Democracy gone Astray: Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.

This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, February 08, 2012

India Military Modernized With China In Mind

NEW DELHI — India has decided to buy 126 fighter jets from France, taken delivery of a nuclear-powered submarine from Russia and prepared for its first aircraft carrier in recent weeks as it modernizes its military to match China's.

India and China have had tensions since a 1962 border war, and New Delhi has watched with dismay in recent years as Beijing has increased its influence in the Indian Ocean.

China has financed the development of ports in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar, and its recent effort to get access in the Seychelles prodded New Delhi to renew its own outreach to the Indian Ocean island state off western India.

With its recent purchases, running into tens of billions of dollars, India is finally working to counter what it sees as aggressive incursions into a region India has long dominated.

"The Indian military is strengthening its forces in preparation to fight a limited conflict along the disputed border, and is working to balance Chinese power projection in the Indian Ocean," James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, told a Senate committee last week.

Tories Tread Dangerously Near the Death Penalty

Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu sparked a firestorm last week with his incendiary comments on the death penalty, in which he stated murderers in jail should be given suicide tools. While he may have been speaking against the backdrop of his own personal tragic experience -- and he has since apologized -- his comments reflect an otherwise disturbing trend among Conservatives regarding their approach to capital punishment, one in which their words do not match their actions. Simply put, since the Conservatives came to power in 2006, Canada has not been as steadfast in its traditional abolitionist point of view, either at home or abroad.

At first, in 2007, the Minister of Foreign Affairs did reaffirm Canada's traditional policy, stating that "there is no death penalty in Canada, and the government does not support the death penalty." The Minister added that "Canada's policy is to seek clemency, for humanitarian reasons, for Canadians sentenced to death in foreign countries," reflecting Canada's long-standing commitment to intentional abolition of all forms of capital punishment.

However, in 2008, the Conservative Government departed from its long-standing principle and policy, saying it would no longer seek clemency in the case of Canadian Ronald Allen Smith, the only Canadian on death row in the United States. This position represented not only a major shift in Canadian policy -- one that has yet to be fully explained -- but which was also a clear departure from the law.

Harper Deals Threaten to Stamp "Made in China" All Over Canada

Prime Minister Steven Harper is basking in the uncritical media reporting of his state visit to China. His "open for business" message has been very well received in Beijing where he has just signed a slew of trade and investment deals in energy, agriculture, and natural resources. Small wonder. The world is running out of conventional energy, land, water, and natural resources. China, as the emerging superpower, needs unfettered and unconditional access to all of these.

What a difference a majority makes! Back when Steven Harper was in opposition, he scolded the Paul Martin government for soft peddling human rights when it comes to China and promised he would never sell human rights out to the "almighty dollar." Now, Canada and China have signed a Foreign Investment Protection Agreemen (FIPA) -- a powerful tool used by corporations to undermine the public good globally that will be used by Canadian corporations to further their interests in China by taking advantage of the poor labour and environmental standards in that country.

While we have yet to see the details of this FIPA, it is likely that it gives corporations the same rights contained in NAFTA and the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), now in negotiation. FIPAs give corporations of one country the right to sue the government of another country for imposing domestic environmental, health and safety, and human rights standards that negatively affect their bottom line. American firms have used NAFTA to extract over $160 million from lawsuits against Canadian public policy.

NDP looks to incite seniors' revolt

The NDP will try to foment a new "rocking-chair revolution" this week-end with a cross-Canada tour to rally seniors outraged at talk of changes to Old Age Security.

Three New Democrat MPs - pension critic Wayne Marston, seniors critic Irene Mathyssen, and deputy seniors critic Lysane Blanchette-Lam-othe - will fan out across the country between Saturday and Wednesday, the party said Tuesday.

The MPs said they will meet with groups of seniors at locations of their convenience, and hear their concerns and suggestions about how Old Age Security should be managed.

The three MPs say their offices have been flooded with emails and letters from concerned seniors. The outrage prompted them to launch the tour, Mathyssen said.

Mathyssen said seniors are a force to be reckoned with, as former prime minister Brian Mulroney learned when he cut benefits to the elderly.

"I think this government, by virtue of its back-pedalling and pussyfooting around, realizes it has made a serious mistake," she said. "This is the rocking-chair revolution."

One question will define national politics in our time: Are Western Canadians prepared to sacrifice for the sake of the nation, now that Ontario is less able to help?

Population data from the 2011 census, released Tuesday morning, reveals a confident, growing Canada. One that is well-equipped to grapple with the demographic challenges facing all developed nations.

But while Western Canada leaps ahead, thanks to robust immigration and burgeoning resource revenues, the rest of the country lags. Quebec and Atlantic Canada are now fewer in number than British Columbia and the Prairie provinces.

And Ontario, home to almost four in 10 Canadians, has dropped below the national average in growth, another grim tiding for Canada’s industrial heartland.

The Canadian social contract is under serious stress. Since the Great Depression, Ontario taxpayers have funded national programs that benefited poorer provinces. Ontario premiers from George Drew to Bill Davis knew that national unity depended on Ontario sharing its bounty. They grumbled sometimes, but they paid.

Conservative MP Blake Richards said he is feeling confident about his bill that would make it a crime to wear a mask during a riot.

MPs are debating the private member's bill in the House of Commons Wednesday evening, the second time it has been debated since it was introduced last fall.

"Obviously private member's bills … traditionally there are not a huge number that make it into law, but I'm actually quite confident that this one will," Richards said in an interview Wednesday ahead of the debate.

