Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- On the anniversary of Jack Layton's death, Tim Harper points out how far the NDP has come in just a year, while Brian Topp highlights where the party still needs to go:

(W)hat to do about the federal government’s crisis of relevance? Recent Liberal and Conservative governments have worked together on a common agenda to make Canada’s national government largely irrelevant to the daily lives of most Canadians. Today’s federal government is a Parliament, it is a public service, it is an army and police force, and it is a largely unconditional bank machine for provinces.

Small wonder that Canadians increasing tune federal politics out. Small wonder Parliament in recent times has been about embarrassing squabbles over trivia. What else was there to talk about? Here is the fundamental mission of the New Democrats: to demonstrate that the Liberal/Conservatives are wrong, and that there are indeed important projects and priorities that Canadians can and should work on together. Not symbolic issues, designed to get us angry and to divide us from each other. The real stuff: Equality. Jobs. Health care. Economic security. The environment. Reclaiming our good name in in the world.

New Democrats need to find a way to give Canadians hope that we are more than the sum of our parts, and that there is much we can do together to make a good country a much better one – carefully and prudently, one practical step at a time, without reigniting the old federal-provincial wars that separatists and conservatives build on, each in their own special way

Meanwhile, John Ibbitson has a rather smaller vision for the NDP, suggesting that it should do nothing but accept the top-down, consumerist political style that's turned off so many voters. Ryan Cleary offers his own tribute, and Cityslikr challenges anybody who claims to respectfully disagree with Layton's proposals for greater generosity and equality to suggest some alternate means of building a better society.

- Mia Rabson rightly questions Elections Canada's lack of interest in prosecuting attempts at foreign influence on Canadian elections. And Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report that even as Elections Canada directly intervenes to provide evidence useful to Ted Opitz's argument over Etobicoke Centre, it's withholding information which might be relevant to the Council of Canadians' challenges in seven other ridings.

- Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob are almost entirely right in criticizing the Cons' attitude toward criminal law. But it's worth adding a proviso to the headline: the Cons' view is more along the lines of "once a criminal, always a criminal unless a Conservative", as the party is quick to offer absolution to anybody who's seen as politically useful.

- Finally, Matt Miller neatly sums up the mentality of "drawbridge Republicans":

(W)e’ve never had two wealthy candidates on a national ticket whose top priority is to reduce already low taxes on the well-to-do while raising taxes on everyone else — even as they propose to slash programs that serve the poor, or that (like college aid) create chances for the lowly born to rise.

Call them the Drawbridge Republicans. As the moniker implies, these are wealthy Republicans who have no qualms about pulling up the drawbridge behind them.
...
Most rich Republicans who champion regressive tax plans find it necessary to at least pretend they’re doing something to help average folks. John McCain, who’s lived large for decades thanks to his wife’s inheritance, famously had trouble keeping track of how many homes he owned — but McCain also tried bravely to create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. George W. Bush campaigned as a “compassionate conservative,” and touted education initiatives that made this claim plausible.

Today’s Drawbridge Republicans can’t be bothered. Yes, when their political back is to the wall — as Romney’s increasingly is — they’ll slap together a page of bullet points and dub it “a plan for the middle class.” But this is only under duress. The rest of the time they seem blissfully unaware of how off-key they sound.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Chairfelines.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- As we approach the anniversary of Jack Layton's death, Tom Mulcair discusses some of the lessons he learned from his predecessor as NDP leader:

(W)hen Mulcair first joined the NDP caucus in 2007, he was sometimes frustrated by the 'go-around' sessions — seemingly endless, repetitive meetings at which MPs debated issues and batted ideas back and forth.

"Sometimes I would find the go-arounds in caucus to be really long processes, but then I realized what (Layton) was doing. He was working with every single person in the room and there was a real art to it.
...
He also learned something about the fine art of political persuasion from Layton.

"Jack rarely tried to convince people by saying to them, 'This is what I'm going to do for you.' Jack had a way of talking to people, which was, 'Things have to change, here's how you can help bring about that change.' That's subtle but it's something that Jack really did intuitively and it's something I picked up on."

Mulcair said he's tried to adopt a similar approach, "rather than lining up policies and saying this what we're going to do, it's we want to listen to you, we want to work with you and we think we can do things better together."

 - Duncan Cameron echoes the view that Layton's willingness to listen set him apart from far too many of his political colleagues:

Reaching out to people, getting to know what they were thinking, opening a two-way dialogue (even with serious adversaries) was what characterized Jack Layton as a leader. Canadians had Jack right. He was the guy to be with for a beer, or to share a bottle of wine. He enjoyed himself, and was easy to like, as people guessed. He wanted to share his thoughts -- after he had heard from you first.

-  And Joan Bryden reports on polling showing just how fondly Layton is remembered by Canadians in general:

12 months removed from the emotional intensity of the moment, a new poll suggests a majority of people believe last year’s remarkable national display of remembrance was both authentic and appropriate — and they continue to hold Mr. Layton and his legacy in high esteem.

Some 62 per cent of respondents to the poll, conducted by Harris-Decima for The Canadian Press, said they viewed the torrent of public grief for Mr. Layton as genuine, compared with just 27 per cent who said they felt mourners simply got caught up in the moment.
...
And a whopping 91 per cent said they believe Mr. Layton made a positive contribution to Canada, 33 per cent of them describing his contribution as “very positive.”

 - On another note, Steve Morgan makes the case for universal pharmacare:

A recent study found that one in 10 Canadians can’t afford to fill their prescriptions as directed. Such financial barriers often increase costs elsewhere in the health care system — from the public purse. For example, if a parent cannot afford the necessary drugs for a child’s asthma, they may be forced to visit the emergency department when the asthma gets out of control.

Thus, the question is not whether it is fair to provide refugees with prescription drug coverage; the question is whether it is fair — and even fiscally responsible — not to provide such coverage to all Canadians.
...
In truth, a universal Pharmacare program would save Canadians billions of dollars; some estimate up to $10 billion per year.

The proof is found in virtually all countries comparable to Canada, countries like Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In comparison to Canada, pharmaceutical spending is lower and has been growing more slowly in all of these countries. Yet they all provide better, more equitable access to prescription drugs than Canada through universal Pharmacare systems of one form or another.
...
If Canadians take pride in their medicare system, and want to achieve better access to medicines at lower costs than they pay today, then maybe it is time for the original vision of medicare, which included Pharmacare, to be completed as planned.

- And finally, Don Lenihan has his doubts that mandatory voting is necessary to encourage political parties to reach out to disaffected voters. But while I'd agree with Lenihan that mandatory voting without a cultural shift would have only a limited impact, it seems to me entirely possible that one might facilitate the other - both by forcing a government elected by a small proportion of the population to reach out to a far larger group, and by setting up incentives for parties to build long-term connections to voters who they know will be participating for decades to come.

