

Tuesday Night Tropical Fauna Blogging

Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Alex Himelfarb laments the Cons' dismantling of a progressive state in Canada. But lest we lose all hope, Annie Lowrey reports on the Piketty/Saez economic work that's paving the way for fairer taxes in the U.S. And Kelly McParland has to admit that more progressive taxes are entirely supported by the public even as he registers his disapproval for having the wealthy pay a fair share.

- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report that Robocon has predictably been traced back to the Cons' central campaign. And Sixth Estate looks in more detail at the latest revelations.

- On the provincial scene, we're learning more and more about Alberta's apparent government-in-waiting. But that isn't to say we should be any more pleased with the current administration - and Jenn Prosser is optimistic that saner heads may prevail in Lethbridge. Meanwhile, Bill Tieleman notes that the B.C. Libs are getting abandoned even by their upper-class base.

- Finally, Tom Spears documents what may be the definitive example of the Cons' message control working precisely as it's supposed to - and utterly wasting public resources in the process.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- When even free-trade warrior Barrie McKenna can only respond incredulously to a message campaign on behalf of the wealthy, you know it's gone too far. So here's McKenna answering the contrived outrage over the NDP's proposal for a slight increase in income tax on the wealthiest Ontarians:

The vast majority of Canadians agree with Ms. Horwath. More that 80 per cent approve the idea of a tax on the wealthy and two-thirds are ready to take a personal tax hit, according to a new poll of 2,000 people by Environics for the Broadbent Institute, a left-leaning think tank. Seventy-seven per cent worry that the growing income gap is “a big problem” for society.

The unease felt by many Canadians is rooted in an uncomfortable reality. Recent work by economists Mike Veall of McMaster University and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley show “an explosion in the earnings of the top 1 per cent” in Canada from the early 1980s to 2007. The top 1 per cent of Canadians pocketed nearly 14 per cent of all income in 2007, compared with 8 per cent in 1982.
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Governments everywhere are in austerity mode. The middle class is being squeezed by stagnant incomes, pension clawbacks and the steady erosion of government entitlements, such as Old Age Security.

Basic fairness suggests all segments of society should share the burden.

- Meanwhile, Karen Foster notes that concerns about fairness across generational lines may reflect the need for more equitable wealth distribution in all age groups:

The middle class is shrinking. In the top income bracket and the class it represents, there are fewer people too, but they have more money. These changes are partly due to economic restructuring - toward service sector and knowledge jobs and away from manufacturing, for example - as well as to the expansion of finance (derivatives, etc.) as a wealth-generating but exclusive enterprise.

But the changing structure and impact of class is also tied to how we redistribute wealth in this country, and how we go about covering the costs of the social programs we believe we should all have access to. Setting aside market conditions for a moment, each of the so-called generations, when they stepped into the world of work, did so in the context of fundamentally different social welfare states.

Since the pivotal 1970s era, the governing ideology around social programs and wealth redistribution has shifted. It has moved away from collectivizing costs toward individualizing fiscal responsibility; from spreading prosperity around toward ensuring one's earnings only go to the causes one deems worthy. Once our government answered to citizens; now it caters to "taxpayers." Where economic policy once revolved around the question of how we might take better care of each other, today it is driven by the belief that no one should be made to take care of anyone else. The crumbling social welfare regime induced tectonic shifts in the moving intersection of class and generation.

Thus, it's not that generation doesn't matter in the context of the changes outlined here. It's that generation can't be considered apart from its context, nor can it be made meaningful without the other categories with which it intersects.

While the question of which generation is more selfish than the other is captivating, it might be time to ask when and why selfishness became the foundation for Canadian economic policy, and what can be done to change it.

- David Frum explores how Lyndon Johnson managed to push through many of the progressive policies which are now under attack by the Republicans' hard right wing.

- Mia Rabson is the latest to point out that the Cons' process in slashing federal jobs has seemingly designed to maximize the resulting pain and uncertainty for Canada's civil servants. But then, Mike de Souza reports that the Cons have never been interested in good advice - such as the utterly neglected suggestion that they not cheerlead for the tar sands.

- Finally, while the Charter has been in the news over the past few days as it reaches its 30th anniversary, it's particularly noteworthy that the Canadian public is still solidly behind its underlying values even as the Cons push for total surveillance and indiscriminate lock-'em-up policies on both crime and immigration.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Danielle Martin discusses the importance of federal involvement in Canada's public health care system:

Whose job is it to co-ordinate health-care reform in Canada? Canadians expect our federal government to play that role. We want to know that wherever we live, we will have access to an equivalent basket of services. We want to know that our governments are buying in bulk whenever possible, maximizing savings. And we want assurances that some basic standards are being met from coast to coast to coast. Health care may be a provincial responsibility, but we know there’s a need for a family to co-ordinate its efforts.
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(T)he 2012 federal budget cut Health Canada, and said nothing about meaningful change. The only nod to improving the system was a three-year, $6.5-million study on cost-effectiveness in health care.