The Alberta MP's bill, first debated in November, seeks to amend the Criminal Code so that it would be an offence to wear a disguise while participating in a riot or an unlawful assembly. It is already illegal to take part in a riot or unlawful assembly, but this bill would create a separate offence related to wearing a disguise while participating.

Richards has said his bill targets those who try to disrupt peaceful and lawful assemblies and turn them into riots, and that the legislation would help prevent violent situations from erupting. It would help protect the right to protest peacefully, according to Richards.

How apt that today’s bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens arrives at a moment when the widening gap between rich and poor is so prevalent in public-policy debate, and the grim conditions in China’s factories are back in the news.

Dickens is of course our greatest writer on the imperative to acknowledge what poverty is and try to do something about it. His way of forcing the reader to see and smell the squalor of 19^th century England is still unmatched in its moral force.

In this, we think of him as a master of a sort of courageous realism, and no doubt he was. Yet there are all sorts of outrageously unrealistic characters and crazy plot turns in his novels, to say nothing of his unmatched ghost story, A Christmas Carol.

So Dickens shows us how a flight of fancy works best when tethered to the real, grimy, conscience-pricking world. By the same token, the most rigorous, fact-based disquisition on inequality—say, the latest Gini coefficient analysis—doesn’t do much for us when detached from subjective description of how people work and live.

By and large, we’ve grown too timid about writing that stretches to find words adequate to the world’s glories and disgraces. We’re attracted by Elmore Leonard’s rule, “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” We’re crimped by what Stanford’s Robert Pogue Harrison astutely describes as “our predilection for understatement and uneasiness about rhetorical display.”

Understatement isn’t likely to awaken anyone’s sense of injustice. Too much of it is also plain dull. The more unlikely figures in Dickens are also the most fun—he’s never just driving home a moral. How we react to them, Heep and Magwitch and the rest, divides us. “Some readers will complain that Dickens has relapsed into ‘mere’ caricature (as though caricature were easy),” wrote Northrop Frye. “Others, more sensibly, simply give up the criterion of lifelikeness and enjoy the creation for its own sake.”

And somehow that giving yourself over to the pleasure of the improbable in Dickens still manages to leave you thinking more honestly about what’s really going on.

Original Article
Source: Maclean's
Author: John Geddes

Harper in China: rules of the game

It’s an odd visit. Today the middle of Stephen Harper’s day was taken up with what our itineraries described as a “round-table meeting.” The Prime Minister’s Office sent us a list of the Canadians who attended: Pierre Beaudoin from Bombardier, Roy Cook from the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, Duncan Dee from Air Canada, Lowell Jackson from CAPP, Amit Chakma from UWO, Lorraine Mitchelmore from Shell, Patrick Lamarre from Lavalin.

It actually took a while for me to ask the pool reporter (many of the events on these trips are covered only by a single reporter and camera, who share with everyone else) whether anybody Chinese was on hand. Nope. Just the Canadians. Chattin’ about the federal budget in Beijing. More of a semi-circle meeting, really.

The news came later: “PM Announces Agreement That Will Facilitate Investment Flows Between Canada and China.” This is the semi-mythical FIPA, for Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement, signed by Trade Minister Ed Fast and his Chinese counterpart, Chen Deming, while Harper and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao looked on.

Canada can ride out the wave of retiring baby boomers and their cost to the Old Age Security program with room to spare, a new report by Parliament's budget watchdog released Wednesday suggests.

The income support program is sustainable and affordable given the federal government's projected revenues and economic growth, Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page said.

In a report on fiscal sustainability and elderly benefits, Page revised some of his earlier predictions based on the government's announcement late last year that the Canada Health Transfer would be tied to GDP after 2016-17.

Benefits for Canada's older population, including the monthly OAS cheques, are financed out of general revenues, and the policy move on the CHT therefore drastically changed the parliamentary budget officer's predictions about the government's fiscal sustainability.

Page had earlier raised concerns about sustainability, but his new debt-to-GDP projections show that not only is OAS sustainable, but the government could even increase the amount it spends on it. To be considered fiscally sustainable, Canada's debt cannot grow faster than the economy.

Kevin Page says the boomers will not break the bank.

In fact, Ottawa’s finances are in such good shape that it could afford to cut taxes and boost spending all while cutting cheques to a growing number of Canadian seniors.

Mr. Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, released a new report Wednesday that takes a close look at the suddenly explosive issue of Old Age Security and pours cold water on Conservative warnings that the program faces a sustainability crisis.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper set off a storm of controversy last month with a speech in Davos, Switzerland, that signalled a review of Canada’s retirement income system. The government has since confirmed that the government is looking at gradually raising the age of eligibility for Old Age Security to 67 from the current 65.

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley has described the situation as a “crisis,” pointing to actuary reports showing the cost of OAS is poised to triple from about $40-billion this year to $108-billion in 2030.

Mr. Page’s analysis agrees with those actuarial estimates – and notes the cost could even be higher if Ottawa chooses to enhance seniors benefits. However, when measured as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, the PBO says the cost is manageable.

Special transit meeting: Council rejects Mayor Rob Ford’s proposal to postpone

Council has rejected Mayor Rob Ford’s attempt to defer the transit vote for a month.

In a last-ditch bid to stave off a likely defeat, Ford proposed an expert panel to study the issue and report back to council. But many councillors said they already had sufficient information, and council voted 24-19 against the proposal.

The final vote on TTC chair Karen Stintz’s proposal is still to come, but the first vote is an ominous sign for Ford. He has not been seen in the council chamber since.

