Category Archives: Democracy

Sep 22 2014
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Democracy, Law, Politics

When getting answers from Ottawa, the cost is worth the price

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Go ahead, ask a question of one of Canada’s esteemed government members. I dare you.

We unelected peasants are, of course, accustomed to obfuscation masquerading as straight talk from those who we periodically install to purportedly defend our democracy.

But it may surprise you to learn that one Conservative backbencher has actually obtained a price tag for every query his fellow parliamentarians — Tory or not — toss at cabinet members in the simple prosecution of their duties.

It’s $117,188 and change.

That’s not for answers to trivial inquires, such as “Will the minister please explain why the socks he is wearing today do not match?” or “Why does this government insist on telling Canadians that sartorial standards require that all attendees to baseball games wear straw boaters, when clearly brimmed caps are the norm?”

No, it’s the cost associated with replying to weightier interrogatives related to such matters as “the percentage of Employment Canada benefits applications that are rejected and how many people have to wait longer than 28 days for a response; which government department is responsible for monitoring the transportation of fissile radioactive material inside our borders; how much money Ottawa has spent developing software since 2011 and what the software actually does; and the amount the government spent on travel expenses while negotiating the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the European Union.”

The quote comes from a Globe and Mail editorial published last Thursday. It refers to actual questions on the Order Paper, which provides mostly opposition MPs with a constitutionally valuable means to ascertain just how much horse pucky a reigning government manages to sling during any given parliamentary session.

Now, Tory MP Mike Wallace wonders whether the cost to Canadian taxpayers is worth the effort to remain accountable to Canadian citizens, if only in this one, time-honoured way.

To be clear, he asked a question, placed on the Order Paper (presumably costing $177,188) that, reportedly, went like this: “Are we sure we’re getting value for the dollar?” In an interview with the Globe, he elaborated: “I think it’s just important that it’s on the record. I think government and Parliament could run more efficiently and effectively in a lot of areas and this is just one little, tiny example of where. . .are we sure we’re getting value for the dollar?”

To ask whether it’s prudent to ask questions of government members, knowing that the question itself will add to the putative $1.2-million, annual bill you’re railing against in the first place, is the apex of right-wing disrespect for, and cynicism about, 145 years of wise, parliamentary procedure.

You might have simply emailed my old colleague Sean Fine, justice reporter at the Globe, with your thoughts. No harm, no foul.

As for you now, though, for shame, Mr. Wallace, for shame!

Still, know that you are not the only one of your ilk who owes an apology to the Canadian electorate.

There is the little matter of your overlord’s constantly fractious relationship with this country’s judiciary, in which he has impugned the reputation of its head, for no apparent reason except spite; slammed its obligations to patiently review the exigencies of government’s legislative branch in the context of constitutional justice; and all but repealed an enlightened policy of his own design because a few big mouths in his circle chose to speak out against him.

Again, the Globe reports: “Last year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that selection panels of MPs from the major political parties would assess candidates being considered for the Supreme Court of Canada, in consultation with leading judges and lawyers, though the actual appointment would remain a Crown prerogative.”

Now, we learn, alongside Mr. Wallace’s concerns about sharing information too freely among the hoi polloi, that this noble exercise in accountability is “being reviewed” for the simple reason that it produced too much accountability, too much truth about Ottawa’s wheelhouses of power and influence, too much public information made too readily to the very people who install these bozos to defend our democracy — we, the peasants.

Dare we ask questions? We’re damed if we don’t.

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Sep 19 2014
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Democracy

In New Brunswick, that was then. This is now

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We are coming down, dear reader, to end of the line, if not our rope, in this, the 38th general election for Canada’s picture-perfect province. Naturally, it behooves us to review what we’ve learned thus far, which may not be much.

Nevertheless, by now we should all fully appreciate the dimension of New Brunswick’s fiscal dilemma, which some observers have characterized as more of a calamity. A $500-million annual deficit and $12-billion long-term debt hang like millstones around our collective neck.

To some extent, we have been conditioned to believe that this is an intractable problem that can’t be ameliorated, let alone managed.

But this is not, strictly speaking, true. Many jurisdictions have faced tougher challenges and recovered nicely (think Saskatchewan). Others have staged convincing turnarounds in relatively short order (think Prince Edward Island).

But to do this for ourselves, we are going to have to work together and on an unprecedented scale. Defying their partisan straight jackets, politicians need to collaborate. Setting aside our ideological differences, unelected citizens must reach out to one another and share their good ideas without hesitation.