On openings

Following up on this morning's post (as well as discussions from Kayle Hatt and Chantal Hebert), I'll offer my theory as to why a Quebec NDP might be a perfect fit for what's otherwise a relatively crowded provincial scene.

At the outset, Quebec voters have shown an inclination to give a chance to parties who decline to get caught up in the traditional federalist/sovereigntist polarity in favour of a more policy-based approach fronted by a well-regarded leader. In the past few years, the ADQ provincially, NDP federally and now the CAQ provincially have all fit the bill. And all have managed to earn the support of a substantial proportion of Quebec's electorate without the strength on the ground of the province's better-established political machines.

But there's an important distinction within that list of parties.

The right-leaning ADQ and CAQ have run out of steam around 30% of the popular vote in trying to pair a "change" message with their ideological bent, while the NDP's support has at times reached up into 40s and even 50s even through a change in leadership. And I suspect that's the result of the NDP offering a set of political values which represents a better match both for the province at large, and in particular the set of voters who are open to new allegiances.

At the moment, the Quebec scene features three sovereigntist parties fighting for left-of-centre votes, along with multiple centre-to-right parties trying to claim the federalist mantle. And the new parties for this election cycle merely added to those pairings.


But there's a reason why those well-worn combinations are producing diminishing returns across the board. And there's surely nobody in a better position to offer an alternative that can draw from dissatisfied voters in both broad camps than the party which has already managed the feat federally.

Of course, a provincial NDP wouldn't yet have one of the common ingredients for a Quebec breakthrough. But I'd have to figure it would have a strong chance to find a leader who can fill in that gap - whether from the ranks of other parties as has been the trend, or from among the NDP's current base.

And with Quebec's current parties fighting to see who can eke out enough seats to cling to power with support from between a quarter and a third of the province's voters, the prospect of a party with a real opportunity to approach true majority status could make for an even more dramatic orange wave than the one which swept 59 NDP MPs into office.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Pratap Chatterjee discusses our new age of robber barons - and how the wealthiest CEOs get out of paying any tax at all on massive sums of money:

The Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington DC thinktank, says that a chunk of the money Ellison spent buying Lanai should have paid for elementary school teachers and clean energy jobs, instead of fulfilling the billionaire CEO's vacation fantasies. That's one conclusion of their new report, "The CEO Hands in Uncle Sam's Pocket: How Our Tax Dollars Subsidize Exorbitant Executive Pay", which points out that Oracle took advantage of a 1993 loophole in tax law to designate $76m of Ellison's income as "performance-related pay", which allowed him to avoid paying any taxes on the money.

Dozens of US CEOs have cashed in on this major tax incentive at an estimated cost to US taxpayers of $9.7bn last year. Statistics provided by National Priorities Project suggest that the same amount of money could have paid for 142,625 elementary school teachers, or healthcare for 4.96 million low-income children.

"At a time of austerity, it's beyond absurd that billions of our tax dollars are pouring into executive pockets," says Sarah Anderson, a report co-author.

- Meanwhile, Erin Weir points out that Vale's choice not to proceed with a potash mine in Kronau only highlights the fact that corporate decision-making has far more to do with other factors than with provincial giveaways - serving as all the more reason for Saskatchewan to ensure it gets fair value for our potash.

- And Jim Stanford notes that the key to growth in our auto sector involves public policy which actually values industrial development, not further attacks on employees:

Imagine, purely for discussion, that labour costs were reduced in Canada. Right now, with a very strong dollar, total nominal labour costs (including benefits) at the three companies average about $3 per hour more than in the U.S. (Real wages, adjusted for higher Canadian prices, are actually lower here.) Suppose that gap was eliminated and costs fell by $3 per hour. Would that usher in a new era of automotive prosperity?

It takes an average of 29 hours of in-house shop-floor labour to manufacture one vehicle (including engine, transmission and final assembly). A $3 hourly saving therefore translates into an $87 reduction in the cost of a car. That’s not even enough to pay for deluxe floor mats in your new sedan, let alone underwrite the future success of an entire industry.

Meanwhile, the all-important policy context in Canada is currently making things worse, not better, for the auto industry. For example, the Harper government is aggressively pursuing free-trade deals that would eliminate tariffs on imports from three different auto-exporting powerhouses: the aforementioned Germany, Japan and South Korea. That would undermine the competitive position of domestic-made vehicles by about $2,000 per unit – outweighing our hypothetical labour savings by a 20-to-1 ratio. Similarly, the continuing flight of the loonie eats up any labour savings as fast as they can be tallied; indeed, the loonie’s 5-cent rise since June alone has added $3 per hour to Canada’s apparent hourly cost.

It seems almost pointless to even worry about labour costs when the broader policy framework that is so essential for industrial success is glaringly absent.

- Finally, Dene Moore reports on how the Harper Cons have gutted the exact review process which they plan to rely on as validating the construction of pipelines wherever Enbridge chooses to place them.

The final piece

Let's follow up on the news that the NDP is planning to assemble a Quebec provincial party in time for the next election with a look at how the move would affect the NDP. And lest there be any doubt, I'd see the development as a huge plus for the party at both levels.

For now, though, let's focus on the federal considerations involved.

The most obvious benefit to a Quebec provincial NDP would be the opportunity for greater party-building - in Tom Mulcair's regular analogy, encouraging the growth of roots to support the party's trees. A provincial wing would set up a formal structure for membership sales and fund-raising within the province which has shown the greatest support for the party, while also allowing a far greater number of interested citizens to get involved as volunteers and candidates to build the next generation of potential leaders.

But the more intriguing development might be found in the widespread theory that Canadian politics are headed toward a greater left-vs-right clash of ideas.

So far, the Cons have been ahead of the game in developing national links between like-minded people. But they haven't been able to develop a consistent national and provincial brand like their American counterparts, due in large part to the fact that the Conservative name is mud in at least a few provinces.

That means that after years of the Cons setting the terms of debate, the NDP is now closer than any other party to presenting a consistent set of values across Canada at the federal and provincial levels. And a Quebec NDP would be the final piece of that puzzle.

Of course, with the opportunity for such national definition comes the need for a Quebec NDP to stake out a specific patch of political terrain - which I'll cover in a later post on the possible Quebec effects of a provincial NDP. For now, though, suffice it to say that the advantages in developing a provincial support structure in Quebec look to far outweigh any costs for the federal NDP.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your Sunday reading.

- Armine Yalnizyan points to the Law Commission of Ontario's proposals to make sure that labour laws don't stack the deck against workers, and encourages citiznes to have their own say:

The truth is, most people don’t know anything about their legal rights as workers, and even if you do, it’s a difficult system to navigate. Putting aside the costs and serious backlog in the courts, if you don’t have a union backing you, you know you’ll get fired if you complain. So most people just quit one lousy job and….end up in another.

