Category Archives: Politics

Aug 14 2014
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Politics

Politicos in no mood to give straight answers

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How sadly predictable are the prescriptions New Brunswick’s political leaders now issue  to treat the provinces’s various and chronic maladies.

Asked repeatedly to speak plainly, boldly and fearlessly about innovative, even radical, remedies for the runaway illnesses of budget-sapping deficits and debt, they pour bromides instead.

Consider their responses to two questions the organization that owns this newspaper posed recently: Would your party consider hospital closures; and does there need to be a change in the size of the public service?

Anyone with even a mote of appreciation for the challenges of health care in a province whose population is simultaneously shrinking and aging recognizes that New Brunswick hosts too many primary care facilities doing too many of the wrong things in  too many of the wrong places.

Of course, we should shutter some hospitals. We should also reconstitute and strengthen geriatric care in community health centres and consolidate emergency medical services wherever such moves do not compromise the quality of, and access to, the services, themselves.

Saskatchewan, a province with population comparable in size to New Brunswick and under similar fiscal circumstances to ours, managed to revamp its health care system in the 1990s.

So, then, gentlemen on the hustings, what say you?

“We’re not in the business of closing hospitals,” declares People’s Alliance Leader Kris Austin. And just what business are they in? “What we are in the business of is finding ways to create a better system whereby people can have access.”

Brilliant.

But no more so, perhaps, than Green Party Leader David Coon’s response: “In the abstract, there is no reason to rule anything out, but in the concrete does it (closing hospitals) make sense? I have no idea.”

Meanwhile Liberal Leader Brian Gallant is in a decidedly conditional mood: “If we can grow our economy, if we can create jobs, if we listen to people on the front lines about how we can be more efficient, more productive, if we ensure that we are more proactive about our health care system. . .we will be able to keep and maintain the infrastructure that we have.”

Sure, and if my grandmother wore a mustache, she’d be my grandfather. Sorry, Mr. Gallant, but wishing for a fundamental change in the fabric of reality does not a health care policy make.

Still, yours is a better answer than this from our current fearless leader, Premier David Alward: “We are focused to be able to build a foundation for an economy based on natural resource development, based on innovation, based on investing in our people so they have the right skills and that will allow us to be able to continue and invest smarter in health care, in hospitals, as we go forward.”

So, is that ‘yes’ or ‘no’? Would your party consider hospital closures?

Never mind. Let’s move on. What about the size of the public service? Whaddya think, men? Too big? Too small? Or just perfect?

You first, Mr. Coon: “Let’s just be practical. .and say, ‘OK, do we need these people to do this work to deliver a good public service and are they in the right places?’”

Yeah, but didn’t we just ask you that?

You next, Mr. Cardy: “It’s not a question of adding or subtracting people. . . It’s a question of what do we need to deliver the public services people want.”

Actually, the question that’s currently on the table is whether we can afford to pay for a civil service that numbers 50,000 in a province whose total population tops out at 750,000 on a good day. That’s among the highest per capita concentration of public workers in Canada.

Yes, Mr. Gallant; I see you have your hand up: “We are going to do a program review and that means we are going to look at every program, every department and every ministry to fully understand where every dollar is going.”

Fair enough, then. You’ll get back to us.

Finally, you Mr. Alward: “We’ve been clear from square one going back to our previous platform in 2010 – we believe that we need to continue to lean the size of the public service. We’ve done that in a very responsible way through attrition.”

Forget it, Mr. Premier. You had me at “lean the size of. . .”

Alas, it seems, a politician’s determination to turn a noun into a verb to express the virtue in maintaining the status quo is about as innovative and radical as it gets in this pretty little tableau of a province.

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Aug 12 2014
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Government, Politics

Redford to the masses: Let ‘em eat cake!

When the rock is a hard place, it's usually government thinking it's a friggin' balloon

When the rock is a hard place, it’s usually government thinking it’s a friggin’ balloon

There is something decidedly Bev Oda about Alison Redford. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the two of them share a certain je ne sais quoi, a certain let ‘em eat cake mentality, a certain – how shall I put this? – aura of power.