Above all, we’re going to need a few big ideas to get us where we want to be: To a place where innovation meets compassionate pragmatism, where natural resources integrate with sustainable development, where healthy communities seed the fallow economic fields of less successful ones.

To say that what this province needs most is jobs is merely to mutter a truism. What sort of jobs are we talking about?

Are these short-term positions, back-stopped by Employment Insurance. We already know what these do for us. Or are the jobs we need more durable and promising than this? And if they are, how do we generate them not just for this generation, but also for future ones?

The steady outmigration of young people from this province to points west is not a problem that we can fairly lay on the shoulders of any political party or government. The exodus has been underway for many years.

To keep our kids – and bring some back – we need to build a truly creative economy; one that implicitly recognizes that economic sectors should be not silos, but incubators that manage to cross-pollinate the province with ingenious, new approaches to entrepreneurship. And we need to remove the unnecessary, baroque regulatory barriers that continue to imprison our thinking, our imagination, within an old, threadbare box.

The federal government has done us no favours with its various jobs and immigration policies. But we can’t let that stop us from forging ahead, implementing our own plans and priorities that reflect and address our distinctly New Brunswick circumstances.

What, dear reader, do we want to be when we, all of us together, grow up?

I envision a province whose cities greet every commercial, social and cultural opportunity with a view to leveraging its main chances for the benefit of everyone, not just of a  neighbourhood, a constituency, a tiny corner of the municipal steppe.

I envision a province whose government makes targeted, strategic investments in areas for which it is properly responsible – education, health care and social services – and rejects the obvious and costly cattle calls to candidates for corporate welfare.

I envision a province whose political culture finally embraces the contributions that both those in power and those in opposition can make to advance the cause of social improvement, if not human perfectibility, in this place that 750,000 people still call home.

The world beyond our borders is full of dangerous places, full of treachery and depredation. In this world, where 50 million individuals are either literally or virtually stateless, left to their own devices, without the democratic protections and safety nets we have come to expect, we are exceedingly lucky.

Shall we squander this by retreating into our separate cocoons?

Or shall we come into the light together, knowing that we are the champions of our own, formidable passion to do better, and be better, together; knowing that if we can think a thing, we can do a thing.

It’s always tempting to perceive an election as a chance to review what we’ve learned and moan about it.

But, really, elections are about the future, where our minds should wander with hope and wonder, not regret. Never regret.

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Sep 03 2014
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Democracy, Politics

Taming our free-market beasts one election at a time

Ever since the financial meltdown of 2008, economic thinkers have wondered whether the free market thirsty for oil and nostalgic for the good, old, bad, old days of easy profit could ever learn from the errors of its rapacious ways.

After all, in the shadow of that calamity, the rich did, indeed, get richer, the poor did, indeed, get poorer, and the middle class became almost mythological throughout much of North America.

Even more maddening, perhaps, is the certainty that many of the very institutions that played key roles in engineering (or, at least, ushering) the near-collapse of the global economy have been bolstered, rehabilitated and otherwise rewarded with public money – money that is now no longer available to pay for the necessities of civilized life, such as rational, affordable health care and higher education.

All of which is reason enough for public intellectuals, such as French economist Thomas Piketty, to conclude that capitalism is, at its core, breathtakingly Nietzschean. In  the introduction to his best-selling book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the professor at the Paris School of Economics, states that “Modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have made it possible to avoid the Marxist apocalypse but have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality – or in any case not as much as one might have imagined in the optimistic decades following World War II.”

Why? Mr. Piketty explains: “When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.”

Still, he’s not entirely without hope. “There are nevertheless ways democracy can regain control over capitalism and ensure that the general interest takes precedence over private interests, while preserving economic openness and avoiding protectionist and nationalist reactions,” he writes.

The rest of his tome is essentially a 577-page set-up for a series of recommendations for savagely curtailing the savagery of capitalism, itself.

But, at least one Nobel Prize-winning economist thinks that while his colleague “is right about the severity of the problem, he is not completely right about its cause – and how  to fix it.”

In an article that appears in this month’s Harper’s magazine, Joseph Stiglitz, chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute, argues, in effect, that the fault is not so much in the social and political systems and institutions we erect but in ourselves for failing to keep them healthy and honest.

“There is no such thing as a ‘purely’ capitalist system,” he writes. “We have always had a mixed economy, relying on the government for investment in education, technology, and infrastructure.” Indeed, he pointedly adds, “the most innovative and successful industries in the U.S. economy (tech and biotech) rest on foundations provided by government research.”