Earlier, Stintz offered a goodwill gesture to Ford, even though his allies had already suggested they would probably reject her plan if it was put to a vote.

The special meeting was called to provide Metrolinx with clarity on how Toronto wants to spend $8.4 billion in provincial transit funding.

Ford wants a subway on Sheppard and wants the Eglinton LRT to run underground from Black Creek Dr. to Kennedy Station. It would come above-ground in only a couple of spots, including at the Don Valley.

Stintz wants to return to a plan that would see above-ground LRT on Eglinton between Kennedy and Laird Dr., and street-level tracks on Sheppard and Finch.

But, in an olive branch to the mayor, she has amended her proposal slightly to defer a decision on Sheppard to an outside panel of experts to recommend the mode of transit best suited to that corridor.

Harper in China: PM gets red carpet treatment, touts trade advances

BEIJING—At the landmark Temple of Heaven where China’s emperors once offered sacrifices for a good harvest, Prime Minister Stephen Harper paused to watch a game of Chinese chess, but made no moves.

Hours later, Harper claimed a bountiful harvest of his own — several new or renewed trade deals plus a nearly-finalized foreign investment protection agreement with China.

At an evening news conference, Harper took credit for a “historic” deal, saying it is Canada’s first comprehensive trade agreement with China, one that eluded previous governments for nearly 20 years, and would one day make a “very practical difference” for Canadian companies seeking to invest here.

In reality, it would help small- and medium-sized businesses who can’t afford to take big risks in China without certainty around things like local laws, taxation or dispute settlement.

Giants such as Bombardier, which employs 4,000 people in China building trains, already do good business here, said CEO Pierre Beaudoin, and are not faced with the same obstacles, but he welcomed the agreement’s promise of more predictability.

At the cavernous Great Hall of the People, Harper was officially welcomed by a guard of honour and Premier Wen Jiabao—the same leader who had chided him in 2009 for taking so long.

And on his second visit, the snubs of the past — Harper’s “almighty dollar”-won’t-trump-human-rights comment, his absence from the Beijing Olymics and embrace of the Dalai Lama — were set aside.

NEW YORK -- The agency that is building the new World Trade Center is "dysfunctional" and has let costs get out of control on the $14.8 billion project, auditors said Tuesday.

The projected cost of the complex has risen $3.8 billion since 2008, when it was estimated at $11 billion, Navigant Consulting, Inc., said in its audit of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Third parties have promised to reimburse the Port Authority for much of the construction, but the agency's remaining bill is still expected to reach $7.7 billion, up 28 percent from the last estimate of $6 billion, auditors said.

The audit was ordered by the governors of New York and New Jersey. It strongly criticized the Port Authority, which also runs New York area airports, seaports and Hudson River crossings.

The Port Authority is "a challenged and dysfunctional organization suffering from a lack of consistent leadership, a siloed underlying bureaucracy, poorly coordinated capital planning processes, insufficient cost controls, and a lack of transparent and effective oversight of the World Trade Center program that has obscured full awareness of billions of dollars in exposure to the Port Authority," auditors wrote.

It doesn't matter where you look; sexualized violence is intrinsic to conflict. Qaddafi's soldiers committed rape in the last days of Libya's regime. The Egyptian military has been sexually violating female journalists and protesters in that revolution. Across the Democratic Republic of Congo, hundreds of thousands of women are suffering the fallout of the sexualized violence that has torn apart their bodies, their families, and their communities.

A new project from the Women's Media Center, initiated by one of its founders, journalist and activist Gloria Steinem, has begun documenting this tool of war and genocide. From the Holocaust through today, Women Under Siege is illuminating the causes as well as the cures of sexualized violence by uncovering patterns and making links between them.

As the director of Women Under Siege, as well as a journalist myself, I interviewed Steinem about sexualized violence in conflict and what needs to be done to understand and stop it.

As the president prepares to unveil his federal budget plan next week, it's a good time to remember that there are boondoggles, and then there are boondoggles. Under the latter, see the multi-billion-dollar "Chemical and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility," a single unfinished building in a New Mexico nuclear complex whose cost has ballooned since its approval a decade ago, and whose main purpose is to build stuff we don't need: plutonium components for new atomic bombs.

As you can see from the Project on Government Oversight's infographic below, the entire CMRR complex, located at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was slated to cost US taxpayers $375 million in 2001. But now, just one half of that two-building plant is expected to cost between $3.7 and $5.9 billion. "[S]everal major changes have occurred that have fundamentally affected the basis of the cost estimate," a Los Alamos talking points memo states. Basically, construction costs rose and mistakes were made, since nobody's built anything like this before. Here's the result:

What does that buy America? According to a 2008 congressional report, the facility and its surrounding complex have "no coherent mission to justify it unless the decision is made to begin an aggressive new nuclear warhead design and pit production mission at Los Alamos National Laboratory." In other words, its purpose is to build new nukes—and at a time when we're supposed to be cutting our nuclear arsenal, not expanding it.

The New START treaty with Russia, signed in 2010, obliges us to reduce our arsenal of 5,000-plus warheads, far more than are needed to cover most of the scenarios in the US nuclear strategy. "Nowhere have I found a concise, objective description justifying [CMRR's] need," Bob Peurifoy, a former VP of another US atomic-arms facility, wrote in an affidavit criticizing the site's construction [PDF]. "The Nuclear Facility might just sit there with nothing to do."

Proponents of the facility and its incomplete structure say that even if no new nukes are ordered, the facility will be used to keep our current arsenal safe. "The primary mission of CMRR will be to support the current nuclear weapons stockpile through surveillance and life-extension programs necessary for the nuclear weapons complex," the Los Alamos memo states.