Actually, that’s not my phrase. It belongs to Merwan Saher, Alberta’s Auditor-General. Speaking to reporters last week about his report on Ms. Redford’s financial dalliances whilst serving as premier of that province (she’s since left both the job and her position as Progressive Conservative MLA), Mr. Saher said, “This is the sense we had  – that this working around rules, this tendency even to ignore rules, is to fulfill requests coming from the premier’s office in ways that avoided leaving the premier with personal responsibility for those decisions.”

Of course, compared with Ms. Redford, Bev Oda, former federal minister for International Cooperation, is a lightweight in the entitlement department. Before Prime Minister Stephen Harper “retired” her in 2012, she was justly famous for charging a $16 glass of orange juice in a London hotel back to Canadian taxpayers.

Ms. Redford, on the other hand, once spent $825 on a single hotel room (according to the Globe and Mail), had her staff block-book seats on airplanes for people who didn’t exist just so she could get a little more legroom, and spent nearly half-a-million bucks on a trip to Switzerland.

Specifically, Mr. Saher’s report bluntly states: “Premier Redford and her office used public resources inappropriately. They consistently failed to demonstrate in the documents we examined that their travel expenses were necessary and a reasonable and appropriate use of public resources – in other words, economical and in support of a government business objective.”

What’s more, says the report, “Premier Redford used public assets (aircraft) for personal and partisan purposes. And Premier Redford was involved in a plan to convert public space in a public building into personal living space.”

Finally, comes this stinging rebuke: “No public servant, not even a premier, should be excused from vigilant oversight of their compliance with policies and processes designed both to protect the public interest and themselves from bad judgement.

And what does the former Princess of the Oil Patch have to say for herself? 

“I had hoped to have more time to do more of what I promised Albertans,” she wrote recently in the Edmonton Journal. “There were many issues we could tackle quickly – a new social policy framework, equality rights, better funding for mental health, disaster responses in the north and south, funding for teachers, Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped, a single regulator and sustainable energy development, a more rational royalty framework, and opening new trade offices. I am proud of the Safe Communities Agenda for Alberta, and the Social Policy Framework that helped to prevent vulnerable youth from following the path of addiction, crime and homelessness. I truly believe we made a difference.”

At the same time, she conceded, “There were also many issues that we needed to deal with that were always going to take longer to fix, for two reasons. First, they were complicated, and second, many had been neglected for too long and there was entrenched resistance to new approaches. That is a reality and a dilemma in public life. It is necessary to be bold and confident, but there is always reluctance to look ahead and to face challenges as well as opportunities. It is easier to look back, to what we know and understand. Moving forward is more difficult, particularly in a province as blessed as Alberta.”

I’ll say it’s blessed. Ask any Maritimer who can’t afford bus fare, let alone plane tickets and hotel rooms. That’s what you get when you have more money than God. In fact, if you’re Alison Redford, you don’t actually need His blessing at all.

Just a little of what Mr. Saher calls “bad judgement” and an “aura of power.”

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Aug 08 2014
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Municipal Affairs, Politics

Where’s Rob Ford when you need him?

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Time was when a good, old-fashioned political scandal in this country involved equal measures of illicit drugs and public inebriation.

Now, according to the Globe and Mail this week, the mayor of Brampton, Ontario, Susan Fennell, has been accused of improperly charging $172,608 to the municipal credit card, which she used to pay for “hotel upgrades, flight passes and even IQ quizzes. . .on her cell phone.”

One wonders how that last one worked out for her. The auditors, in any case, aren’t waiting around to find out; they are less interested in the details of her preoccupations than in the scope of her alleged public pinching.

Says the Globe piece: “An expense scandal has been simmering since last fall, but it wasn’t until a four-month audit was completed this week by Deloitte Canada that the extent of the mayor’s breaches of the city’s spending policy were revealed, highlighting and high level of dysfunction in Canada’s ninth-largest city.”

Specifically, Deloitte found that the burgermeister of this burb of 600,000 souls had violated the codebook 266 times and possibly more, since Ms. Fennell couldn’t provide details about 72 other spending excursions.

Naturally, her fellow councillors are livid. “We certainly didn’t sit around this table and approve first-class travel and luxury hotel rooms,” said Elaine Moore, who is no fan of the mayor on a good day. “I think what we have is an attitude of compete disregard for taxpayers’ dollars.”

