Tag Archives: Stephen Harper

Oct 01 2014
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Business, Politics, Trade

Europeans flying high on Canada’s dime

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Taxes, we are firmly told by our big brothers in federal office, are not for repairing the nation’s frayed social safety net.

They are not for offsetting the demographic demands on the health care system of an increasingly aging population.

And they are certainly not for anything so wobbly and unnecessary as a fully-subsidized, universal program of early childhood education spanning this great realm from coast to coast to shining coast.

I can tell you what they are for, though.

“Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave visiting European delegates a free flight home to Brussels last week, after adding a Toronto reception to their schedule,” the CBC dutifully reported on Sunday, after having obtained a government email to the RCMP’s Protective Policing branch.

According to the public broadcaster’s Terry Milewski, “That reception made it impossible for the visitors to make a planned commercial flight from Ottawa, and thereby get to a Saturday meeting in Brussels. The cost of the (Canadian Forces) Airbus flight is estimated at more than $300,000”

Specifically, the piece states: “The modified Airbus A310 costs $22,537 an hour to operate, according to official figures in 2012. The price has likely risen since then, but, at that rate, and assuming 15 hours’ flight time from Toronto to Brussels and back, the trip would have cost $338,055.”

And that doesn’t begin to account for the costs of additional security, motorcades, or the reception, itself, which was arranged to mark the occasion of Canada and the European Union signing their new Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). Of course, opinions varied on the significance of the cotillion, itself.

Trade Minister Ed Fast assured the House of Commons that it was “a critical element” of the European visit. “On this side, we understand how important trade and investment are to driving economic growth and long-term prosperity in this country,” he said whilst denouncing his NDP tormentors as “anti-trade”.

Yet, the Europeans, themselves, seemed to suggest that the reception was not a formal extension of the summit which produced the final agreement earlier in the day. It was. . .oh. . .how do you say? . .a party.

And as people would be up late, presumably having a marvelous time trading war stories from their days at the negotiating table (Hey Frank, you remember that time I rewrote Section 4, Sub-section 8, Paragraph A in less than three minutes? I tell you, the Europeans never knew what hit ‘em), putting a publicly paid-for jet at the disposal of our new best-friends-forever to facilitate their last-minute return home, is just the gentlemanly thing to do.

At least Greg Thomas wasn’t buying the hooey. According to the CBC article, the director of the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation found himself in the deliciously ironic position of being a guest of the event at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto: “(He) said his organization would send a cheque to the government for the cost of his attendance, and added that the Airbus freebie was a waste of taxpayers’ money. ‘Victory lap or not, there’s no excuse (for) blowing 300 grand on short notice for what amounts to a political show,’ (he added). ‘Many Canadians can stomach the expense of hosting the royal family when they come to Canada. (But) having royal treatment afforded to European bureaucrats is not something that’s going to go down, I think, in any part of the country. They could have done this in Ottawa. They could have saved $300,000 and it would have had the same effect.’”

Amen to that, brother. And if this were any other sort of negotiation, planners in the Prime Minister’s Office might well have decided that discretion is, indeed, the better part of valour.

But this was CETA, the glittering jewell in Stephen Harper’s crown as prime minister – or so he believes. 

“The historic. . .Agreement is by far Canada’s most ambitious trade initiative, broader in scope and deeper in ambition than the. . .North American Free Trade Agreement,” reads the Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development website. “It will open new markets to our exporters throughout the EU and generate significant benefits for all Canadians. The Government of Canada has made opening new markets through agreements like CETA a priority – just one way it is creating jobs and opportunities for Canadians in every region of the country.”

Let us hope so. It seems we have some taxes to pay.

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Sep 29 2014
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Humour, Personal History

Pearls of wisdom from the Buddha of showmen

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A casual acquaintance of mine (I’ll call him Cal Tripken), who makes a good living on the motivational speaking circuit in Toronto, sits across the table from me, picking calamari out of his teeth with a dessert fork.