But there's a problem: Los Alamos is staying mum on the opening date for the complex. And the Project on Government Oversight estimates it won't be operational until at least 2023—by which time all of the US military's existing weapons will have gone through already-scheduled "life extension" upgrades. The CMRR nuclear facility will indeed be a building without a mission, all for roughly 12 times the amount of money President Obama is begging Congress to spend on Alzheimer's research next year. Somebody set up us the bomb!

Original Article
Source: mother jones
Author: Adam Weinstein

Keystone Pipeline: House Energy And Commerce Committee Advances Plan

WASHINGTON, Feb 7 (Reuters) - A plan to fast-track the stalled Keystone XL oil pipeline was passed by a key committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, as Republicans made yet another attempt to spur approval of the project that has become a major issue in the 2012 elections.

The bill would wrest decision-making on the pipeline from the Obama administration and hand it to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which would be compelled to issue approval permits quickly on the Canada-to-Texas project.

But the plan would need to clear several more congressional hurdles, including getting through Democratic opposition in the Senate, before it could land on President Barack Obama's desk for approval.

In a decision last month that pleased environmental groups, Obama blocked TransCanada's $7 billion project, citing the need for further review of its route as the line would have traversed sensitive lands and an aquifer in Nebraska.

Republicans have made the pipeline a symbol of what they believe are unnecessary regulations that are stifling job creation and energy production in the United States.

On Tuesday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 33-20 to send its Keystone bill to the full House, where it will likely become part of a highway and infrastructure funding bill that House Speaker John Boehner wants to see passed this month.

Republicans also have not ruled out trying to attach a Keystone provision to must-pass payroll tax-cut legislation.

BEIJING -- Nearly 20 years of negotiations on an investment protection deal for Chinese and Canadian investors has come to a close.

The prime minister says negotiations on a Foreign Investment Protection Agreement between the two countries are over.

The deal still needs to be legally reviewed and ratified by the Canadian and Chinese governments before it can come into force.

A FIPA, as it is known, gives foreign investors equal footing with domestic businesses in either country and business groups had been urging Harper to wrap up talks with China in order to spur greater investment between the two countries.

Canada and China had been negotiating a FIPA since 1994 and by January 2010, a dozen rounds of talks had failed to produce an agreement.

By the end of 2010, Canadian investment in China increased by 38 per cent over 2009 levels. That same year, Chinese investment in Canada totalled $14 billion, an increase of nine per cent.

Pipelines, pandas trump democracy

BEIJING — Last July, the man who is widely expected to succeed Hu Jintao as China’s president stood in front of the palace in Lhasa, Tibet, that is the traditional seat of the Dalai Lama and delivered a warning to the world.

“We will completely smash any plot to destroy stability in Tibet and jeopardize national unity,” said Xi Jinping, serving notice that China would fight what he called Tibetan separatists.

As Prime Minister Stephen Harper begins his five-day trip to China, those Tibetan “separatists” are very much in the news again.

Demonstrations in the past few weeks in support of Tibet in cities a few hundred miles from one of the cities Harper will visit here are being met with sharp government crackdowns.

It’s difficult to know how serious the situation is in those places.

Chinese soldiers have been stopping western journalists from visiting the region, condescendingly turning them away by saying icy roads are not safe for “foreign guests.”

Xi’s summer speech was a sign to all that this year’s change of leadership here will not change China’s penchant for ugly repression of those who fight for freedom of speech and democracy.

How we learned not to fear China's bomb

Last week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a frightening claim about Iran. "I look at the rhetoric and the kind of philosophy that drives the Iranian regime, the kind of threats they have made to others in the world," he said, "and my deep concern about this regime is that, for the first time in history, we are facing a regime that not only wants to attain nuclear weapons but a regime that has, compared to virtually all other holders of nuclear weapons in the past, far less fear of using them."

No other leader has said anything remotely like that but Stephen Harper is clearly not alone in holding this view. Many people worry that Iran's leaders would incinerate Tel Aviv - even if doing so risks the immediate and total annihilation of Iran.

Are they right to worry? We can't answer that question with certainty. To do so, we would have to know what's in the minds and hearts of Iran's leaders, and to know how they will behave in the unpredictable circumstances of the future. No one can be sure of that. Not even Iran's leaders.

But Stephen Harper is certainly wrong about history. This is not the first time we have faced this situation.

Since the prime minister is in China now, he might want to ask his hosts about it.

The story begins in 1953, with the end of the bloody stalemate between the United States and China on the Korean Peninsula. The next year, the two countries clashed over possession of some islands in the Taiwan Strait, and Chinese dictator Mao Tse-tung responded by launching a program to develop nuclear weapons.

Why are Trust and Integrity forgotten notions in Canadian politics?

Over the weekend, my fifteen-year old son was talking to me about what’s going on at school.

“Pop, the word “integrity” is thrown around the class a lot, but people don’t seem to know what it really means”, he said. I asked him what he thought it meant and I was gearing myself up to give a fatherly sermon on the meaning and importance of integrity. Before I could, and without missing a beat, Michael replied: “It means being honest, trustworthy, and doing what you say you’re going to do.”

If nothing else, I am an immensely proud father. With a few carefully chosen but deeply felt words that can only come from sincere conviction, my son summed-up what makes the world go round. Trust really is the fundamental basis for human progress. It is indispensable to any relationship, be it between individuals, organizations, or governments.