But that simply emboldens bully employers. So it’s really up to the rest of us to become more aware of these situations and talk about them, as this process triggered by the Law Commission of Ontario hopes to do.

They are inviting response and your ideas on how to improve the legislation, or better enforce them.  You can check out their website and weigh in with your views by October 1.

- And of course, the Saskatchewan NDP is working to ensure that citizens have an opportunity to speak out here as well. Which stands in stark contrast to the Harper Cons' longtime plan to silence anybody who didn't read from their own talking points (as pointed out by Keith Reynolds).

- But as important as it is for citizens to be able to speak out, it also matters who decides whether or not to listen to us. And on that front, I'll have to disagree with Adam Radwanski's belief that a trend of political offices being placed in corporate hands somehow offers any particular reason for hope - as it only seems likely to ensure that the business elite continues to run roughshod over everybody else.

- And Kev provides a prime example of how public policy has been designed to fail people who most need it - as Ontario's basic social assistance amounts aren't even enough to cover housing (let alone other basic needs) in much of the province.

- Finally, on a more optimistic note, Aaron Wherry writes about Jack Layton's final letter to Canadians, and how it's still serving to inspire plenty of people as we approach the anniversary of his passing.

On potential support

Abacus' latest federal poll includes some noteworthy data on which voters see a real prospect of shifting their preferences - and particularly on the number of voters who are willing to entirely rule out a vote for either the Cons or the NDP.

In particular, Bloc and Lib supporters are roughly twice as likely to say there's "no chance" of their supporting the Cons than the NDP (72%-37% and 50%-24% respectively), while the Greens aren't far behind at 52%-30% - all of which suggests that plenty of non-supporters are somewhat leaving open the possibility of uniting behind the NDP as the leading alternative to the Cons. And even comparing the parties' own supporters, more NDP than Con voters rule out a vote for the other party by a 63%-56% margin.

Which leaves one noteworthy group of voters where the Cons point to a slight advantage in growth potential: those who are truly undecided, who rule the Cons out slightly less than the NDP (43% compared to 48%, with a comparable advantage in respondents indicating a "fair chance" of support).

Now, I'd be interested to find out what group of voters is mostly represented in the "undecided" group to produce that result. (Perhaps Red Tories and blue Libs who aren't currently satisfied enough with any of the options to indicate a preference?) But it's noteworthy that the NDP looks to have far more room for growth than the Cons among every other party's supporters - meaning that the Cons' hold on power may depend on their being able to reach voters who haven't yet found any reason to support them, rather than merely catering to their current base.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Toby Sanger discusses how wealthy Canadians - especially in the financial sector - are making more and more use of offshore tax havens to avoid paying their fair share:

The latest Statistics Canada figures  show 24% of Canadian direct investment overseas in 2011 went to the top twelve tax havens, up from 10% in 1987.   In fact, tax havens of the Barbados, Cayman Islands, Ireland, Luxembourg and Bermuda were five of the top eight national destinations of total Canadian investment abroad, with the US, UK and Australia the only countries not considered tax havens in this group.
...

These totals would be even higher if they included figures for other tax havens such as Monaco, Liechtenstein and many others where the figures either aren’t available or weren’t made available for confidentiality reasons.  They also don’t include money going to tax havens associated with the UK and the US, such as Channel Islands, or through banks in those countries.

The finance and insurance sector now accounts for over 51% of Canada’s total direct investment overseas, more than double its share from 1987, more evidence that a large share of this money is going overseas to avoid taxes.   The Harper government has lauded Canada’s growing investment overseas, claiming it shows looser foreign investment rules (which allowed numerous takeovers of Canadian industry) have been beneficial, but the actual figures show the reality is quite different.  A large and growing share of this money isn’t going into real capital investments that could ultimately benefit people overseas or in Canada; it’s going into tax avoidance that benefits a wealthy few at the expense of the large majority in Canada and around the world.

 - Meanwhile, Art Eggleton is learning that the best way to make the case to help Canadians living in poverty is to advocate for greater equality at all levels of income.

- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report on the Cons' response to polling data on the effect of Robocon. But it's most noteworthy that a shotgun approach may have shot the Cons' own case in the foot since so many of the Cons' attacks have been pre-refuted for the court's convenience:

In her 35-page affidavit, Corbin says Graves’ results cannot be relied on because the survey was conducted so long after the fact.

“It is implausible that consumers would remember not only getting a call a year after it occurred, but specific details of the call.”

Graves had said in his affidavit that he dealt with the possibility of “over-remembering” by comparing his results in the seven ridings with a control group of 1,500 people in other ridings.

Corbin suggests Graves didn’t make his raw data available for others to review. However, the poll results have been posted on ekospolitics.com since shortly after his affidavit was filed.

- And pogge offers up another election fraud roundup, with Con MP Peter Penashue apparently joining the list of Con MPs who manage to stand out in the cover-up department even by his party's pathetic standards.

- Finally, Susan Delacourt follows up on the idea of mandatory voting with an apt observation as to how it would change the complexion of election day:

In Australia, voting is mandatory. In Canada, it’s not. Muttart told me earlier this year that he was struck by how quiet things are there on election day — all the frenzied get-out-the-vote efforts by parties in Canada simply don’t exist in Australia.

Ask any Canadian political volunteer, of any stripe, about that big E-day push, known by the acronym GOTV. It can be a circus. And in the midst of that melee in the 2011 federal election, someone got the idea that the tools of GOTV, the databases and the phone contacts, could be used just as easily to keep voters away from the polls.

Musical interlude

Garbage - You Look So Fine (Acoustic)

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Andrew Jackson thoroughly demolishes the argument that after three decades of wage stagnation and soaring corporate profits, Canada's economy somehow needs to see workers suffer even more:

The reality is that the pay of most workers has stagnated in real terms over the past thirty years as the profit share of  GDP has increased at the expense of wages, and as wages have become much more unequal with more and more of the total wage and salary bill going to the top 1% made up mainly of senior executives. As the OECD recently reported, since 1990, 6% of total national income has been shifted from wages to profits and the pay of the top 1% combined.

And a recent Statistics Canada study documents the stagnation of real hourly wages of the majority of Canadian workers between 1981 and 2011. Over that entire thirty year period, the average hourly wage of full-time workers rose by just 14% (and that includes the top 1%.) . This compares to growth of over 50% in real GDP per person over the same period.

The view that wages are “too high” boils down to saying that workers have no right to share in rising national income, all of which should go to profits and senior managers. That is, to say the least, a curious basis on which to sell the proposition that workers have any kind of stake in our current economic arrangements.