“Sorry, dude,” he says. “I still don’t see what your problem is.”

Lunch is over and the cheque has arrived. I have a column to write, but I reckon I still have enough time to reiterate my predicament once more.

I have been asked to give a keynote address at business convention, I explain. I can say anything I want as long as it’s not scatological, pornographic or racist. My problem is that, in recent years, I have developed a morbid fear of public speaking.

Oh sure, I can write a screed for my city’s daily newspaper or for CBC radio that would, and often does, make a politician’s blood churn cold with rage, or an anti-shale gas activist’s dander jump like fleas from his overheated scalp. It doesn’t bother me at all; I sleep great.

But when faced with the prospect of speaking before a live audience of more than 20 people, my throat constricts, my palms sweat, and I cast a frantic glance over at the baby barn at the back of my garden and seriously wonder whether, with a few last-minute renovations, it might serve me well as a hermitage, where I might hole up for the rest of my life.

The curious thing about all of this is that when I was much younger, I was a professional stage actor who had no trouble – indeed, I relished – holding the attention of a theatre packed with between 500 and 1,000 patrons at a time.

So, I ask Cal, what gives. . .dude?

“Well,” he says, putting down the fork, “Let’s parse this. . .You are chiefly a political commentator. . .Correct?”

Correct.

“So, that means that you presumably know something about the subjects that interest you. . .Right?”

Right.

“Bro, there you have it. That’s the problem in a nutshell.”

He still has a little strand of squid stuck between his lateral incisor and canine teeth, which I decide to ignore.

“What are you talking about?” I say as I check my watch and hand my credit card to the sever, as her several, earlier attempts with Tripken’s plastic produced inconclusive results.

“It’s as clear as the frog in your throat. . .You’re too authentic. Your audience doesn’t want to hear what you really think. They want to hear what they think, in your voice. That lets them off them off the hook from actually having to think for themselves.”

Dear Buddha, do go on.

“Deep down, you know this; you’re just not admitting it to yourself. You can write a speech in the privacy of your own boudoir and rehearse it until the cows come home. But if it actually comes from you, what is really you, it’s always going to sound hollow to you when you’re giving it in front of a live audience. . .Frankly, my friend, you’ve forgotten your theatre training. Nowadays, it’s all about the show, baby.”

So, I venture, maybe I should put a pillow under my jacket and prance around the stage like an ersatz Richard III sounding fury and melancholia during speech. Or, perhaps, I should channel Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire and scream “Stella!” at the top of my lungs before I segue into a dissertation about how a higher HST rate in New Brunswick will pay for. . .well, streetcars.

“Whatever, dude,” Cal says as he grabs a toothpick. “How do you think Ronald Reagan became the most beloved President of the United States in 50 years. It wasn’t because he was a policy genius. It was because he was an actor. . .And what about our very own Stephen Harper? Do you actually think that hard-talking Steverino means half the things he says. The guy plays soft rock on the piano. . .And in a sweater-vest, no less.

Tripken gets up to leave. “Now, I really gotta go and brush my teeth.”

I smile and, as I retrieve my credit card, say: “Oddly enough, so do I.”

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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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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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Government, Politics, Society

When some are more equal than others

 

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It is one of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s favorite yakking points. NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair bangs on about it every chance he gets. Even Canada’s esteemed Prime Minister Stephen Harper has raised the subject, albeit delicately, in public from time to time.

Now the worthy Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has jumped into the fray in its first country report on the Great White North in two years: Canada is, indeed, a nation of unequal opportunity and in all the ways that matter.

While “Canadians enjoy high levels of well-being and social progress” and though all of the country’s “component scores exceed the OECD average,” the report also concludes that “disposable income inequality has increased by considerably more in Canada since 1995 (11 per cent) than in other countries with data (2 per cent) to a level that is now 12th highest in the OECD.” 

What’s more, “in an era of high commodity prices has created wide regional economic disparities, while much of the public revenues from non-renewable 

resource extraction are spent on current government programmes, rather than being saved for the benefit of future generations. Incomes have risen in resource-rich provinces, but the resulting currency appreciation has placed pressures on manufacturing.”