His bottom line is that “a well-functioning economy requires a balance between the public and private sectors, with essential public investments and an adequately funded system of social protection.”

Of course, that notion has been out of style for nearly 35 years. Both Reagan and Thatcher revolutions, which marked the ascendence of neo-conservative cultural warriors and their fellow travellers on Wall Street, made puppy chow out of the once cherished and credible proposition that good governments play a legitimate role in curbing the excesses that turbulent competition is bound to produce.

Still, had such creatures (good governments) existed prior to the financial crisis, there’s every reason to believe that the awe-inspiring income inequalities, joblessness, consumer debt, and fiscal malaise entrenched in public institutions of every variety would not so bedevil us today.

It is even conceivable that elected officials would ply their trade with a certain decorum and circumspection, knowing that the voters they woo do not, in fact, find all politicians utterly loathsome.

As New Brunswick heads ever closer to an election that many pundits have predicted will be conspicuous for its failure to inspire much confidence in any political party, we mustn’t forget that democratic governments are the only protections we have against the predations of the marketplace.

When we don’t respect our public institutions and refuse to care for them, they will weaken, dissolve and vanish.

Then, dear citizen, enjoy facing the free market in all its rapacious glory.

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Aug 11 2014
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Democracy, Sports

Is artificial turf unfair to women?

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Several, world-class women footballers claim that their sport’s governing body has all but relegated them to second-class status by forcing them to play on artificial turf in next year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada. But has it?

The question, which is important for many reasons of fairness, also contains a local, practical dimension. Moncton, one of six Canadian host cities for the women’s event, covered its stadium’s grass soccer field with the phony stuff on orders from FIFA. It cost the municipality $500,000, or a third of the total price.

“New irrigation was installed and then what you’re seeing is this spring they were able to finish that subsurface and then install what they call in the industry, the carpet or the artificial turf,” Stéphane Delisle, venue general manager of the event, said in May. “The surface is one example of FIFA’s mandate to ensure that we’re offering literally a level and equitable playing field for all of the participants.”

Some elite players beg to differ. Now, they are threatening legal action against FIFA for gender discrimination.

“We just saw the World Cup in Brazil,” Carrie Serwetnyk, an ex-player for Canada and the brains behind the non-profit Equal Pay, told the CBC last week.

“We just know there’s absolutely no way the men would play on fake grass. It would be a scandal. So to think it’s OK for the Women’s World Cup to be played on artificial turf, what kind of a message does that send?”

Added the women’s lawyer, Hampton Dellinger: “We know there’s no doubt that the men would not be asked to play on a second-class surface for their world class tournament. They weren’t this year in Brazil, it’s already been established that the men’s World Cup tournaments in 2018 and 2022 will be on grass. There’s no reason the women should be treated as second-class.”

Moreover, he said, “There’s certainly a very credible range of evidence that artificial turf poses a greater and unique danger versus grass pitches, particularly at the highest level. Obviously the only place you can have turf burns – and these are serious, they can really be incapacitating to a player – is on an artificial pitch.”

The problem is that there is also a “very credible range of evidence” that suggests just the opposite: That artificial turf is, at least statistically, no more injury-inducing than natural grass.

According to an article entitled, “A Meta-Analysis of Soccer Injuries on Artificial Turf and Natural Grass”, in the Journal of Sports Medicine last year, researchers “examined eight studies that compared soccer injury rates occurring on artificial turf and natural grass. In total, these studies report nearly 1.5 million hours of training and match play and almost 10,000 injuries. The adjusted injury rate ratios for all injures was significantly less than 1.0 indicating lower incidence rates for playing and training on artificial turf. For specific categories and specific injuries, several injury rate ratios values were less than 1.0. In no case did we find an injury rate ratios value significantly greater than 1.0.”

Indeed, last year, Justin Shaginaw, Athletic Trainer for US Soccer Federation, reported on his sports blog that just as many studies support artificial turf as do natural grass and “since the research doesn’t give us a definitive answer regarding injury rates and artificial turf. . .we know that the greater the traction, the higher the rate of injury. Wearing cleats made specifically for artificial turf, or better yet turf shoes, may help to decrease traction and therefore reduce lower extremity injuries.

“We can apply this same thought process to grass regarding increased traction and increased injury rates. Unfortunately, there may be a decrease in performance as shoes with less traction may cause players to slip.”   