- Following up on yesterday's column, Mark Lemstra also sees plenty of reason for optimism in the Canadian Medical Association's focus on the social determinants of health.

- Althia Raj writes about the electoral boundary revision process in B.C. (featuring a commissioner's remarkable declaration that public input will be ignored) and Alberta (where there's reason for optimism in a shift toward better urban representation similar to that proposed in Saskatchewan).

- Sixth Estate is far too kind in responding to David Akin's pointless criticism of one of the most useful tools for accountability we've seen in Canadian politics.

- Finally, I'll give Michael Fougere this much: he's absolutely right that at the moment, the City of Regina's core business isn't so much land development or public administration as catering to private land developers. But this fall's election would seem like a rather important opportunity to change that focus.

A convenient reminder

No, we shouldn't be surprised that Vic Toews is pioneering exactly the type of reality check that's most needed when reporting on the Cons' own PR efforts. But since Toews has helpfully supplied the idea and the template, here's a handy checklist for any churnalist otherwise tempted to merely take a Con announcement and run with it...

Conservative (MP)/(Senator)/(spokesflack) _(name)_ is expected to hold a press conference at _(location)_ on _(date)_.

It is important for you to be aware of the need to respond to any misinformation which might be presented.

_(name)_'s presentation is expected to consist primarily of (talking points pulled directly from Conservative advertising)/(fabricated "facts")/(baseless smears of opposition parties). Before reporting on the press conference, please (apply basic common sense)/(talk to an expert on the subject)/(spend five minutes on teh Google)/(consult government documents which contradict the public statement) to ensure that the most glaring inaccuracies are corrected.

Of course, the above assumes it's actually worth the media's time to report on the Cons' spin in the first place - which is itself highly doubtful. But at the very least, such a filter should go a long way in making sure the truth gets its shoes on and starts catching up to Con misinformation as soon as possible.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Sum Of Us deserves plenty of credit for highlighting Enbridge's attempt to delete a thousand square kilometers of treacherous and sensitive islands in order to sugar-coat the dangers of shipping oil out of Kitimat. But it's also worth noting that the issue goes beyond the precise site chosen as the first and cheapest option: as Enbridge itself has claimed in its attempt to assuage people who stand to be affected by the pipeline inland, there's far more risk involved in shipping oil products by tanker than by pipeline wherever they choose to place the port. And that means the greater outrage is the Cons' utter negligence in doing everything they can to encourage tanker traffic.

- Meanwhile, John O'Connor points out the difference between the Cons' refusal to study or regulate  the genuine dangers of reckless oil production and use, and their determination to find fault with cleaner and safer wind power alternatives.

- Erin catches Don Morgan in a whopper of a lie about the state of Saskatchewan manufacturing since his government took power:

Saskatchewan newspapers report:

“Certainly in professional, scientific and technical areas and in the mining and the manufacturing sector (the job numbers) are very strong,” Don Morgan, minister of advanced education and labour relations, told reporters at news conference Friday.

On Friday, Statistics Canada reported that Saskatchewan manufacturing employment dropped by 900 last month and declined by 600 over the past year. Since Morgan’s Sask. Party government took office, our province has lost 5,100 manufacturing jobs. By what measure is manufacturing employment “very strong”?

...

It’s easy to understand why Sask. Party politicians would like to claim strong manufacturing employment. They are trying to characterize “Dutch disease” as an eastern Canadian preoccupation. In reality, manufacturing job losses have afflicted all regions of Canada, including Saskatchewan.

- Finally, Bill Curry reports on the radical anti-worker advice that looks to form the basis for the Cons' next budget. But it's worth noting that even the Cons' corporate allies are using inequality language as both a goal and an excuse to attack labour just as brutally as their Republican counterparts:

Labour issues surface in several discussion categories, with the general view that Canadian workers are overpriced. “Need to address wage differentials in labor market among countries; we are losing jobs to other countries,” the memo reads. “Right to Work legislation should be pondered as it creates inequities in productivity; US example was provided.”

In the United States, about two dozen state governments have passed right-to-work legislation, which allows workers to opt out of paying union dues. Critics call the measures a form of union busting.

New column day

Here, on how the Canadian Medical Association's new focus on inequality and the social determinants of health may be nicely timed to shape Canada's political future.

For further reading...
- Some of the CMA's history of advocating for increased privatization can be found here, here and here.
- By way of comparison, more recent documents like the CMA's principles for health-care transformation and its federal budget consultation submission (PDF) take a rather more productive position. And new president Anna Reid looks to be continuing that trend.
- And as an added contrast, compare the issues voted on by the CMA five years ago to those considered and approved this week.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Tobi Cohen picks up on the possibility of a provincial NDP in Quebec, and notes that the federal party is considering what can be done before the next election after that set for September:

NDP national director Chantale Vallerand told Postmedia News talks are preliminary. “There’s been so many things thrown at us in the past year that we’ve been busy making sure that we were on top of everything at the federal level so we didn’t have any time, resources or energy to devote at a provincial level,” she noted.

“Having said that, we are exploring options and possibilities on how that can be done at the provincial level but it’s not short-term . . . It’s not something we are saying no to.”

- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report that the RCMP has been involved in the search for the fraudsters behind Robocon. 

- Peter O'Neil notes that the National Energy Board looks to be engaged in a Keystone Kops routine of its own: having declared last week that it wouldn't consider the scathing U.S. National Transportation Safety Board report on Enbridge's Kalamazoo oil spill, it's now decided to demand that Enbridge file the report in its Gateway pipeline review. Which means that Stephen Harper would have yet more reason to hedge his bets on the pipeline - if he hadn't been the one to rig the game in the first place.

- Finally, Malcolm weighs in on Saskatchewan's proposed riding boundaries.

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Cats reaching out.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking ahead, the economist sees two possible scenarios.

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

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

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

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

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

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Pamela Palmater discusses how the Cons' push to monetize First Nations reserves ultimately looks to be little more than another giveaway to the oil industry:

By now most of you have heard about the Harper government's intention to introduce legislation that will turn reserve lands into individual holdings called fee simple. The legislation has been referred to as the First Nation Property Ownership Act (FNPOA). Some media outlets have referred to it as "privatization" but what the legislation would really do is turn the collective ownership of reserve lands into small pieces of land owned by individuals who could then sell it to non-First Nations peoples, land-holding companies and corporations, like Enbridge for example.

The idea is not a new one. Hernando de Soto has been trying to sell the same idea to Indigenous populations all over the world. The evidence seems to show that the Indigenous peoples are far worse off for it. Prior to de Soto's destructive world tour, the Indigenous Nations in the United States suffered the sting of fee simple legislation in the Dawes Act. Once the lands were given to individuals, the lands were subject to state laws. The same would happen in Canada where the lands would be subject to provincial instead of federal law.