The nation’s traditional mechanism for redistributing wealth from have to have-not provinces, federal equalization transfers, “only partially offset inter-provincial disparities in fiscal capacity.”

Housing is a special concern, says the organization. Prices in major cities, especially Vancouver and Toronto, are preposterously out of sync with the asset wealth that underpins homes and condominiums there, raising the specter of a market bubble and subsequent crash. 

If that happens, only banks and other lenders will prosper, thanks to Canada’s uniquely generous mortgage insurance system which guarantees institutions 100 per cent payback in the event of loan default – a circumstance that if repeated often enough would, itself, accelerate the widening gap between the rich and the rest of us poor schlubs.

Still, whenever politicians and pundits grumble about income inequality – which U.S. President Barack Obama has termed the “greatest threat” to contemporary society – other members of the chattering class are sure to point out that sour grapes never helped anyone, rich or poor.

Unerringly, they cleave to arguments that justify, legitimize or merely accept disparity as a fact of life. 

Writing in the Washington Post earlier this year, economist Joann Weiner cited four reasons why Mr. Obama is sort of stuck. 

First, America  is a “Great Gatsby” nation where “the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor.” Second, “winning the ‘birth lottery’ is the biggest factor in determining” one’s like pay grade in life. Third, birds of a feather flock together; rich, educated, people marry other rich, educated people. And fourth, the uneducated are unlikely to reverse their fortunes because college has become too expensive to pursue. 

Ironically, though, these conditions, which hamper efforts to inject the system with greater equity, are themselves the product the widening disparity that first appeared in the late 1970s thanks to what former U.S. Labour Secretary Robert Reich and others have identified as two concurrent developments: the appearance of spectacular, new business technologies; and a wholesale assault on private unions.

The former lowered labour costs, while the latter undermined wages and job security. Consequently, as Mr. Reich notes on his blog, “We are heading back to levels of inequality not seen since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. The pertinent question is not whether income and wealth inequality is good or bad. It is at what point do these inequalities become so great as to pose a serious threat to our economy, our ideal of equal opportunity and our democracy.”

In fact, the best practical reason why everyone, from the improbably wealthy to the grudgingly poor, should worry about disparities in wealth and income is economic. Without a sturdy middle class around to keep buying the stuff rich people’s factories make, the whole game implodes.

Progressives among us are certainly not inured to the status quo. They note with confidence various fixes, including universal early childhood education to provide economically disadvantaged kids with the same start in life as their wealthy counterparts. 

The real question is whether our collective Trudeaus, Mulcairs and Harpers will ever be ready to put their money where their mouths are.

 

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Jun 12 2014
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Climate, Economy, Energy

Climate change is real. But do the feds care?

 

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Senior federal Tories no longer deny, as more than a few once did, encroaching climate change. Their thinking on the issue has evolved. Now, they accept it, almost willingly, as a cost of doing business in the 21st Century.

With all the bellicosity that this proposition implies, Prime Minister Stephen Harper thumbed his nose at U.S. President Barack Obama this week, suggesting that the latter’s effort to enforce new emission standards for power plants was disingenuous.

“No matter what they say, no country is going to take actions that are going to deliberately destroy jobs and growth in their country,” he said during a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott in Ottawa. “We are just a little more frank about that.”

Moreover, he added, “the measures outlined by President Obama, as important as they are, do not go nearly as far in the electricity sector as the actions Canada has already taken ahead of the United States in that particular sector.”

Finally, he said, “It’s not that we don’t seek to deal with climate change, but we seek to deal with it in a way that will protect and enhance our ability to create jobs and growth. . .Frankly, every single country in the world (feels the same way).”

Now, who’s being disingenuous?

Canada’s official government position on climate change is virtually non-existent. The feds do not maintain, let alone enforce, regulations governing greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas industry for a very good reason: They are terrified of angering their pals in Big Petrol. 