None of which is likely to convince the potential litigants against FIFA. To them, the issue is one of fairness.

Elite athletes – both men and women – have long expressed their preference for natural grass. Is it fair that FIFA accedes to the males and not the females it represents?

On the other hand, is this treatment of women tantamount to gender discrimination when even the experts can’t decide which is the superior playing surface?

In the end, it will likely be communities like Moncton, where the games occur, that provide the answers.

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Aug 08 2014
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Democracy, Politics

Welcome back, you summertime follies

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North of the normally frozen 49th parallel, summer reaches its apogee, often baking the brains of public figures just well enough to justify calling this the silliest season of the year. On the other hand, when it comes to official foolishness, we don’t dare hold a candle to the Americans.

Last week, in the land of the Star-Spangled Banner, Congressional Republicans voted in favour of suing President Barack Obama for allegedly trampling the Constitution during his campaign to ram healthcare reforms down the gullets of unwitting citizens, (which would be, presumably, their preferred take on the matter).

“This administration has effectively rewritten the law without following the constitutional process,” GOP Representative Pete Sessions was quoted as saying to Washington reporters following the 225-201 vote, in which only five Republicans demurred and not a single Democrat assented.

According to a Reuters account, “The suit is expected to claim that Obama, a Democrat, exceeded his executive authority in making unilateral changes to the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. Republicans argue that by delaying some healthcare coverage mandates and granting various waivers, he bypassed Congress in violation of the U.S. Constitution.”

Indeed, over the past six years, the GOP has made as much mischief for the president as is democratically possible. But this is the first time in history when members of Congress have actually sought redress for their complaints with the Executive branch of government through civil litigation.

But that’s not even the most absurd aspect of the affair. This is: The Republicans are suing over changes to Obamacare that they, themselves, demanded the president make back in October.

“Obama, himself, tweaked Republicans on Wednesday,” CNN reported last week. “In Kansas City, Missouri, he noted the House was about to leave Washington for the month of August, but ‘the main vote that they have scheduled for today is whether or not they decide to sue me for doing my job.’”

In one sense, though, the threat of a lawsuit is a more logical avenue to go down than that other, more common expression of opprobrium: impeachment. The Republicans know that they don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of stick-handling that result. They don’t have the votes in the Senate. 

Still, according to a CNN analysis, “The issue resonates with Democratic supporters, according to Rep. Steve Israel of New York, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The group has raised $7.6 million online since Boehner announced the lawsuit plan just over five weeks ago, he said. ‘You bet we’re going to run on a Congress that is just obsessed with lawsuits, suing the President, talking about impeaching him instead of solutions for the middle class, talking about jobs and infrastructure,’ he said.”

All of which fuels the U.S. public’s thoroughly unalloyed disgust with politics in general. “Americans are finding little they like about President Barack Obama or either political party, according to a new poll that suggests the possibility of a ‘throw the bums out’ mentality in next year’s midterm elections,” an Associated Press story declared last fall.  “The AP-GfK poll finds few people approve of the way the president is handling most major issues and most people say he’s not decisive, strong, honest, reasonable or inspiring.”

Meanwhile, “In the midst of the government shutdown and Washington gridlock, the president is faring much better than his party, with large majorities of those surveyed finding little positive to say about Democrats. The negatives are even higher for the Republicans across the board, with 4 out of 5 people describing the GOP as unlikeable and dishonest and not compassionate, refreshing, inspiring or innovative.”

So much grist, so little time to mill up here in Canada where we try vainly to compete for scandal mongering with the Joneses south of us.

Alas, notwithstanding the Conservative caucus of Stephen Harper – the fetishistic attraction for control, the militancy, the coarse name-calling that passes for principled debate – we just don’t seem to have what it takes.

Not, at least, like the Yanks.

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Aug 08 2014
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Democracy, Economy, Politics

The consequences of a slow-growth era

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In a report that will bring only scowls to the faces of Conservative party operatives and their masters in Cabinet, a McGill University economics professor argues that the time has come for a kinder, gentler hand at the tiller of the national economy.

It’s not that the HMS Canuckistan is in any real danger of sinking under the weight of the jobless hordes its ferrying from one unpromising corner of the country to the other. Indeed, both the Bank of Canada and the International Monetary Fund predict that the Canadian economy will, in fact, grow marginally by 2.2 per cent this year and 2.4 per cent in 2015.   

It’s just that politicians and policymakers have fired up the engines about as much as they can, and there’s not much more they can do to speed the pace. They, and we, must face facts: This boat is permanently puttering.