The primary purpose of the Dawes Act was to assimilate Indigenous peoples in the U.S. by breaking up their Indigenous governments. The legislation allowed the government to divide up communal lands into small parcels to be held by individuals. It has been described by historians as:"the culmination of American attempts to destroy tribes and their governments and to open Indian lands to settlement by non-Indians and to development by railroads" (Oklahoma Historical Society). In the Canadian context, similar legislation will open up "Indian lands" for big oil, gas and mineral extraction.

- Meanwhile, Les Whittington reports that the Cons retaliated against Attawapiskat for rightly challenging their own improper actions by then denying federal support for a desperately-needed housing plan.

- Dan Leger notes that the Cons have set themselves up to wear full political responsibility for pushing the Gateway and other pipelines, but recognizes that they have plenty to lose in having made it so.

- Finally, Mia Rabson comments on mandatory voting - including this from one former PM who sees some merit in the idea:

Former Prime Minister Joe Clark told the Free Press in June he was slowly changing his mind about the idea of mandatory voting.

"I used to dismiss it because it seemed to be ordering people to do something they wouldn't do by their will," Clark said, following a forum on youth voting hosted by Elections Canada. "But I think the analogy with speeding laws, with other rules holds. It is a national interest that the public have more participation in the political process and perhaps a requirement to vote would lead to that."

Clark said he hasn't studied the issue much himself, nor has he looked at the experience of mandatory voting in Australia, "but I think we're in a sufficiently serious situation now that we need to look at other alternatives. I don't think we should exclude anything."

Monday Morning 'Rider Blogging

Most of the commentary on Friday's loss to Edmonton has focused on the common traits between the Saskatchewan Roughriders' last three losses. But the more important developments may have been some new weaknesses which figure to make it much tougher for the 'Riders to get back in the win column.

To start with the points which might serve as a distraction, let's note that Friday's game offered a prime opportunity to confuse cause and effect when it comes to late-game turnovers. Yes, Darian Durant was intercepted twice - but only with the 'Riders already well behind in the game, and at a point where playing it safe wasn't an option.

Which isn't to say Durant had a great game overall. While his numbers looked much better for a few big plays (Taj Smith's circus catch and a couple of brilliant runs by Kory Sheets), Durant was once again somewhat off target with many of his throws and decisions (with a completion thrown from across the line of scrimmage serving as a particularly ugly drive-killer). And aside from Sheets, the rest of the offence was equally inconsistent.

But the 'Riders' have shown they can win with a modest offence if the team's other units play well. And that's where Friday's result raised some real cause for concern.

On special teams, Tristan Jackson had by far his worst game of the season. In some cases, that could be traced to obvious missed blocks; in others, it simply looked like Jackson wasn't finding the seams which he normally exploits as well as any returner in the CFL. But it's not an accident that the 'Riders were able to pile up large yardage totals without scoring a lot of points - and much of the problem has to do with the team starting with far worse field position than it has in most games this season.

Likewise, a defence which throttled the Eskimos just a few weeks earlier suddenly looked helpless against Steven Jyles' offence. And while most of the commentary so far has focused on the secondary, it wasn't only the Eskimos' passing attack that was unrecognizable compared to week 2: Hugh Charles also had a strong game thanks in large part to poor tackling by the 'Riders' run-stoppers.

Which is to say that rather than merely focusing on their late-game weaknesses, the 'Riders also look to have some work to do in rebuilding what seemed to be their strengths. And with nearly every team in the CFL clustered around the .500 mark, the 'Riders can't count on making the playoffs if they aren't able to regain at least part of their early-season form.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Carol Goar comments on the CEP/CAW plan to merge and work toward a far more active type of unionism:

Both the CAW and the CEP — of which I am a member — gobbled up smaller unions to reach their current size. But neither achieved the critical mass to keep growing or to revitalize the labour movement.

This time they’ve come up with a more ambitious — but much riskier — formula. They aim to create a new union unlike anything labour activists or the public have seen in the past.
 • It would be “a fighting force for all workers,” not just its own members.
 • Its reach would extend beyond traditional workplaces. It would organize temp workers, contract employees, immigrants in precarious jobs, the self-employed and the unemployed.
 • It would be open to all “who share the vision of a stronger, larger Canadian social union,” including artists, entrepreneurs, homemakers, community activists and seniors.
 • It would offer support and services to non-members engaged in disputes with their employers.
 • It would inspire — embarrass if necessary — umbrella bodies such as the Canadian Labour Congress and the Ontario Federation of Labour to be bolder, more active and more forceful.

For those curious, I tend to agree with Goar that a more ambitious, higher-stakes push is a necessary step in ensuring the relevance and effectiveness of the labour movement. With the basic social contract which allowed unions to focus more narrowly on securing their positions within large unionized workplaces now under vigorous attacks from the Cons, their cronies and the corporate sector, it looks to me to be a losing strategy to cling to shrinking fiefdoms rather than engaging a greater range of workers to again shape a broader social agenda. And it's by showing the benefit of collective action for its members that unions can help make the case to apply similar principles in society at large.

- Meanwhile, George Lakoff sounds a warning against using frustration with "low-information voters" as an excuse for failing to effectively frame and promote progressive values.

- Janyce McGregor discusses the conflicting pressures on the Cons in deciding whether or not to force through the Gateway pipeline. Meanwhile, Calvin Sandborn asks whether the Cons plan to learn anything from Enbridge's track records of major spills and pathetic responses, while Iain Hunter highlights the steps they've taken to avoid doing anything of the sort.

- Finally, Peter Wilby comments on how strict intellectual property laws (which of course the Cons only want to make worse) are creating perverse incentives for businesses to innovate only in the field of contrived rent-seeking schemes rather than actual product improvement:

The US drugs industry, say Light and Lexchin, spends only 1.3% of revenues (excluding taxpayer subsidies) on basic research to discover molecules that could lead to genuinely new medicines. It spends far more on maintaining profits – among the highest of any industry, after tax – and on PR, marketing and lobbying. There is an innovation crisis, but largely of the companies' own making.

For years nearly all original drugs brought to market have been based on research either at taxpayer-funded institutions, mainly universities, or in small biotechnology companies. Big companies, such as Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (recently fined $3bn by US regulators for aggressive and misleading marketing), are essentially rent-seekers. They do not create wealth and add social benefit, but enrich themselves through control of resources, as landowners have done for generations. And what has happened in "big pharma" – long marked down by the left, and some on the right, as an unacceptable face of capitalism – mirrors what has happened across the British and US economies. The innovation crisis is not confined to the drugs industry.
...
Technologists tweak vegetables and fruits to make them last longer, look better and travel more easily, without regard to flavour. Bankers develop new trading "products" that, however you cut it, are still about borrowing and lending. We have digital radio and high-definition TV, though not everybody thinks either improves on what existed before. For many companies, skilful marketing of products that aren't significantly different from what preceded them has replaced innovation. It's cheaper and less risky to convince customers that something is ground-breaking, even when it isn't, than develop something truly innovatory.