My business lawyer once said to me that the best contract lawyer on the planet will not protect you from someone you cannot trust. Without trust, bad things happen and progress grinds to a halt. The wheels of commerce turn only because there is an implicit trust bond between parties that enter into millions of transactions on a daily basis. When that bond is broken, calamitous things can happen. We saw that in the run-up to the 2008 global financial meltdown.

The creation of financial instruments such as credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, and securitized debt instruments made billions for global financial institutions and ‘sophisticated’ investors. The institutions that put their names behind them were trusted by millions of people. Driven by greed and self-interest, people in these institutions preyed on millions of trusting people. They were like fish in a barrel.

Crossing the floor: To whom are legislators responsible?

Despite all the displays of apparent antipathy shown by MPs toward members of other parties in the House of Commons, there is actually sometimes a surprising amount of camaraderie between them outside of the political theatre of question period. Real hostility is often felt, however, by MPs towards former members of their own parties who have ‘crossed the floor’ to sit with another party in the House of Commons or as independents. This is seen by many as a betrayal of the voters who elected the MP and of the party the MP left.

Although floor crossing does not occur frequently in the House of Commons or in provincial legislatures across Canada, it does occur. It is often seen as a coup for the party that gains a member and a blow to the party that loses one. The act of a politician crossing the floor and changing political affiliations leads to the question of who exactly a legislator is responsible to in a representative democracy.

When presented with such a question, most Canadians likely quickly answer that a legislator’s main responsibility is to the electorate, and that is true. It is, however, not the whole answer, nor is it even the system that is widely adhered to in Canada (with the exception of territorial politics and most city councils).

There are three main approaches to an elected official’s responsibility. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses.

A legislator can be viewed as essentially a delegate for their constituency, an agent acting on behalf of the electors who votes according to their wishes.

Little green lies: Prime Minister Harper and Canada’s environment

Is Stephen Harper the worst prime minister that Canada has ever had, from an environmental perspective? The evidence is mounting that this is indeed the case, despite some early glimmers of hope. Given the deteriorating global environment, this failure of leadership could not have happened at a worse time.

That Canada has become an international laggard in environmental policy and practice is now an incontrovertible fact. In 2009, the Conference Board of Canada ranked Canada 15th out of 17 wealthy industrialized nations on environmental performance. In 2010, researchers at Simon Fraser University ranked Canada 24th out of 25 OECD nations on environmental performance.

Yale and Columbia ranked Canada 37th in their 2012 Environmental Performance Index, far behind green leaders such as Sweden, Norway, and Costa Rica, and trailing major industrial economies including Germany, France, Japan, and Brazil. Worse yet, our performance is deteriorating, as we rank 52nd in terms of progress over the 2000-2010 period. Even Prime Minister Harper has candidly admitted, “Canada’s environmental performance is, by most measures, the worst in the developed world. We’ve got big problems.”

For several years, the Conservatives blamed Canada’s environmental problems on the previous Liberal government, and their own lack of progress on a fractious minority parliament. Now that it has a majority, is the Conservative government attempting to solve environmental problems with stronger laws, higher standards, larger investments, and tougher enforcement? No.

Cost of crime is high -- and so is the price of prisons

Perhaps it's time for the get-tough-on-crime advocates to put their money where their mouths are.

The Conservative government's much-anticipated omnibus crime bill -- a conglomeration of tweaks to the justice system that, at its core, includes more and longer sentences -- is currently before the Senate and, thanks to the Tory majority, it is destined to become law sometime this year.

The provinces are freaked out about the cost of enforcing the new and longer sentences; Ontario alone has estimated the cost of enforcement and incarceration at $1 billion per year, and Quebec expects to spend more than $500 million to build more jails. With provincial treasuries reeling from the recession, this is horrible timing.

Consider the situation in Manitoba. The Manitoba Government and General Employees' Union this week sounded the alarm on overcrowding. The number of prisoners in provincial jails (for sentences less than two years and people on remand -- in custody awaiting trial) has doubled since 2004 to 2,200 prisoners. Over that time, however, the number of available beds has only increased by about 25 per cent, to a total of nearly 1,500 beds. So, at any one time, Manitoba jails have close to 700 more prisoners than beds.

The more worrisome trend is even though Manitoba hasn't been able to expand its capacity, total spending on corrections has almost doubled in the same period, to $141 million from $77 million. And remember, that's just spending on jails. You cannot forget policing and court services.

Harper driven by libertarian ideology, not reality

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was quoted in the Globe and Mail on July 10, 2009, as saying, "You know, there's two schools in economics on this. One is that there are some good taxes and the other is that there are no good taxes. I'm in the latter category. I don't believe that any taxes are good taxes."

Four days later, on July 13, 2009, Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson responded: "Only libertarian anarchists believe that all taxes are bad, and that society can get along without them... Presumably, there lurks inside the prime minister an anger about much of contemporary society that has been built by taxpayers' money, an anger contained by the political reality that the prime minister can't do much about this state of affairs."

By the end of the 2012-13 fiscal year, and assuming there are no further tax cuts in the upcoming federal budget, the Harper Conservatives will have reduced the cost of government by $220 billion, according to the Toronto Star. Canadian corporations have pocketed $60 billion in savings. Over the same period, Ottawa has run up a cumulative $169-billion deficit.

Taxes have been slashed. Government is smaller. And now, all the institutions and departments of government except for prisons and the military are on the firing line in the federal budget.

Dramatically downsizing Ottawa fulfils another Conservative goal -- turning the social safety net over to the provinces. The prime minister is a strict constitutional constructionist, determined to shrink back the federal government to its role circa Confederation in 1867.