What irks and astonishes others who are not privy to the traditional perks of municipal office is the lack of procedures in place to enforce spending policy. Says the Globe: “In February, 2011, councillors voted 7-2 to. . .allow members to approve their own claims. . .It’s a move that;s baffled observers.”

Indeed, exclaimed Susan Crawford of the city’s Board of Trade, “There’s no corporation in our country that doesn’t have an oversight function in terms of expenses – recording them, reviewing them and approving them,”

Still, is Ms. Fennell worried? Commenting on her colleagues‘ demand for a criminal investigation into her activities, she smirked, “Do you want to stick to the (Ontario Provincial Police or do you want to double-check the proper protocol with Peel, OPP, RCMP, CSIS, the army?”

Elsewhere in Public Service Land, where the roads are paved with gold and no one need ever check his bank account, scandal-plagued former Alberta Premier Alison Redford penned her goodbyes to the citizens of the Wild Rose province.

“I am stepping down immediately as MLA for Calgary-Elbow to start the next chapter of my life, teaching and resuming work in international development and public policy,” she wrote in the Edmonton Journal this week. “I recognize that mistakes were made along the way. In hindsight, there were many things I would have done differently. That said, I accept responsibility for all the decisions I have made.”

Oh really? According to the CBC, which obtained an advance copy of Alberta Auditor-General Merwan Saher’s report on the former premier’s spending habits, “false passengers” appeared on several government flights. Ms. Redford’s staff would routinely ‘cancel’ the manifest at the last minute, thus “making it possible for (her) to fly alone with her entourage.”

The CBC report continued: “(The A-G) also concluded Redford derived a “personal benefit” by taking her daughter on dozens of government flights. Saher raises the question of whether Redford’s desire to take her daughter on out-of-province trips may have influenced the decision to use government aircraft rather than commercial carriers.”

Again, just as in Brampton, the peasants are revolting. Jim Lightbody, a University of Alberta political scientist can scarcely believe his eyes. “It reveals a scarcely disguised contempt for taxpayers’ money,” he told the CBC.

Indeed, it does. But that also seems to be the way the circus is heading these days. 

Earlier this summer, Joe Fontana – the former mayor of London, Ontario, having been convicted of fraud and breach of trust (charges that stemmed from his time serving as  federal Liberal cabinet minister) – was sentenced to four months of house detention and several more of probation.

Former Conservative senator Mike Duffy faces 31 charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery. Who knows what’s happening in the Pamela Wallin case, as the RCMP continues its investigation into her expenses?

It all makes one yearn for a little illicit-drug and public-inebriation action.

Dear Rob Ford: Won’t you come out and play?

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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 30 2014
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Politics

All hail our towering examples of public service

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We are, in every way on every day, blessed in this country to count among our citizenry the finest class of politicians and civic leaders humanity has ever seen fit to produce. Of course, we dare not stare too long at their like, lest these glittering specimens of probity and circumspection blind us where we stand.

Perhaps, then, only a glance or two will suffice.

What say you Rob Ford, Lord High Mayor of yon Hog Town? When last we checked your calendar, you were just emerging from several weeks of. . .ahem. . .well-deserved rest, having spent several years working overtime to become habitually. . .well, let’s just say. . .tired and emotional.

According to the Globe and Mail this week, hizzoner says it is “irrelevant whether or not his family firm does business with a large U.S. printing company he and his brother opened doors for at city hall, arguing the Ford’s company has too many clients for him to declare a conflict on every one.”

In fact, the mayor’s exact words were: “People come with ideas to save the city money. I’ll be the first one to bring them in, bring the managers and say, here’s some ideas. If thats a conflict, I’m going to have to declare a conflict with almost every business or person in this city. I guess I am in a conflict.”

That said, Mr. Ford trundled off for a photo-op at a new playground in the GTA’s North York borough. There, he joined some kids on the monkey bars and exclaimed his abiding support for the new space and others like it across the city. Which was strange, because, as the Toronto Star reported, “he was the only member of council to vote against a proposal to let the city use $140,000 in private money to build the park. The proposal passed 34-1.”

Again, according to the Star, “Local resident and advocate Talisha Ramsaroop, 21, said Ford told her and two other young people at the ceremony that he has done more for low-income communities than any other mayor – and that he ‘started’ the park project. ‘Those were his exact words: ‘I started this,’’ Ramsaroop said.