In short, rent-seeking is now far more lucrative than innovation that delivers social benefits. The big rewards go to directors and executives of large companies – and financial traders, the ultimate rent-seekers who impose an unproductive tax on invention, investment and hard work across the world.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher keep up their reporting on Robocon by noting that Elections Canada's trail seems to have gone cold with the use of an unsecured wifi connection to hide the identity of Pierre Poutine. But as Susan Delacourt points out, that fact only confirms that the Cons' election fraud seems to have been rather deliberately planned to escape detection.

- Meanwhile, Delacourt also laments the effect of "churnalism" in which the media serves largely as a conduit for government or business talking points:

Harper has not held a news conference around Parliament Hill since 2009 and has succeeded in drawing strict limits around media access to his government. “It’s not that he hates the media,” one Conservative MP said to me earlier this year. “It’s more that he has no respect for them.”

Why has this worked so well for Harper? Probably because the public buys the idea, frequently put forward by the Conservatives and their allies, that the media is little more than a delivery system for the “spin” the politicians like to spout.

Watching most of those MP panels on TV, or wading into the daily scrums in the foyer of the Commons, it’s hard to disagree with that assessment. That’s not debate we’re seeing — it’s just people reciting well-rehearsed lines, speaking past each other, and certainly not answering any questions.

In the print realm, meanwhile, politicians and their handlers are now fond of replying to media questions with sparse, fact-free emails, timed to arrive just before deadline, so there is no opportunity for follow-up or subsequent queries.

All of this has been rightly dubbed “churnalism” — the practice in which journalists simply take the PR material handed to them and churn it out to their readers or viewers.
...
Any solution, though, is going to have to address this issue of the “churn” and the spin. It won’t be easy. By any rough count, the growing number of communications professionals on Parliament Hill (about 1,500 in government alone, according to a Hill Times tally) vastly outpaces the ranks of the media (around 400 in the press gallery, and shrinking, it seems, monthly.)

The number that should focus the collective media mind, however, is that 78 per cent figure south of the border — all those people who now view political reporting in the same, dim light as they view the politicians.

And that may not be because the media is the enemy of politicians, but because it’s grown too accommodating to the spin and talking points.

- And on a related note, Peter O'Neil learns not to take the self-serving statements of dirty oil advocates at face value.

- Irene Mathyssen discusses why the Cons' push for privatized pensions doesn't figure to provide retirement security for Canadians:

The regulations surrounding the administration of PRPPs are yet to be established; but unless the cost of administration is low, and unless the pooled amount of investment is high -- which is unlikely given the non-mandatory nature of the plan -- PRPPs will not be any more relevant as a retirement savings option to Canadian workers than RRSPs. In other words, the banks will profit and workers will continue to struggle to make ends meet before and after retirement.

The voluntary nature of this savings plan is not the only drawback. PRPPs as a retirement savings vehicle function like RRSPs. They are taxed on withdrawal and affect net eligibility for Old Age Security (OAS). PRPPs and RRSPs only serve middle- to high-income earners (those averaging wages of $50,000 or more) at retirement. Workers making less actually run the risk having their income drop to below poverty levels at retirement because of the fact that their PRPP income is taxed and clawed back from OAS eligibility.

- Finally, Bob Hepburn documents the remarkable story of the McGuinty Libs releasing outdated and inaccurate data as an excuse to close Ontario Place just as it was in danger of proving a smashing success.

Musical interlude

Deadmau5 - Faxing Berlin

Friday Morning Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- pogge offers up the definitive response to the Cons' attempt to encourage a sell-off of First Nations reserve land:

When you look past the paternalistic argument that the only way First Nations communities can possibly thrive is to be more like us, this is what's left:

...businesses that want to unlock the economic potential of reserves, from real estate development to forestry and mining, need the legal certainty that a property regime makes possible.

In this context, "unlock the economic potential" looks very much like a euphemism for "streamline the regulatory and tax regime to make it as easy as possible for us to suck all the wealth out." We've been unlocking our own economic potential since around the time Reagan was elected president south of the border. We've unlocked so much economic potential that we now live in the Age of Austerity because all the money is stashed in offshore accounts. If the First Nations have any sense, they'll tell us to get stuffed.

- Meanwhile, FSIN notes that the Cons are slashing funding for First Nations housing.

- If we haven't yet turned every public service into a Con crony's profit stream, it isn't for a lack of trying - with the administration of public benefits programs looming as the next area to be handed over to the corporate sector. But there are some pieces of the Cons' work that are too dirty for even the most anti-social corporation to take on.

- The Victoria Times Colonist and Graham Thomson are duly skeptical about Stephen Harper's claim to be the slightest bit interested in science in determining whether or not to force the Gateway pipeline on B.C. And if we needed another reminder of how distant science is from the Cons' spin on the environment, Marc Lee highlights a few of the more glaring holes in the Cons' latest report on greenhouse gas emissions:

The report creates an alternative “do nothing” scenario that leads to surging emissions of 850 Mt in 2020, then subtracts estimates of federal and provincial actions taken to date, which gets us to 720 Mt. That is a lot of spin on the numbers, perhaps hoping few people will bother to read the actual report and just report the government’s line.

But even the 720 Mt number is suspect for a variety of reasons. First, the economic downturn lowers the baseline, with 2010 emissions coming in lower than previously expected. Next, the feds have included land use changes in the calculations for the first time. The decline in forestry activity means more carbon will remain sequestered in Canada’s forests, and this will lower emissions by 26 Mt. Take these out and the 2020 target jumps back to 745 Mt, slightly more than 2005 levels. Then report also arbitrarily lowers emissions from BC’s natural gas sector, relative to National Energy Board projections. And it assumes that proposed regulations yet to be ratified contribute to decreased transportation emissions. And that Saskatchewan implements carbon capture and storage for four new coal-fired power plants.

The other matter is to what extent the feds can take credit for any reductions in various sectors of the Canadian economy. Much of the heavy lifting appears to have been done at the provincial level, including BC’s carbon tax, Quebec’s cap-and-trade regime and Ontario’s phase-out of coal-fired electricity. In transportation, new vehicle regulations are touted but these just copy the new regulations established by the United States. The report makes repeated reference to new regulations being developed for the oil and gas sector, too, but these have been promised for a long time and no draft regulations have yet seen the light of day.