What the fake citizenship scheme says about Harper

The strange case of Jason Kenney and the faked citizenship ceremony continues to intrigue. Many have criticized the role of Sun TV in broadcasting, as news, a hoked-up photo-op in which federal bureaucrats posed as new Canadians.

But the bizarre incident is more interesting in what it says about Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government — its bully-boy approach to the federal bureaucracy, its indifference to reality and, in particular, its unrelenting attempts to redefine the way in which Canadians view their own country.

That Kenney was at the centre is only appropriate. The immigration minister has served as point man in the government’s effort to corral votes of so-called ethnics.

But beyond that, Kenney’s job is to help change the way in which Canadians look at politics, part of a long-term effort to make Harper-style Conservatism the country’s dominant ideology.

The old Conservative brand, associated with prime ministers like John Diefenbaker and Joe Clark, emphasized practicality melded with compassion. The new one focuses on pride, patriotism and toughness.

Martial valour is an integral part of this new image. From that stems Harper’s emphasis on the military, as well as the alacrity with which he sends Canadian troops to wage war in unlikely countries like Libya.

The Conservatives succeeded Wednesday in passing another motion to limit debate, this time on second reading of the copyright reform bill.

Government House Leader Peter Van Loan moved a time allocation motion on the copyright reform bill Wednesday that will limit remaining debate at second reading to two more days.

Following that debate and a vote, the bill will go to a committee for further study.

"We want to get this done and it's time the opposition stop delaying," Heritage Minister James Moore said as debate on the time allocation motion got underway Thursday after question period. He said there will be opportunities for substantive debate at the committee stage and that the government wants to hear proposed amendments from the opposition parties.

The opposition parties, however, complained that the government is "muzzling" debate and stifling democracy with its repeated use of time allocation on its legislation.

The NDP's Joe Comartin said Parliament is being turned into a "farce."

"They are shutting down debate just repeatedly," he said.

When Van Loan served notice Tuesday that the Conservatives intended to limit debate on the copyright bill, he said he tried to reach an agreement with the NDP but the Official Opposition "wouldn't commit to any reasonable, cooperative approach," so he would instead table a time allocation motion.

Ottawa 'poisoning' kids: MP

OTTAWA -- Manitoba NDP MP Pat Martin says the government is poisoning Canada's kids by backing away from a plan to limit trans fats in Canadian food products.

An access to information request from Health Canada was made public Tuesday, showing Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq killed a government plan in 2009 to impose strict limits on trans fats. An announcement was set for October 2009 to phase in limits on trans fats in all Canadian foods to protect Canadians and ensure a level playing field for the food industry. The regulations were to be published in January 2010, and the industry was to have 12 months to comply. A communications plan was developed to announce the plan, but when it went to Aglukkaq's office for approval it was shelved.

"She is undermining the will of Parliament and poisoning another generation of children," said Martin. "I am terribly disappointed."

In 2004, the House of Commons passed a motion calling on the government to admit trans fats were bad for people and to set up a task force with an eye on developing regulations or legislation to limit trans fats within one year.

Trans fats are unsaturated fats that occur often in food processing. They are considered to be among the worst fats to consume because they raise the levels of so-called bad cholesterol and lower what is known as good cholesterol. They have been linked to heart disease. Most trans fats are formed when liquid oils are turned into semi-solids such as shortening or margarine.

A half-century has passed since the last person in Canada was executed, but a recent public opinion poll suggests Canadians are warming to the idea of a return to capital punishment.

The survey conducted by Angus Reid Public Opinion in partnership with the Toronto Star found that 63 per cent of the 1,002 Canadians surveyed across the country believe the death penalty is sometimes appropriate. Sixty-one per cent said capital punishment, which was abolished in Canada in 1976, is warranted for murder.

“I think people might be warming to the idea of having it as an option on the table, if anything just as a deterrent,” said Jaideep Mukerji of Angus Reid.

But Mukerji said the poll also reveals that it is “not a black and white” issue for many Canadians. Given the choice of supporting the death penalty or life imprisonment, 50 per cent chose the latter, the survey found.

“We ask the question in two ways — do you support or oppose the death penalty — and in that context people really do support it,” he said. But when the option of life imprisonment is introduced as an option for those convicted of murder, “50 per cent actually say they would prefer life in prison.”
The debate over restoring the death penalty took on new life last week when Conservative Senator Pierre Hugues-Boisvenu suggested serial murderers should be given a rope to hang themselves in prison. In June 2002, the senator’s daughter Julie was kidnapped, raped and murdered. Boisvenu later withdraw his remark.

The Angus Reid online survey found that Canadians’ views on the death penalty differ greatly according to political allegiance and region. The poll was conducted Feb. 2 and 3 with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

In British Columbia and Alberta, about seven in 10 support the return of the death penalty; six in 10 Ontarians, or 62 per cent, agree.

The most opposition was in Quebec, with about 45 per cent against the return of capital punishment. Some 32 per cent in Ontario and 24 per cent in British Columbia were also opposed.

“These respondents (about 75 per cent) are primarily concerned over the possibility of wrongful convictions leading to executions, but most (54 per cent) also feel that even if a convicted murderer has taken a life it is wrong to take the murderer’s own life as punishment,” the survey results stated.

The poll found that respondents who voted Conservative in the 2011 federal election were more likely to regard the death penalty as “always” or “sometimes” appropriate while the majority of those who vote Liberal, Bloc Québécois or Green were opposed to the return of the death penalty. NDP supporters were divided on the question.