“Canadian monetary policy has little ability to further stimulate Canadian growth. Given the large amount of uncertainty now faced by Canadian firms, further reductions in the policy interest rate are unlikely to be effective in stimulating aggregate demand,” writes Christopher Ragan in a commentary for the C.D. Howe Institute.  “In addition, the ongoing problems associated with very low interest rates cannot be ignored and may soon present the Bank of Canada with a compelling case for rate increases.”

Yes, “Canadian fiscal authorities have more room to manoeuvre than their counterparts in many other developed countries.” Still, “there remain solid arguments for budgets to be brought back to balance in the next few years.”

Since neither monetary nor fiscal instruments are likely to leverage faster economic growth, and since the private sector remains as jittery as a cat in roomful of rockers when it comes to parting with its money for capital investment and skills development and training, slow growth is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.

So, then, what’s a prudent government to do?

“Canadian policymakers should accept the continuation of Canada’s slow-growth recovery for the next few years. Slow growth has undesirable consequences, however, including longer unemployment spells, more part-time employment, and a greater incidence of long-term unemployment. Policymakers should focus on addressing the associated burden by enhancing income support for the unemployed, increasing the mobility of workers and improving incentives for labour-market training.”

Put it another way: Politicians in bad times have a duty to observe the progressive natures of their souls and care for the underprivileged, relieve the burdens of the downtrodden and disenfranchised and, in general, act like human beings for once in a very long while.

In fact, none of this has been part of the job description, at least in the western political canon, since Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan ran away with the keys to the democratic system’s castle some 30 years ago.

Still, it’s high time that those we elect to public office recognize that fierce individualism and the frontier spirit of so-called free-market capitalism carry with them certain drawbacks – one of which is the tendency to blow the world’s financial systems to kingdom come every so often.

In this lies pragmatic reasons for Prof. Ragan’s prescriptions. In his commentary, he identifies four specific groups on whom the “burden of recessions and slow economic recoveries is likely to fall disproportionately.”

The first is comprised of people who lose their jobs as a direct result of economic blows. Then there are those who are new to the labour market (young people and immigrants) and can’t find gainful employment despite their often valiant attempts. “Third are those who find a new job but only one that is of lower quality than what they desire,” he writes. “Empirically, this group is often identified as involuntary part-time workers. The final group includes individuals who remain unemployed for an extended period of time, unable to find any job or one appropriate to their skills. Their burden is both the loss of income they experience as well as the likely degradation of their skills and reduced employability that often accompany long-term unemployment.”

If governments turn a blind eye to these individuals, they are essentially ignoring all but the comfortably affluent and the very rich. And alienating most of the voting public makes for mighty poor politics only a bit more than a year out from an election.

Scowl as they might, but those who currently stand at the helm of the economy ought to consider that when managing public expectations, kinder and gentler can also mean smarter.

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Jul 24 2014
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Democracy, Politics

Canadians say ‘ho hum’ to federal priorities

 

Sleeping giants, like the electorate, wake up...don't they?

Sleeping giants, like the electorate, wake up…don’t they?

Certain enclaves of the federal government have long suspected that Canadians are far less enamoured of their cherished policies than they have otherwise propagandized. 

Their buoyant rhetoric about the nation’s proud military tradition, bolstered by tens of millions of dollars for war memorials and stagy commemorations, have struck many citizens as crass testimonials to a certain prime minister’s preoccupation with battlefield derring do. 

Meanwhile, thousands of veterans needlessly do without – victims of red tape, official neglect and outright disinterest among corps of bureaucrats whose members have never, and likely never will, lace up an army boot.

Equally, Canadians are, in increasing numbers, dissatisfied with Ottawa’s leadership (or lack, thereof) on education – both pre-school and K through 12. Public school is properly the purview of the provinces, but a sense of national purpose is sorely lacking – a fact manifested in the hodgepodge of early education, primary and secondary programs across the country.

And then there’s health care, another provincial responsibility that could use some sage advice from federal policy makers and office holders. Still, Ottawa’s diffidence regarding long wait times for several medical procedures and widely divergent catastrophic coverage regimes virtually guarantees the nation’s mediocrity in this crucial service on the developed world stage.

In fact, in almost every way, the Government of Canada’s ‘jails and jobs’ agenda has failed to impress the general public. 