“In fact, the park, Reading Sprouts Garden, was (an). . .initiative of local councillor Maria Augimeri. Ramsaroop said she was ‘really upset’ when she was informed later of Ford’s opposing vote. ‘To be quite’honest, I didn’t know that politicians were allowed to lie to your face,’ Ramsaroop said. “Like, I know this sounds really optimistic, but I was completely unaware that politicians were allowed to lie to the face of the people.’”

Elsewhere in Oz, the Senate of Canada was debating whether or not to sanction one of its members for some such misdemeanour.

Nope, it wasn’t mighty Mike Duffy, rumoured to be from Kensington, Prince Edward Island, now facing 31 counts of fraud and breach of trust. Neither was it his colleague Pamela Wallin who’s still facing the RCMP’s music.

It was the heretofore all-but-unknown Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, a Conservative senator who got his wrists slapped for hiring his girlfriend. As a Star piece noted, “A Senate committee is debating what – if any – sanction to level against a Quebec Conservative who was found to have breached parts of the upper chamber’s conflict-of-interest code.

“Sen. Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu got a chance Monday to testify behind closed doors about why he continued to employ his girlfriend as an assistant, even though it violated Senate guidelines.

“Boisvenu renewed a job contract for his girlfriend twice, and tried to ensure a two-week special leave for her as she moved from one job to another in Senate administration. . .Boisvenu was found to have acted inappropriately by not only renewing the contract but also by lobbying Senate leadership over how time off Lapointe had taken was to be counted.”

Meanwhile the Upper Chamber’s ethics commissioner, Lyse Ricard, is recommending that no sanctioned be leveled against the former victims’ rights advocate as he didn’t mean to break the Senate’s rules. His “error of judgement,” she said, was “made in good faith.”

But of course – among the political class, aren’t they all?

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Jul 29 2014
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Economy, Politics

George Orwell would be proud to call this tax man Big Brother

When the rock is a hard place, it's usually government thinking it's a friggin' balloon

When the rock is a hard place, it’s usually government thinking it’s a friggin’ balloon

Big Brother arrived in Canada last week – late by 30 years, if we are inclined to set our time pieces according to the schedule predicted in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984– and finally started unpacking his bags.

Ho do we know? It’s not by the creepy rise of the surveillance state as manifested by Communications Security Establishment Canada (this country’s version of the U.S. National Security Agency). It’s not by the uptick of moral priggishness and the desire of mostly conservative politicians to throw just about everyone who ever smoked a joint into jail.

Nope, confused citizen, it’s by the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) full, official embrace of “doublethink”, thanks greatly to the federal government’s determination to root out and defund political activities among national charities – especially those that have been critical of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s social agenda or, more accurately, lack of one.

You may understand “doublethink” as the “act of ordinary people simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts.” That Wikipedia definition is as almost good as any. The only one better was unwittingly expressed in a Canadian Press (CP) story late last week. To wit:

“The Canada Revenue Agency has told a charity that it can no longer try to prevent poverty around the world, it can only alleviate poverty – because preventing poverty might benefit people who are already not poor.”

The CP item also characterized the spat between CRA and Oxfam Canada as a “bizarre bureaucratic brawl”, which it most certainly is.

Obviously, the best way to alleviate poverty is to prevent it from happening in the first place. The same logic applies to every other deleterious eventuality in life.

The best way of alleviating mental anguish or physical suffering is to prevent disease. The best way of alleviating the effects of bankruptcy is to prevent the accumulation of unsustainable debt. The best way of alleviating social inequality is to prevent the proliferation of sub-standard public education.

Still, prevention is oftentimes an overtly political act. Conversely, alleviation amounts in most cases to a hand out – and, generally, too little too late. That, it seems, is perfectly fine with certain office-holders in Ottawa.

It’s okay to throw a man a fish when he’s starving, but not to teach him how to secure his own catch of the day (all of which, incidentally, runs counter to Christ’s own teachings – a rather ironic twist given the overt religiosity of this government’s cherished voting base).

The doublethink in this case is, itself, a unique twist of the standard model. It does not force you to hold as equally valid two diametrically opposite conclusions; it demands that you consider two obviously joined concepts as inextricably separate.