Last year, Angus Reid Public Opinion asked similar questions in the United States and Britain and found that the majority of respondents in both countries supported the continuation or the return of the death penalty.

Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Richard J. Brennan

Facts, interpretations and Chávez

Modern social science's essence lies in its purpose, articulated in the 19th century, to expound a meticulous, secular knowledge of reality that is somehow corroborated by empirical research. The challenge for researchers of course rests in how they define "empirical research." The driving methodological debate in the social sciences -- however abstruse or historically distant -- orients itself according to the divide between the advocates of the interpretive method and the proponents of positivism. In terms of social theory, the former was most persuasively argued by Max Weber in his essay "Objectivity in the Social Sciences" while the latter was most systematically articulated by Emile Durkheim in Rules of the Sociological Method. Weber noted that the skill of the human sciences lay in its unique capacity to articulate the specific meaning of a phenomenon while Durkheim pointed to the social sciences' powerful ability to derive general laws from the study of an object, event or process.

A simplified example of the above difference would be to compare the ethnographic method of an anthropologist with the quantitative one of an economist. The former might have lived for a year in a location -- say a barrio in Caracas back in 1997 -- to examine the massive growth of the informal economy in order to explain how the population's interpretation of democracy was redefined by the collapse of the country's gross domestic product throughout the 1980s and '90s.

Meanwhile, our stereotypical economist might never have left the office and instead would have engaged in a mathematical analysis of available data sets that would allow for the modelling of various supply-demand relations that were taking place due to the breakdown of economic productivity and the consequent rise in official unemployment.

Is organized labour doomed?

Last week, on Feb. 2nd, I drove up to London, Ontario, to shoot some film footage of the locked-out workers picketing outside the Electro-Motive Diesel plant for a documentary I am working on. The company, the only one to make locomotives in Canada, is owned by Caterpillar Inc., the world's largest equipment manufacturer. They had locked out the entire workforce of 450 workers on New Year's Day after demanding wage cuts as high as 50 per cent.

While we stamped our feet in the cold, I spoke to Bob Scott, the plant chairman for the CAW Local 27 unit that represents the workers. A pleasant, middle-aged fellow, Scott told me the company had always planned to lock them out and refused to negotiate after the gates were padlocked. Scott seemed stunned at how Caterpillar had thrown all norms of labour relations out the window. He explained the company had opened a plant in Muncie, Indiana, and the Canadian workers were told they had to compete with the shitty wages Caterpillar was paying its American workforce.

The day after my visit to the picket line, the really bad news came down: Caterpillar was closing the Electro-Motive plant in London for good. It was no accident this occurred just as Indiana was announcing it had become a right-to-work state, making it almost impossible to organize unions there.

Meanwhile, this past weekend, Toronto's right-wing mayor Rob Ford, laid down an ultimatum to the city's 6,000 outside workers, saying nearly all of their seniority rights would be stripped. It was a take-it-or-leave it deal. CUPE Local 416 caved in and accepted much of what Ford was demanding, allowing him greater ease to contract out jobs.

Clean-up crews are tearing down a squatters camp that took shape last month, first on the grounds of City Hall and then behind nearby Osgoode Hall.

Toronto police moved in first thing Wednesday morning to tell the people they had to move and to allow the clean-up crews to remove the tents and pick up the rugs, tarps and debris that has grown in the square since January.

The protest started after a Jan. 17 demonstration against the mayor's proposed budget for 2012.

The campers didn't offer any resistance. Most picked up their belongings and just watched as the tents, furniture and garbage were removed.

Some of the people taking part in the protest were veterans of the Occupy Toronto movement that took root in St. James park in the fall.

Most of the people evicted Wednesday say they are homeless.

The city has served them with several eviction notices over the past few weeks.

Original Article
Source: CBC
Author: --

Harper's 'strategic partner' China yields investment deal

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao presided over a signing ceremony Wednesday for a wide-ranging set of agreements set to further bind the Chinese and Canadian economies.

One concluded negotiations for a groundbreaking investment deal. Others announced "partnerships," "frameworks," "calls for proposals" or more conventional trade deals in a range of sectors from energy to education.

The CBC's chief political correspondent Terry Milewski called them a "small blizzard of incremental agreements." Individually, some may not seem very significant, but taken together they will have a significant effect on Canada's relationship with an economy that may soon be the world's largest.

During their bilateral meeting, Wen spoke of Harper's first visit to China in 2009 as having "opened up a new page in our financial relationship" and suggested this week's meetings could "further enhance our mutual understanding and trust so that we can elevate China-Canada relationship to a higher level."

Harper noted in reply that "Canada-China exports and trade have almost doubled since we took office."

Job loss at Electro-Motive Diesel tragic, but companies cannot be forced to stay in Canada

Dalton McGuinty, the Premier of Ontario, is right to advocate a review of the Investment Canada Act – an exercise that the federal government has abandoned after a cabinet shuffle – but wrong to propose changing Canada’s foreign-takeover policy so as to obstruct or prevent enterprises from going out of business. That would discourage companies from investing in the first place.

The closing – after a lockout – of Electro-Motive Diesel Inc. in London, by its owner, Caterpillar Inc., which bought it in June, 2010, was the occasion for Mr. McGuinty’s statement on Monday. “If your intention is merely to buy an Ontario business so you can shut it down and strip out the jobs and the intellectual property,” he said, “that’s not on.” He directly attributed such an intention to Caterpillar: “This company, we have learned, had no sincere interests in a long-term presence in that community.”

As it happens, Electro-Motive Diesel Inc. has always been a subsidiary of American corporations.