According to a report in the Globe and Mail last year, the World Resources Institute stated that in 2010 this country’s carbon footprint was the tenth-largest in the world. “On a per-capita basis, Canada is 17th; among the G20, Canada trails only Australia and the United States,” the item noted.

As for Canada’s putative lead over the United States in regulating the electricity sector, Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute, an environmental think tank based in British Columbia, begs to differ. In a blog post on June 4, he wrote:

“While Canada did introduce federal coal regulations in 2012, the regulations have a long phase-in period that allows some of Canada’s coal plants to operate clear through the middle of the century, without any greenhouse gas controls whatsoever.”

Mr. Dyer observes that this “timid response” guarantees that meaningful drops in greenhouse gas emissions won’t appear until 2030. In this context, he writes, “The U.S. proposal is far more effective at reducing greenhouse gases from electricity generation in the short term, compared to business as usual. Analysis suggests the EPA rules would reduce power sector emissions by an estimated 23 per cent below business as usual by 2025, compared to five per cent from Canada’s federal regulations (according to Environment Canada’s own numbers).”

Apart from this, Pembina estimates that, between 2005 and 2020, tar sands expansion will have rendered preposterous Canada’s faint-hearted promise to the international community to cut its greenhouse gas production by 17 per cent.

“Environment Canada estimates that Canada will only be ‘halfway’ to meeting its 2020 target in 2020 – meaning that we’re on track to miss the 2020 target by 113 million tonnes, or double the current emissions of British Columbia,” wrote Clare Demerse, Pembina’s former director of federal policy, on the Institute’s website last year. “To date, the federal government has not published any plan or proposal to close that gap.”

Under the circumstances, how can any political leader in Ottawa claim with a straight face that the government has a plan for mitigating the effects of the nation’s increasingly rapacious fossil fuel industry?

Energy Minister Joe Oliver is practically apoplectic over the possibility that Alberta oil will forever languish where it does no one any good. In a recent speech, he described the black gold as “landlocked”, costing the national economy billions of dollars a year in lost revenue.

Meanwhile, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq is ritually fond of stating that the federal government’s emissions policy demonstrates how she and her Conservative confederates are “standing up for Canadian jobs,” as if no clean, sustainable alternative is even worth considering.

Fair enough. But if certain federal Tories no longer deny the existence of climate change, neither should they deny the other truth: They couldn’t care less.

 

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Jun 06 2014
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Climate, Energy, Oil and Gas, Politics

New Brunswick’s climate change talking points

 

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Greenhouse gas emission targets, like New Year’s resolutions, are made to be broken. Still, as loyal supplicants of the state of denial otherwise known as New Brunswick, it behooves all of us to wish Premier Alward and company all the best with their new Climate Change Action Plan.

Luck? You’re going to need it. 

“To do its part under the Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers (NEG-ECP) 2013 Climate Change Action Plan,” the strategy, released on Monday, declares. “New Brunswick has committed to achieving greenhouse gas reduction targets of: Ten per cent below 1990 levels by 2020; and 75-85 per cent below 2001 levels by 2050.”

Apparently, this is perfectly doable. After all, as the report notes, the province managed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent between 2005 and 2010, even as it grew its economy by 19 per cent over that period.

Forget that in 2011, New Brunswick belched 18.6 million tonnes of 

CO2 equivalent, which amounted to the third-highest per capita emissions in the country, behind Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Forget, too, that as the plan clearly states, “New Brunswick’s economy faces challenges due to its high ‘carbon intensity’. In other words, the province consumes a relatively large amount of energy per dollar of economic production, and despite recent 

progress, much of the energy New Brunswick uses still comes from refined petroleum products. With the transition to a lower carbon economy well on its way, people around the world are making significant changes to the way they do business. As a province that exports much of what it produces, New Brunswick’s reputation and real performance in climate change may affect its trade competitiveness in international markets.”