The wholesale flight of the feds away from things Canadians actually care about – the environment, hard science, and, of course, the social safety net – to things that merely bewilder them – fighting crime at a time when crime rates are at historic lows; taking credit for creating jobs while repeatedly reminding everyone that only the private sector can and should generate new employment opportunities – has conjured an atmosphere of ennui from coast to coast.

Now, some research commissioned by the federal Department of Finance confirms officialdom’s worst suspicions. 

According to a Canadian Press story this week, public opinion surveys conducted last winter, “suggest key government policies are out of step with Canadians’ priorities, including the Northern Gateway project. . .Members of focus groups. . .had ‘little enthusiasm’ for the proposed bitumen pipeline to the British Columbia coast – even those who said they support the controversial project. . .Rather the groups spontaneously raised education, health care, pensions, and veterans as their key issues.”

The operative word there is “spontaneously”. That indicates that participants weren’t prompted or even asked forthrightly about their feelings. They just blurted their concerns with a degree of unanimity that should truly worry a government that’s running second in the polls, behind the third-party Liberals, and preparing to head into a national election. 

As for western oil and gas, the report, itself – prepared by NRG Research Group – states that “detractors worry about the environmental consequences in the event of a spill, particularly as a result of a tanker accident off the B.C. coast. . .There is an appreciation that increased access to oil will be economically beneficial, but there is still a desire to do so in a more environmentally safe manner.”

A report like this is, of course, exactly why governments employ professional spin doctors. When I was one, back before the federal Grits suffered their political Waterloo at the hands of Stephen Harper’s bayonetted storm troopers, I might have prepared a statement that read something like this: “Naturally, Canadians care about the environment. So does this government. To suggest otherwise shamefully underestimates the intelligence of the electorate, which, need it be said, gave this government the mandate it now takes with great seriousness.”

See how that works? Wait for it; we’ve still got it in store.

In the meantime, however, we might do well to ruminate on what it means to live in a democracy where the government of the day – Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Green, Republican, Democratic, Rhinoceronian – brooks no criticism, takes no advice, considers no alternatives to its various hobby horses, and prosecutes its “mandate” with a perpetual scowl on its face. 

We might legitimately question whether this political machinery constitutes a democracy at all.

Then again, if we have decided that our rage against the machine will keep us home on voting day, we already have our answer.

 

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Jul 16 2014
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Democracy, Politics

How Ottawa minds our own business

 

What are these posts for? Shut up, government says, sit on 'em

What are these posts for? Shut up, government says, sit on ’em

What do 33 dejected foreign workers, denied positions in New Brunswick, and low blood sugar have in common?

If you said it’s the bevy of busybodies beavering away to make a general nuisance of itself in Ottawa – otherwise known as the Government of Canada – give yourself a pat on the back. But stay away from the sweets.

Apparently inspired by a Globe and Mail investigation earlier this year, Harpertown is all set to poke its proboscis into the pantries of the nation.

“In recent months, the Globe and Mail documented the links between sugar and harmful health concerns, and called on the federal government to set a recommended daily sugar limit,” the newspaper reported, in one of the most pompous displays of self-serving grandiosity it has been this ex-staffer’s pleasure to witness, earlier this week. 

“Our reporting revealed the extent to which the food industry adds sugar to many products in various forms, the extent to which labelling requirements don’t sufficiently inform consumers about this practice and the broad range of health problems that stem from the amount of sugar in the daily diet.”

Now, galvanized by this magnificent example of public service journalism, we are asked to believe that Ottawa is about to require food producers to finally play it straight with Canadians and tell the truth about the degree to which they are poisoning the general populace. 

Accurate labelling, it seems, is the answer. So is a federally-sanctioned “recommendation” for the amount of sugar Canadians should consume in any given 24-hour period.

Bully for the federalistas, but methinks the chances that this famously recalcitrant crew of onetime reformers and oftentimes media mashers takes its marching orders from Canada’s self-appointed, self-important, “national newspaper” are perishingly small. 

The more likely explanation (which may be weirder still) is that despite its right-wing, small-government, anti-Liberal, nanny-state-hating political pedigree this particular crew of Tory MPs and their fellow-travelling bureaucrats just can’t resist telling people – any people – what to do.

And that extends far beyond the sugar bowl.

As the Moncton Times & Transcript reported recently, Canadian consular officers in Vietnam rejected 33 applicants from that country for jobs at Captain Dan’s Seafood and Pecheries GEM Ltee despite the fact that the two employers had “valid labour market opinions at the time of the application and had paid all due fees while the Vietnamese applicants took additional measures to improve their candidacy.”