“Relieving poverty is charitable, but preventing it is not,” the CRA finds in one of the most ludicrous. anti-humanitarian pronouncements any branch of government in this country has ever issued. “Preventing poverty could mean providing for a class of beneficiaries that are (sic) not poor.”

Huh? How exactly would that work? Please, pray tell.

Would Oxfam or any other tax-exempt charity in the poverty-reduction biz conduct an audit of millionaires who are in danger of suddenly losing their shirts, watch them shed said garments and then, and only then, swoop in with bags of basmati and powdered skim milk to “alleviate” their now straightened condition?

The whole thing is, as Oxfam Canada’s executive director told the CP, absurd. “Our mission statement still indicates we’re committed to ending poverty, but our charitable (purposes) do not use the word ‘end’ or ‘prevent’,” he said. “They use the word ‘alleviate.’”

Okay. . .New plan. Oxfam can effectively clean up the language of its mission statement to reflect the new sensitivities. But what prevents it from conducting its real business in precisely the same way as it always has?

Does the charities directorate of the Canada Revenues Agency have the budget in these artificially engineered austere times to track every “political activity” of every charity in Canada to ascertain the degrees of their compliance to Big Brother’s edicts?

Under the ridiculous circumstances, it’s best not to over-think these things.

Keep calm and carry on, good ladies and gentlemen.

Jul 27 2014
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Demographics, Economy, Politics

A tale of two debt loads

Mountain of debt...maybe we grow accustomed to its face...

Mountain of debt…maybe we grow accustomed to its face…

Implementing prudent fiscal policy is, for finance ministers, like threading a needle with a tightrope. Just ask Ottawa’s Joe Oliver or Fredericton’s Blaine Higgs who are, for very different reasons, attempting to execute that particular circus trick.

In the wake of a C.D. Howe Institute report that calls for the federal government to loosen up on its avowed purpose to balance the national budget by 2015 come what may, Mr. Oliver thunders like a Calvinist preacher: “Our government will not open the taps on reckless spending. We will not go down that well-trod and irresponsible path to economic decline.”

Still, economist William Scarth is adamant. “The federal government should delay its final stage of deficit reduction by three years,” he writes in his report for C.D. Howe. “If its deficit-to-GDP ratio is held at one-half of one percentage point for three years before reducing it to zero, it is estimated that the nation’s unemployment rate would be four-tenths of one percentage point lower during this three-year period (the equivalent of 75,000 new jobs).”

He’s not alone in this thinking.

A recent Canadian Press piece quotes several noted experts – some of whom are not partisan word warriors – who point out that the Canadian economy is not, in fact, in especially good shape. Over the past 12 months, only Alberta has created any jobs –  and even there, 72,000 new positions are not enough to boost the flagging fortunes of Ontario, Quebec or, for that matter, New Brunswick.

“Balancing the budget is a political imperative not an economic one,” NDP finance critic Nathan Cullen says. “It’s like balancing the family budget and not feeding the kids.”

Meanwhile, Liberal deputy leader Ralph Goodale writes in a recent editorial, “For months on end, (the Harper government) dismiss weak employment numbers – like the ones recently reported by Statistics Canada for the month of June – as just ‘monthly volatility’.  But it keeps recurring, month after month. One might ask, at what point does that so-called ‘volatility’ become an undeniable trend in the wrong direction. Or to put it another way, when will Mr. Harper pull his head out of the sand?”

Then, there’s David Dodge, a former Bank of Canada Governor whose Spring 2014 Economic Outlook for the law firm Bennett Jones observes: “It is. . .important to realize that in the current environment of low long-term interest rates, fiscal prudence does not require bringing the annual budget balance to zero almost immediately. Small increases in borrowing requirements to finance infrastructure investment would still lead to declines in the debt-to-GDP ratio. Moreover, with low interest rates, it is the right time for governments and the private sector to invest in infrastructure.”

Finally, the CP taps Bank of Montreal chief economist Doug Porter for his views. Says he: “The market is not crying out for a tighter fiscal policy at the federal level. If the government wheeled out a significant medium-term infrastructure program, I don’t think I’d have a big problem with it – they can borrow very cheaply and there’s a pretty good case to be made that there’s lots of demand for infrastructure.”