The real trouble with the Investment Canada Act was seen in the federal government’s finding, in November, 2010, that the proposed purchase of Potash Corp. by BHP Billiton Ltd. was not of “net benefit” to Canada, in the midst of many claims that the potash deposits of Saskatchewan were a strategic Canadian asset – a phrase absent from the ICA. That led to an uncertainty about Canada in the international investment world, which needs clarification.

Mr. McGuinty seems to think the ICA should routinely require foreign applicants for takeovers to commit themselves to stay in business for some fixed term – come what may.

Back in 2007, Canada set some such conditions on the takeover of Stelco Inc. by United States Steel Corp. It proved hard to comply with these in changing economic circumstances. Though the federal government was right to sue U.S. Steel for breaking its promise, it was also right to eventually settle the dispute, in December, 2011.

The loss of 450 jobs at EMD, in a region that has already lost many manufacturing jobs, is tragic. But the changes that Mr. McGuinty wants to the ICA are not viable. A government agency in Ottawa cannot impose business judgments on real businesses.

Original Article
Source: Globe
Author: editorial

Harper in China: PM gets red carpet treatment, touts trade advances

An off-the-cuff remark by Galen Weston at the Canadian Food Summit has enraged the farmers’ markets community and local food lovers.

“Farmers’ markets are great. . . ,” Weston said Tuesday during a speech to about 600 people at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, but added: “One day they’re going to kill some people though.”

“I’m just saying that to be dramatic though,” he quickly added.

Weston is executive chairman of Loblaw Cos. Ltd, Canada’s largest food retailer, with more than 1,000 stores.

He was talking about building a long-term vision for food in Canada and how to capitalize on the demand for local food. Food inspections are crucial, he insisted.

Robert Chorney, the executive director of Farmers’ Markets Ontario, had to wait until the next session’s comment period for a chance to speak out.

“We strenuously object” to Weston’s remark, he told the delegates. “That was awful.”

Replacement crew blocked from boarding trawler

Locked-out members of the Fish, Food and Allied Workers' Union (FFAW) blocked a replacement crew of workers from boarding an Ocean Choice International fishing trawler, in the union's latest skirmish with the company.

A replacement crew of about 30 non-unionized workers for the trawler Newfoundland Lynx arrived in Bay Roberts at about 9 p.m. Tuesday.

They were faced by a picket line manned by the locked-out OCI trawlermen.

A bus carrying the replacement workers waited about eight hours just outside the property owned by Harbour International, which won a court injunction to keep pickets off its property.

The bus, meanwhile, was accompanied by an RCMP cruiser, with Mounties also stationed near the picket line at the wharf.

At 4 a.m. on Wednesday, the busload of workers left Bay Roberts without trying to cross the line.

Greg Pretty, a union representative for the FFAW, says it was a long but successful all-nighter for the union.

"Two people jumped (off) the bus," said Pretty. "So we have two people who told us that they're finished with the scab bus. It was a mistake. They're not going back, and it was a bad idea to start with."

Pretty said the locked-out crewmembers will maintain their picket line near the Newfoundland Lynx.

He believes OCI is determined to go fishing, and expects the company to make another attempt to put replacement workers on the vessel.

Original Article
Source: CBC
Author: --

Alberta seeks way to pay for B.C. support of pipeline

The Alberta government is looking to clear a path for the oil sands through British Columbia by upping the economic benefits for its western neighbour – including the option of paying to modernize and expand West Coast ports.

Premier Alison Redford’s government stressed Tuesday there were no formal discussions, much less a formal proposal, but some in the Alberta government acknowledge that British Columbians need to see a tangible benefit if they are to bear the risks of an oil pipeline and associated West Coast tanker traffic headed to Asia.

However, there is friction within Ms. Redford’s government about how far it should go to address B.C.’s concerns, and political worries about any move that could be perceived as handing over a share of Alberta’s energy royalties.

Under one proposal being discussed, Alberta could team up with Ottawa to support a broader western industrial corridor project. Money devoted to that project could go to building up West Coast port infrastructure, or to support northern British Columbia communities along the way. Such an industrial corridor would do more than transport energy – it would also be used for moving other products, such as potash.

In a January meeting, B.C. Premier Christy Clark bluntly told Ms. Redford that public opinion is against the pipeline in British Columbia – Alberta gets the benefits while B.C. carries the risks of environmental disaster, according to senior officials in B.C.

PARLIAMENT HILL—Opposition MPs say the list of 76 private-sector volunteer and professional groups approved to nominate candidates for the Queen’s Diamond Anniversary medals this year has Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “fingerprints on everything.”

The list—which includes the names of no fewer than 22 military and veteran organizations, the conservative-oriented REAL Women of Canada and the lobby group Conference of Defence Associations—has given the nomination honour to a limited number of groups likely to be favourable to the Conservative government, MPs say.

Seven nominating groups under the heading “Multiculturalism” include the pro-Isreal B’Nai Brith Canada, International Christian Voice and a well-connected Chinese elderly care and school foundation in Toronto, but no Muslim umbrella associations or distinct Indo-Canadian councils or groups.

Animal protection groups, meanwhile, have two representatives among the non-governmental “partners” selected to take part in the nomination process for the 60,000 Diamond Jubilee medals to be awarded this year to deserving Canadians by a panel of judges under the auspices of Governor General David Johnston.

The five-member "Professional and Economic" group category is dominated by five large industrial and business organizations, leading off with the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada, and has the MacDonald Laurier Institute as its only other non-governmental participant.