- Finally, Brent Rathgeber makes the case for sitting MPs to stay out of the boundary revision process. Needless to say, his Saskatchewan caucus-mates don't seem interested in listening.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Mitchell Anderson discusses the Ten Commandments that have ensured that Norway's oil wealth is preserved for the benefit of citizens. But it's particularly worth contrasting Norway's philosophy surrounding non-renewable resources against the frenzy to extract everything today at any price (which of course currently dominates western Canadian politics):

Norway was in no rush to develop their oil resources, and determined that it would only be on their own terms with a clear benefit to Norwegians. So strong was this sentiment that an all-party parliamentary white paper itemized "10 commandments" (see sidebar) for oil development, later enshrined into the Norwegian Petroleum Act.
...
When global oil prices shot up in 1974 after the Middle East oil embargo, the Norwegian government decided that a major tax increase was needed to ensure that oil companies would not realize windfall profits at the expense of the Norwegian taxpayer.

Professor Einar Lie at the University of Oslo researched the history of this period and describes how the government used the newly formed Statoil to gather intelligence on how far they could push foreign companies.

"The Norwegian civil servants wanted to squeeze this lemon to the maximum but they did not want to foreign oil companies to leave. So they talked extensively with Statoil, which had a lot of informed contacts with the other oil companies to find out just how much they would be able to take without the foreign companies leaving Norway. They were extremely pragmatic on how to get the maximum taxation."

- Karen Foster points out the gap between the reasonable expectations of younger workers about their ability to retire after putting in several decades of hard work, and the public policy direction set by the Cons and others to ensure that retirement is delayed and rendered less secure.

- Common Dreams documents how workers in the UK have been placed on a private employment blacklist based on suspicions of citizen activism.

- And finally, neither Thomas Walkom nor Craig McInnes buys the Cons' spin that a decision on the Northern Gateway pipeline will be anything but a political calculation by an oil-soaked government.

New column day

Here, on how the mixed-riding proposal of Saskatchewan's federal electoral boundaries commission offers at least some improvement over the current all-rurban mess when it comes to recogizing communities of interest.

For further reading...
- Joe Couture covers both the initial proposal, and reactions from parties and academics.
- Kelly Block's acknowledgment that rural voters in Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar would represent her margin of victory can be found here.
- And again, anybody interested in participating in next month's public hearings should sign up here.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- John Conway discusses the Cons' project of destroying Canada's social safety net.

- But the good news is that Stephen Harper is running into a few roadblocks along the way. For example, the rule of law - as a Federal Court judge has concluded that the Cons' attempt to impose an arbitrator with connections to both their own party and Air Canada to rule on a collective agreement for Air Canada's workers.

- And Thomas Walkom writes that there are limits to what the Cons can impose on the general public in trying to push the Gateway pipeline:

Harper’s hope was that this combination of toughness, smear and crass ideology — particularly if repeated endlessly in the right-wing media — would convince a big chunk of the broad Canadian middle. The strategy does, after all, work in the U.S.
But it hasn’t here. Public opposition to the scheme is so intense in B.C. that even the avowedly pro-business, governing Liberals have joined in.

Add to this the nightmare of aboriginal politics. First Nations along the pipeline route are threatening to tie up the project for years in court — which they can do.

And the broad public? My guess is that, Joe Oliver notwithstanding, most Canadians don’t regard environmentalist David Suzuki, or even B.C. Liberal premier Christy Clark, as dangerous radicals funded by foreign gold.

What they do see is an increasingly shrill federal government whose bully-boy tactics aren’t working.

- Finally, Jordon Cooper comments on the costs of ignoring mental health as a public policy issue:

Across the country we have seen what happens when we underfund mental-health programs. It leads to an increase of people on the streets, it forces police into becoming mental-health workers, and in some situations it leads to deaths. Mental health is a complicated field but until we start to publicly address how we doing, how is it going to get better?

The bar to get help is too high, takes too long, and people end up too close to the edge. We deal a lot with the symptoms in our society - why not tackle the problem directly?

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Crashing cats.

On provisional boundaries

Volkov has already summed up the likely effect of the preliminary Saskatchewan federal riding boundaries released today.

But before we start planning the Regina Lewvan victory party, the most important part of the boundary revision process has yet to play out. So I'll encourage Saskatchewan readers to sign up for next month's public hearings and make clear that the preliminary move away from the current rurban mess makes for a step in the right direction.

On unscientific methods

Scott is absolutely right to be skeptical of the claim that the Cons will let science play any role in their attempt to force a pipeline through northern B.C. - particularly given their general distaste for the subject.

But there's a more direct response worth pointing out to Stephen Harper's ludicrous spin, as it's his government that's decided to make sure that environmental assessment of the Gateway pipeline will be a purely political decision:

The Governor in Council will make the decision on the environmental assessment (whether the project is likely to cause significant adverse effects and if so, whether such effects are justified in the circumstances).

That's right: it was just last week that Harper publicly announced his purely political decision to make sure that nobody associated with either scientific inquiry or public consultation will get any say in determining whether the pipeline will cause "significant adverse effects". And while that doesn't mean anybody can afford not to point out the environmental issues raised by the pipeline (if nothing else for ease of mitigation once the Cons have been safely toppled from office), nobody should be fooled into thinking science is to blame for Harper's poor choices.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The Star-Phoenix editorial board comments on the need to crack down on tax havens:

(T)he scale of the avoidance Mr. Henry detailed in his report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, drives home just how immoral is the practice of tax avoidance, particularly at a time when even rich countries such as Spain and the United States are staggering under their debt loads and deficits because they can't raise enough tax revenue.

As Gwynne Dyer, a Canadian journalist based in Britain, notes in a recent column published in Embassy magazine, despite efforts by some governments to recoup tax revenues lost offshore, the problem has more than doubled over the last five years just as debt crises and resulting austerity measures have thrown millions out work.

The fact there are relatively few people hiding so much in a relatively few places such as Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Cayman Islands, and Jersey should make it simple for the international community to exert pressure to collect the taxes that governments are owed.

Since the tax revenue and corrupt funds come from all countries - from small developing nations to outlaw states to the largest economies in the world - a global agreement not only should be possible but imperative.

- But lest anybody think it'll be easy to get the 1% to live up to social obligations, the same Canadian corporate sector that's hoarding giant piles of unused cash is demanding approval not to use its reserves to properly fund employee pensions.

- Even as they claim to have no resources to provide for basic social needs, the Cons have set up a secret torture committee and plan to burn $1 billion on drone warfare. Which means it's no wonder they're so determined to silence anybody who might point out a principled need for action.

- Speaking of which, Don Lenihan and Graham Fox discuss how the Cons have inverted Canadian federalism by refusing to take any responsibility for the public policy areas Canadians care about most:

(T)he federal government seems to have opted for a more transactional approach to governance, concentrating on issues like border security, crime and natural resources. The Harper government seems uncomfortable with complex processes and relationships, so its guiding principle is to keep things as simple as possible.