All of which is another way of saying what U.S. Ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman warned this week: If we don’t soon get our climate-change act together up here, north of the 48th, there will be economic consequences to pay elsewhere on the world stage.

“We need to continue (the) work together moving toward a low-carbon future, with alternative energy choices, with greater energy choices, with greater energy efficiency, and sustainable extraction of our oil and gas reserves,” he said in a speech in Ottawa on Monday. “This is not a task we can take on individually. It can only be successfully challenged together.”

Mr. Heyman made his remarks as his boss U.S. President Barack Obama’s unveiled sweeping, new plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 30 per cent by 2030. 

Again, like New Brunswick’s targets, the number feels arbitrary. Who knows what can happen in five years, let alone 15 or 35? Almost no one foresaw the industrial output-killing Great Recession of 2008, which, incidentally, did more than all the earnest policy makers in the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Still, it’s a start, and that’s more than we can say for our own venerable leader Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose only response to criticism this week that he’s not moving fast enough to match US. initiatives on climate change was downright surly: “(Obama is) acting two years after this government acted and taking actions that do not go nearly as far as this government went.”

The unvarnished truth is, however, that the Yanks are on course to cut all of their emissions by 15 per cent by 2020. In contrast, we Canucks are more or less happily sitting with our heads stuck in the Alberta oil sands, where production dooms any hope of meeting our oft-stated reduction target of 17 per cent a scant six years from now.

In New Brunswick, several factors militate against the new action plan’s chances of success. Oddly enough, none of these has anything to do with tight oil and gas development, an as yet unrealized sweet dream, or wretched nightmare, depending on who’s doing the talking.

Without dramatic, even temporarily traumatic, changes to the energy mix in this province – without a concerted effort to cut back usage, conserve electricity and, finally, migrate to renewable sources for in situ consumption – all of our greenhouse gas reduction targets will remain, like so many of our other promises in New Brunswick, made to be broken.

 

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Jun 04 2014
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Democracy, Politics, Privacy

Who watches the watchdog?

 

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The degree to which Daniel Therrien will faithfully execute the duties of his office as Canada’s incoming privacy commissioner rests entirely on his appreciation of the meaning of one word.

Call it independence or objectivity or dispassion, but the mandate and mission of this parliamentary watchdog are both clear and specific. 

They go like this, straight from the official record: “The mandate of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) is overseeing compliance with both the Privacy Act, which covers the personal information-handling practices of federal government departments and agencies, and the Personal Information Protection and Electronics Documents Act (PIPEDA), Canada’s private sector privacy law. The mission. . .is to protect and promote the privacy rights of individuals.” 

In this, “the Commissioner works independently from any other part of the government to investigate complaints from individuals with respect to the federal public sector and Sutherland private sector.” 

So, then, what are Canadians to make of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s choice to succeed Interim Commissioner Chantal Bernier? By all appearances, the two could not possess more divergent pedigrees. 

Like her predecessor, Jennifer Stoddart, Ms. Bernier comes from the traditional, bible-thumping school of public watchdoggery, preaching the gospel of accountability in all things government-related, come what may. 

In contrast, Mr. Therrien’s resume reads like that of a consummate insider, a man who appears to be more comfortable with going along to get along. His official bio, posted to the Prime Minister of Canada’s website, is unapologetic, even cheerful:

“In his current role, among other notable achievements, Mr. Therrien co-led the negotiating team responsible for the adoption of privacy principles governing the sharing of information between Canada and the U.S. under the Beyond the Border Accord, an umbrella agreement to enhance trade and security which includes 33 specific arrangements. These principles provide for the implementation, harmonization and augmentation of safeguards found in Canadian and U.S. Privacy legislation.”

To his supporters (among them, somewhat incongruously, is Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau), Mr. Therrien is the model of perspicacity, experience and knowledge – exactly what the office he will soon fill needs. To his detractors, he’s a catastrophe waiting to happen.

In a letter to Mr. Harper, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair asserted, among other things, that Mr. Therrien “has nether the neutrality nor the necessary detachment to hold this position.” 