Those measures included “weeks of intensive English-language courses and specific seafood processing training.”

The Moncton lawyer representing the two local firms is flabbergasted. “The employers have been let down without an adequate workforce,” Martin Aubin told T&T reporter Kayla Byrne. “They have paid good money, done everything by the rules and received permits to hire people. We had openings for 33 people, we found 33 people, but all of them have been denied. . .To fail completely is a new experience for me.”

Get used to it. 

No one – but, no one – gets around these dogs once they’ve got several bones clenched between their incisors. Consider, if you will, one more choice example of latent control freakishness: Bill C-24, which passed quietly in June.

Also called the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, this legislation moves its patron, Minister of of Citizenship and Immigration Chris Alexander, practically to tears. 

It will, he said recently, “protect and strengthen the great value of Canadian citizenship, and remind individuals that citizenship is not a right, it’s a privilege. . .It is in honour of those who protected this city, in honour of those who have served and serve today, in honour of all who have made the sacrifice of war, and those who have contributed in their own way to building this great country, that we are further strengthening the value of Canadian citizenship.”

It will also do a couple of other things, according to one news report – notably provide the federal government with sweeping new license to share information about Canadian immigrants with foreign powers almost indiscriminately.

Of course, that’s all in a day’s work for a government whose main business is fast becoming minding other people’s.

 

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Jun 20 2014
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Democracy, Government, Privacy

Warning: Canada’s privacy watchdog also bites

 

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Well, now, that didn’t take long. It seems the honeymoon had only just begun before the newlyweds were hissing and spitting at each other. 

And they all said it was a match made in parliamentary heaven, that it would last, if not forever, at least until the Harper wagon train pulled up its stakes for the last time and headed back home towards the setting sun.

But, in an interview with the Globe and Mail earlier this week, Daniel Therrien, Canada’s new privacy commissioner, took a largely unexpected leap and publicly repudiated the federal government’s interpretation of a recent Supreme Court decision on online privacy in Canada. He even termed parts of the controversial Bill C-13 – which seeks, among other things, immunity for telcos that voluntarily relinquish subscriber information to authorities – as nugatory.

“At a minimum, I would say the immunity clause in Bill C-13 becomes essentially meaningless,” he told the newspaper. “The Supreme Court agrees that this is sensitive information, that it is entitled to constitutional protection. That is a huge clarification. . .So the idea there would be voluntary disclosure from service providers to law enforcement agencies – it is now clear that is not going to pass constitutional muster. I think that is clear.”

In his statement to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights (JUST) on Bill C-13, he was just as categorical: “We are concerned this broad language (in the Bill) could lead to a rise in additional voluntary disclosures and informal requests. This is of particular concern with private-sector companies that are otherwise prohibited from disclosing personal information without consent under PIPEDA or substantially similar legislation. In essence, this could amount to permissive access without court approval and oversight.”

He added: “Canadians expect that their service providers will keep their information confidential and that personal information will not be shared with government authorities without their express consent, clear lawful authority or a warrant.

This does not sound like the guy about whom a panel of privacy experts warned the Prime Minister in an email prior to Mr. Therrien’s appointment earlier this month.

“With great respect and without any intended slight on his abilities, we feel obligated to object to the Government’s recently announced appointee for Privacy Commissioner of Canada,” the letter noted. “As long-standing Assistant Deputy Attorney General for Public Safety, Mr. Therrien lacks the perspective and experience necessary to immediately tackle Canada’s many privacy problems. . .Mr. Therrien’s direct responsibility for and oversight of the programs he will now be called upon to advocate against will exacerbate the already steep learning curve with which he is faced.”

As it turns out, not so much. Also broadly out of step with events was NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair who fumed in question period earlier this month, “Does the prime minister understand why Canadians find it more than a little bit creepy that the prime minister wants to name this guy to protect their privacy.”

In contrast, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau now comes off looking downright prescient. In his letter to the PM in late May, he wrote, “I have come to the conclusion that Daniel Therrien would be an excellent candidate for this position. . .His knowledge and experience, as well his distinguished record of public service will be of great benefit to Canadians.”

In fact, if Mr. Therrien’s initial performance is any indication, Canadians should rest a little more easily. 

Bills C-13 and S-4, which rewrites the regulations covering inter-company dissemination of user information, are time bombs that the Supremes have wisely sought to defuse. What’s more alarming, perhaps, than the proposed legislation is the government’s official response to the Court’s decision.