But that ignores the mountains of evidence we already have about how to improve our health-care system while making it more efficient. It’s becoming baffling to Canadians as to why our federal government wouldn’t co-ordinate a national pharmacare system that could save billions. Everyone knows you get a better deal if you buy in bulk.
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Canadians are still optimistic about our health-care system. Most of us believe it’s the best in the world. We’re happy with a publicly funded system. A lot of us think that it takes care of our most vulnerable, and that it will be there for us if we’re ill or injured.

It makes you wonder why the federal government wouldn’t want to fight for that system, and lead the transformation needed to keep Canada ahead of the pack on health care. Canadians take pride in their health-care system — so should their government.

- Doug Cuthand highlights some of the important and inexpensive programs the Cons are attacking in the name of austerity (but with the poorly-veiled goal of eliminating accurate information on inequality in Canada) - with First Nations in particular standing to suffer from the Cons' bias:

The budget speech is all about putting a good face on what's in the document, with the nasty details buried to be dug out later. We learned from the budget speech that the First Nations Statistical Institute is gone. Next came the announcement that the National Health organization will shut down in June because its funding was cut completely.

As well, the National Council of Welfare has been scrapped. It was the only federal agency that had an exclusive mandate to improve the lives of poor people.

So what's happening? The Harper government is using austerity as an excuse to clean house and get rid of programs that were either supported by the Liberals or could provide valuable information to advocacy groups. In the process, aboriginal people are becoming collateral damage.
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Unfortunately, we have a federal government that is more interested in spin and deception than in consultation and democratic institutions. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation is gone in addition to NAHO and the statistical institute. One can't help but wonder where this will lead us.

The prime minister's reaction to the housing crisis at Attawapiskat was a clear indication that he can't tolerate bad news. He blamed the community and its leadership. He sent in an auditor and put the onus on the community. Will this be the reaction to other First Nations that speak out about their sorry living conditions?

Now we have to wait for the next shoe to drop. The word in the colonial office is that the government will make an announcement next week about grants and contributions. This is the money that flows to the First Nations and political organizations. Can we expect cuts? You bet we can. Just how deep the cuts will go is the question.

- Meanwhile, Dave points out the Centre for Plant Health, another of the casualties of the Cons' war on science. And Tim Harper raises his own concerns, while noting that the NDP is well positioned to claim the title of party best placed to provide responsible government if the Cons' cuts lead to predictable health and safety consequences.

- Crawford Kilian optimistically thinks there's a conservative soul to be saved through a splinter party from the Cons.

- Susan Delacourt proposes that political marketing and advertising be subject to publicly-enforceable standards.

- Finally, Dr. Dawg recognizes that there's only so much we can accomplish through a political system which the Cons are entirely happy to trash. But I'd see that problem as part of the reason why unofficial gathering places and a consistent flow of information to counter the Cons' publicly-funded propaganda - whether online or otherwise - are absolutely needed to help muster a movement to change course.

On speculative advances

Somehow most of the discussion of Thomas Mulcair's Question Period appearance this morning seems to have missed what strikes me as the most important point. So let's take a closer look at how his message has evolved from the leadership campaign - and how it figures to position the NDP to form government in 2015.

At first glance, Mulcair's answer in response to a question focused on the possibility of a coalition government in 2015 might not seem like a particularly strong one:

Mulcair said the party will be running candidates in all 338 federal ridings (adjusted with new additions) in the next election, otherwise the party would be conceding territory to the Conservatives.

"Anything beyond that is pure speculation," he said. "My goal is to form an NDP majority government and with the types of polls we're seeing now Canadians are rallying to us."

But there's a rather significant difference between the new declaration that it's too early to say whether Mulcair would consider a coalition, and Mulcair's earlier statement that a "no" to any such possibility was "categorical, absolute, irrefutable and non-negotiable. It’s no. End of story. Full stop."

In effect, merely in recognizing that any talk of a post-election coalition will depend on the circumstances at the time, Mulcair is taking a more cooperative line than the leaders of the Official Opposition in the previous two elections. Which means that the NDP will preserve at least some of its hard-earned reputation as the party most willing to work pragmatically toward progressive goals.

Mind you, the statement that we'll need to see what happens doesn't serve as quite the strong defence of cooperation that I'd most like to see. But it does open the door for a neat contrast against Libs past and present - allowing Mulcair to say he'll consider working with the Libs and others toward common goals, while highlighting just what those goals are for the NDP. And if the Cons decide to follow up with another bizarre anti-cooperation crusade that pushes Mulcair to make stronger statements about the importance of working together rather than being as insular and narrowly-focused as Harper and company, then the result for the NDP figures to be all the better.