By contrast, the Council of the Federation (COF) is emerging as a new kind of collaborative forum. The provinces are using it to build and test the strategies and coalitions they think governments need to solve complex issues...

...The provinces, recall, have responsibility for many of the issues that register the least confidence (and highest complexity), such as health, education and other social services.
As a result, the pressure on them to experiment and collaborate is growing exponentially.

This, in turn, is pushing them toward more pan-Canadian approaches, while the federal government, which views its responsibilities as more transactional, is returning to watertight compartments and bilateral relationships.
...
(I)f the provincial effort is even modestly successful, we don’t think the federal government can avoid engaging for long. We believe it has a natural leadership role in this new, pan-Canadian environment. Its networks, infrastructure, resources, and legislative authority would make an essential contribution to solving issues around energy, healthcare and innovation. Eventually, the federal government will have to come back to the table — whether it be this government or some future one.

Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Moira Herbst is the latest to comment on the connection between the lack of good jobs and an excess of corporate cash hoarding:

(I)t would be refreshing if the pundit-political class considered a radical but obvious idea: tapping the multitrillion-dollar stockpiles of corporate cash currently sitting on the sidelines and benefiting no one. Compulsive hoarding is unhealthy for individuals. It's even worse for whole economies.

The sorry facts are these: job growth is still half of what is needed to keep up with population growth. Meanwhile, more than 14% of the US workforce is unemployed, underemployed or discouraged from looking for work. The numbers for July aren't expected to budge much. Absent a massive inflow of tax dollars, jobs aren't going to come from the public sector. State and local governments are broke, and the fight over federal deficits has turned into an all-out war in Congress.
...
It turns out that US-based mega-corporations are hoarding cash. How much cash? Record sums. It's about $1.73tn in US assets, according to the Federal Reserve – 50% more than they held in 2007. When you count worldwide holdings of US companies, the figure is a staggering $5.1tn, estimates Reuters' David Cay Johnston. Apple alone has $117bn.

Banks are also stockpiling cash; they're sitting on more than $1.5tn in excess reserves in the US.

Not only are mega-companies not creating enough decent jobs with this cash, they continue to offshore work and underpay workers. Many are not even rewarding investors or accelerating their growth with the money, thereby causing harm to themselves, according to a recent survey by Ernst & Young. Economists also say that cash hoarding is blocking a recovery in Europe.

- But sadly, Tom Tomorrow makes it clear that nothing can be done:


- It's actually somewhat of a pleasant surprise that at least as of last year, the Cons hadn't yet excised all references to renewable energy from internal briefing notes. But it's all the more shameful that they continue to push a short-term reliance on high-speed, low-safety oil extraction when they can't plead ignorance as an excuse for their neglect.

- And lest there be any doubt, Alberta's drinking water sources and B.C.'s coast aren't the only sensitive areas due for a coating of petrochemical sludge if the Cons get their way.

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for a sunny Sunday.

 - Mitchell Anderson's second article on Norway's success in converting oil resources into a massive source of public wealth focuses on the country's history of resistance to outside ownership. But I wouldn't see much reason why Canada couldn't turn its own sense of hard-earned independence from the world's dominant powers (which has always defined our relationships to the U.K. and U.S.) toward our corporate overlords.

- And in a guest post at Progressive Economic Forum, Tony Clark highlights why there's reason to be skeptical of the demands of our oil barons - as a "labour shortage" being used as an excuse for importing disposable foreign labour in fact reflects nothing more than a refusal to share the benefits of a profitable industry with Canadian workers.

- Bruce Johnstone rightly criticizes Stephen Harper's pardons to Customs Act violators for valuing nebulous economic rights far more than the real rights and freedoms his government has attacked while in power.

- Finally, I'm not sure how much circulation Yvonne Marton's profile of Thomas Mulcair's car ownership will receive. But it looks like a neat example of Mulcair fitting into the NDP's set of priorities - focusing on function and value in comparison to the Cons' preference for shiny trinkets.

On connections

Tuesday, July 31 was the deadline for submissions to the Wall government's consultation process on employment and labour law. Like hundreds of other interested individuals and groups, I took the time to put together a submission - based on the underlying view that however biased the process was from the beginning, and however unlikely a bought-and-paid-for government was to listen to anybody who offered ideas to provide a more secure future for Saskatchewan workers rather than seeking to grind them to dust, there's always some value to be found in fostering discussion between citizens and legislators as to how we should be governed.

And many others with positions starkly opposed to the Saskatchewan Party did the same - criticizing Wall for failing to provide a more thorough consultation process, but consistently expressing the view that a responsible government should seek to connect more with its citizens.

Tuesday, July 31 also marked the unveiling of an NDP effort to build on the limited consultation permitted by Wall. So how did Wall's base react to an open channel of communication?

"One of our main activities ... is identifying polls and Twitter feeds that need to go horribly wrong," [Kate McMillan] said in an interview this week. "It's all in good fun, but there's also a political statement being made."

One post the NDP flagged as offensive - "Tommy Douglas, not dead enough" - is a line that has been used for years on her blog, McMillan noted.

"This is all fair in love and war on the Internet ... Anything that's open to the Internet inviting opinions is subject for high traffic, from the left and the right," she added.

"Politicians and parties should stay very clear of social media," she opined. "The only people on Twitter for politics are people who want to hurt you."

Which offers about as clear a contrast as one could imagine. The NDP and its allies responded to a limited consultation exercise with two main messages: a principled argument as to the policy choices involved, and a concern that the government should do more to hear from affected parties.

In contrast, the Saskatchewan Party's authoritarian base considers it an important activity to ensure that any effort to build communication between policy-makers and citizens goes "horribly wrong". Which presumably helps to ensure that policy is designed by and for the few who already enjoy privileged access to a thoroughly-insulated premier, while limiting our political options to shallow personality choices developed within easily-captured top-down party structures.

Unfortunately, the right in Saskatchewan thinks it can get away with more and more extreme attacks on democratic participation based on the province's 2011 election result. And the NDP - having governed largely as a "we're not them" choice for four terms while having few spare resources to dedicate to citizen engagement - still has a long way to go in rebuilding its historic capacity to bring together Saskatchewan voters.

Indeed, relatively modest steps with the Were You Asked? site (such as a simple filter before content submitted to the site was published) would have avoided the easy manipulation by vandals and saboteurs that proved embarrassing last week. And presumably that's a lesson the NDP will need to keep in mind as it decides how to reach out to citizens.

But the more important point is that vandalism and sabotage are indeed part of the value structure of a government and its base looking to keep Saskatchewan's citizens as silent and inactive as possible. And that radical difference in how we value public participation should be one of the NDP's overarching messages as we work on developing more effective forms of engagement.