Michael Geist, an electronic security consultant, also expressed concerns. “Surely, the government is sending a bit of a signal that in an environment when there were other privacy commissioners and people with deep backgrounds on the privacy side, that they’ve chosen to focus on someone whose most recent emphasis has been on safety and security,” he told the Toronto Star last week. 

In a different time, none of this would have captured the public’s imagination quite so compellingly. After all, the privacy office, itself, wields more moral than legal persuasion over the affairs of public servants. It reports to Parliament, which is, for the moment, numerically weighted in favour of the sitting government. 

Still, the digital age – the age of whistle-blowers like Edward Snowdon and Julian Assange – has produced its very own brand of fear and loathing, where big brothers lurk around every street corner just under the closed circuit TV monitors that record you picking your nose as you jaywalk to work. 

Now, along with all the other bad news to digest, comes a front-page report in the New York Times this week that alleges the National Security Agency in the United States is “harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents.”

In this environment, Mr. Therrien’s nomination deserves the scrutiny it’s getting.

He may well be the dutiful, responsible, careful thinker his backers describe. He may be better-equipped to exercise his duties than any parliamentary watchdog, before or since. He may be a mandarin who manages to cross over from public servant to ombudsman, seamlessly. 

But will he be independent, the essence of his task? 

Time – that commodity this democracy is running down every day – will tell.

 

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Jun 03 2014
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Education, Politics

It’s time to walk the talk on education

 

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Fisheries and Oceans minister Gail Shea’s heart is in the right place when she says that education is the key to Canada’s long-term prosperity.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s heart (such as it is) is likewise in the right place when he urges the international community to emulate this country’s commitment to improving maternal and child welfare around the world. 

Still, actions always speak louder than words, and when it comes to putting their money where their mouths are here at home – where functional illiteracy rates are among the highest in the industrialized world and the federal government’s conception of early childhood education is nothing more than a grab bag of measly tax giveaways to individuals and families – national leaders are mute to the point of perpetual silence.

“A skilled workforce leads to a stronger economy with more and better jobs,” Minister Shea told a graduating class of Holland College in Prince Edward Island last week. “For governments, more people working means more people paying taxes. Taxes are necessary for providing things like health care and education. So, it is an investment in the future, it is an investment in you, and it is an investment in the province and the country, as well.”

She added: “Everybody graduating here tonight has recognized that having a better education and greater skills will help you achieve success.”

Elsewhere, Prime Minister Harper told participants in a three-day summit of maternal and child health, “It’s a philosophy of our government, and I think of Canadians more broadly, that we do not measure things in terms of the amount of money we spend but in terms of the results we achieve.”

Later, in an interview with the Globe and Mail, he elaborated: “We’re in a truly global world. So I do think it is in our broader, enlightened self-interest to make the world a better place. But I also do think some of these things are just worth doing in their own right. We are a very wealthy and lucky people. . .Most of us were fortunate to be born at this point in history and in this particular country.”

But how will history and this country’s future generations judge this particular point in time? 

Mr. Harper is absolutely correct. On a per capital basis, Canada is, compared with its trading partners, awash with cash. The country is set to return to surplus within the next few months and, barring unforeseen events (such as those that afflicted world financial markets in 2008), natural resources development will buoy the economy, injecting sustainable volumes of black ink into federal government coffers for years to come. 

What should we do with that boon? Should we instruct our elected leaders to return it to our individual bank accounts? Or should we take a longer, more considered view of our nation’s true source of wealth and economic durability? 

Universities and vocational colleges consistently complain that our children (when these institutions get their hands on them) are woefully ill-equipped to compete in the labour markets of the world. The kids are, in fact, not alright. Higher education scrambles to undo what lower education has done to little Johnny and Jane. 

Meanwhile, the pressure to train young people to fit existing job roles mounts, even as advanced disciplines in critical thinking, communications and cultural awareness fade to the vanishing point along the horizon most other – and less economically promising – economies as ours, dutifully chart. 