Move eastward to New Brunswick and witness a whole different tale of woe. Here, Finance Minister Higgs would give his left pinky to own Mr. Oliver’s set of problems, i.e., to spend or not to spend.

According to the latest audited financial statements, the province finished fiscal 2013-14 with a deficit of $500 million (about $20 million more that anticipated) on a long-tern debt of $11.6 billion.

Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s population of 755,464 people continues to age, making a quick return to fiscal health about as likely as a late-July nor’easter.

Still, plucky Premier David Alward enthuses, “We are turning the corner and we see revenue projections on target or actually a bit ahead of target from what we are projecting.”

Of course, to do that, Telegraph-Journal reporter Chris Morris notes “additional revenues of $1.129 billion, a 14 per cent increase over 2014-2015, must be achieved.”

Not even on his very best day would Mr. Oliver walk that tightrope for Mr. Higgs.

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Jul 27 2014
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Politics

Why does Ottawa hate charity?

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I thank God Almighty that I am not a tax-exempt Canadian charity. The way I like to run my chops whilst simultaneously poking the bear that is Stephen Harper’s Conservative government virtually guarantees that the eternal vigilance of the Canada Revenue Agency would focus exclusively on me for the rest of my days.

PEN Canada’s president Philip Slayton knows what I mean. His organization represents about 1,000, mostly mouthy, writers. Their mission statement goes as follows: “PEN Canada is a nonpartisan organization of writers that works with others to defend freedom of expression as a basic human right, at home and abroad. (It) promotes literature, fights censorship, helps free persecuted writers from prison, and assists writers living in exile in Canada.”

Occasionally, the group issues news releases like this one in May:

“The Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act (Bill C-13), currently being discussed at the Standing Committee for Justice and Human Rights, would provide telecom companies with criminal and civil immunity for disclosing subscriber information to government agencies.

“According to information published following an access to information request by University of Ottawa Law professor Michael Geist, in 2011, nine of Canada’s major telecom providers and social media sites received 1.2 million data requests from government agencies. The companies complied in 784,756 cases. The total number of requests and disclosures from all telecom companies is likely higher.

“‘These figures give an idea of the government’s unsettling predilection for surveillance,’ said PEN Canada National Affairs Committee Chair William Kowalski. ‘If information has been volunteered this readily, then privacy would vanish if these practices became law.’”

So, perhaps, would any expectation of freedom of expression, which is kind of ironic, given PEN’s current straights. Earlier this week, two tax auditors arrived on the Toronto-based organization’s doorstep, demanding to be shown what The Canadian Press describes as “a wide range of internal documents.”

This was not exactly unexpected. Back in 2012, the Harper government announced that it was cracking down on so-called charities that pursue political “activities”, particularly those that it suspected of breaking the ten per cent rule – the proportion of time an organization can spend advocating outside the boundaries of is mandate and mission without compromising its charitable status.

Since then, The Canadian Press has uncovered more than 50 “political-activities” audits underway against a wide variety of groups, including Amnesty International Canada, The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Canada Without Poverty, and the David Suzuki Foundation.

The common thread is fairly plain. All are progressive, liberal, politically aware and archly critical of the current office-holders in Ottawa.

CRA officials, of course, deny any connection to operatives in government. This is, they say, just business as usual. “The process for identifying which charities will be audited, for any reason, is handled by the charities directorate itself and is not subject to political direction.” Cathy Hawara informed the Canadian Bar Association this spring, according to CP.

Maybe, but it does seem oddly coincidental. As for Mr. Slayton, he’s cooperating with the authorities, but he’s none too happy about it. “I refuse to let it have a chilling effect on us,” he to CP. “We are not going to have some kind of fear – about having our charitable status questioned by authorities – stop us speaking out on issues.”

Indeed, he said, “If it means you have to live in fear of the revenue authorities, and if it means that there are things you want to say, you feel you should say, but you feel you cannot because of the rules, well then, what price charitable registration?”

It’s a good question. And it’s worth pondering, awhile, how the federal government sets its priorities. Real fraudsters, con men and criminals ship their ill-gotten booty to tax havens all over the world. Somehow, though, politically active charities deserve the tax man’s vigilant eye.

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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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