According to a Globe story, Justice Minister Peter MacKay claims that the ruling actually “backs up the government’s view because ‘voluntary disclosures do not provide legal authority for access to information without a warrant,‘ though the bill (C-13) allows police to get information without a warrant.”

Huh?

It is for reasons such as the foregoing bafflegab that individuals like Mr. Therrien are in great demand by democracies around the world. Their jobs are not to dance with power, but to push against it, especially where new communications technologies vastly expand the opportunities for unauthorized or explicitly illegal surveillance.

Yes, Ottawa officialdom, the honeymoon is indeed over.

 

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Jun 16 2014
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Democracy, Politics

In Canada, once a citizen always a citizen

 

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Chris Alexander is a young man on a mission. And as all young men do on missions he makes mistakes, for which the rest of us must surely pay.

Canada’s 45-year-old citizenship and immigration minister apparently believes his beloved country is under siege. Droves of dual citizens (Canadian and pick-a-nation) are queuing up to undermine the foundations of this perfect democracy that perches between the Niagara escarpment and the Arctic Circle.

Says he: Off with their imperfect, great-white-northern heads. 

“This. . .is historic because it addresses an asset that Canadians consider absolutely fundamental to their identity,” he opined in Ottawa as his Bill C-24 was set to pass its third reading in the House of Commons last week. 

In fact, he insisted, Canadians think his proposed legislation is “absolutely essential” to counter treachery against the state in this country – activities that are, apparently, rampant among young, downwardly mobile scions of upwardly mobile immigrants to whom this government has, until now, opened up its hearts and pocket books.

Specifically, Bill C-24 would, as the Canadian Press reports, “strip dual nationals of their Canadian citizenship if they commit acts of treason, terrorism or espionage. . .the federal bill would increase the scope to those born in Canada but eligible to claim citizenship in another country – for instance, through their parents – and expand the grounds for revocation to include several criminal offences.”

As for that, says CP, Mr. Alexander elaborated: “The Conservatives (are) fixing flaws introduced by the Liberals in 1977 – legislation that ‘actually cheapened Canadian citizenship, opened it to abuse and put to one side the whole question of allegiance and loyalty to this country’.” 

Clearly, from this perspective, rot must fester at the root of our system.

The important question, though, is whether a duly elected government has the right to determine whom among those who may or may not cleave to “allegiance and loyalty” and “country” is worthy of citizenship.

Unfortunately, there are no legal precedents available to answer that question, a circumstance which tends to arise when politicos are entitled to freelance their ideologies over and above their responsibilities to protect the rights and freedoms of all  their fellow countrymen and women. 

Still, no evidence, whatsoever, exists to suggest that rougher, more punitive citizenship laws will preserve law and order in Canada. Generally, perpetrators of crimes against the public well-being are local fools and maniacs who were born and raised in communities that are both ostracized and forgotten by ‘polite’ society. Generally, these disenfranchised individuals are not immigrants. Rarely, are they dual citizens.

And yet, facing stiff opposition from federal Liberals and NDP, Mr. Alexander now drapes himself in the finest Harperite raiment: denial. 

According to the Canadian Press, Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett asked last week, “How can the minister justify this abuse of power which trample on the rights of Canadians, even those who were born here in Canada?”

NDP multiculturalism critic Andrew Cash added: “This is nonsensical and it’s most likely unconstitutional. Why did the government turn down every single suggestion put forward to try to fix this bill?”

In turn, Mr. Alexander accused Mr. Cash of being “lost in the thickets of his own ideology,” which is, if ever there was one, a perfect pot-kettle-black moment in recent Canadian politics.

In 1977, Mr. Alexander was exactly eight years old, just wise enough to recognize that a two-wheeler was marginally better than a trike. I was a hopeful political science aspirant at Dalhousie University. Even then, though, I knew the difference between callow indifference to the gravity of truth and a flat tire.

No Canadian asks his brethren to declare fealty to the state; rather he demands that the state produces democracy as a condition of his participation. If the state fails to comply, then it is the right of every citizen to object. 

Mr. Alexander’s measures would, by extension, turn this objection into sedition. And that, in his own words, is no “asset that Canadians consider absolutely fundamental to their identity,”

Lawyers and scholars are already having a field day with this proposed legislation, as others have had with the Harper government’s similar forays into constitutional engineering. 

What remains to be seen, however, is the degree to which citizens embrace the nobility of their enfranchisement as among the luckiest people on Earth, before their luck runs out thanks to a young man “lost in the thickets if his own ideology.”

 

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