A half-century of hard-won experience in places like Norway, Sweden and Finland convincingly argues that state investments in national early childhood education programs are the best hedges against illiteracy, lassitude, crime, and social dissolution among young people.  

And yet, with few exceptions, Canada – with all its money and resources, with all its hearts in the right places – chooses to spend the money it hasn’t promised to return to taxpayers on prisons, military aircraft that don’t fly and staged commemorations of wars it may or may not have won two centuries ago. 

It’s long past time to put our money where Gail Shea’s mouth is.

 

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Jun 02 2014
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Environment, Politics

Political palaver is making global warming worse

 

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If Prime Minister Stephen Harper is waiting for his frenemy in statecraft, U.S. President Barack Obama, to establish a regulatory agenda for carbon emissions before he raises any finger but his middle ones to his critics in the environmental lobby, his patience will soon be rewarded.

Today, the putative leader of the free world introduces what one news report describes as “the most significant action on climate change in American history.”  According to the Guardian online, “The proposed regulations Obama will launch at the White House on Monday could cut carbon pollution by as much as 25 per cent from about 1,600 power plants in operation today.”

Consider that these facilities account for as much 40 per cent of all emissions in the United States, and you can’t help suspect that these rules might actually possess some gravitas for a change. 

Consider, also, that Mr. Obama is using his executive authority without the imprimatur of Congress, where nearly half of sitting Republicans publicly reject the science behind climate change. That means no pesky horse-trading when it comes to the language and substance of the new regs.

In effect, reports the Guardian, “The rules, which were drafted by the Environmental Protection Agency and are under review by the White House, are expected to do more than Obama, or any other president, has done so far to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions responsible for climate change. They will put America on course to meet its international climate goal, and put US diplomats in a better position to leverage climate commitments from big polluters such as China and India.”

Or as the president told graduates of West Point during a speech last week, “I intend to make sure America is out front in a global framework to preserve our planet. American influence is always stronger when we lead by example. We can not exempt ourselves from the rules that apply to everyone else.”

Hmmm. What say you now, Mr. Harper?

For years, Canada’s prime minister has insisted he can’t do much to further his international commitments – particularly, the ones he made in 2009 at the Copenhagen climate change conference – to reducing this nation’s carbon footprint without a clear signal and comprehensive guidelines from its largest trading partner.

Now, he has it. 

In fact, one could argue, he’s had it for nearly a year. 

“Today, President Obama is putting forward a broad-based plan to cut the carbon pollution that causes climate change and affects public health. The plan, which consists of a wide variety of executive actions, has three key pillars: Cut carbon pollution in America; prepare the United States for the impacts of climate change; lead international efforts to combat global climate change and prepare for its impacts.”

That’s an excerpt from a document entitled, “The President’s Climate Action Plan”, dated June 25, 2013. It is, apparently, the fountainhead for this week’s regulations. And, according to a recent report in the Globe and Mail, somebody in the environment ministry was well aware of the plan on the day of its unveiling last summer.

“The United States has implemented limits on emissions from the oil and gas sector that are ‘significant’ and ‘comparable‘ to those the Conservative government is considering, says a newly releases Environment Canada memo, one that contradicts Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s assertion that Canada is waiting for the U.S. regulations before it will act,” the Globe piece revealed. “The June, 2013, memo. . .was produced after President Barack Obama released his Climate Action Plan that day.”

How curious, then, that Mr. Harper – apparently oblivious to Mr. Obama’s initiative – should tell Global News in December, that regulating Canada’s oil and gas  emissions “would be best done if we could do this in concert with our major trading partner…so that’s what I’m hoping we’ll be able to do over the next couple of years.”

The good news is, of course, nothing now prevents Mr. Harper from boldly going where no westernized, reform Tory has gone before: To the front lines in the battle to save the planet from too much hot air; a commodity, it seems, that’s common to polluters and politicians, in equal measure.

 

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