Economic Fact Check

Contrary to what our self-described economist Prime Minister would have us believe, the jobs that are being created in Canada today are but a pale echo of what once existed. Responding to a January report about the creation of 29,000 new jobs, Star readers have this to say:

Jump in jobs eases economy fears, Feb. 8

The article begins by saying “the labour market started 2014 with a bang adding 29,400 jobs,” presenting a positive tone regarding unemployment. This is misleading. From 2004 to 2008, according to Statistic Canada, nearly 350,000 well-paying manufacturing jobs disappeared, to be replaced by a number of service jobs that paid minimum wage or less. Every sector was hit: the automotive industry, auto parts manufacturing, textile product mills, all industries related to wood and paper. Along with these jobs went the unions, and suddenly we were seeing the rise of food banks.

By 2010, manufacturing employment had fallen by an additional 375,000 workers. All courtesy of free trade agreements that allowed companies to leave Canada for cheap-labour countries.

Then there were other job losses: Sears, 1,600 jobs gone; public sector workers: 20,000; and major Canadian banks, in the thousands. The construction industry in northern Alberta, which generates the best paying jobs in the country, has been laying off workers and replacing them with temporary foreign workers earning as little as half the prevailing wage.

“They called the guys (Canadian workers) into an office, told them that they were gone, and they literally walked past the replacements on the way out,” Alberta Federation of Labour Gil McGowan said.

Job losses over the past 10 years add up to well over a million. The number of jobs listed in the article, 29,400, doesn't even wipe out the job losses of the month previous, 49,500.

And it does nothing about the million jobs already lost.

Bert Deveaux, Toronto

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty should have chosen ballet slippers instead of steel-toed shoes the way he dances around the reality Canada is rapidly becoming a part-time economy. Will that be fries with your budget, Sir?

Richard Kadziewicz, Scarborough

No doubt these facts will be viewed as just a tiny challenge to the Harper propaganda machine.

About Upper-Class Twits and Peter MacKay

Yesterday, over at Northern Reflections, Owen had a trenchant post on Justice Minister Peter MacKay, a man who has always struck me as one of the most profoundly incompetent members of the Harper cabinet. After reading the post, I couldn't help but think of one of the classic skits by Monty Python, The Upper-Class Twit of the Year.

Enjoy:

Another Guest Commentary From The Salamander

In response to a post I wrote yesterday, The Salamander left one of his trenchant and masterful commentaries on the myriad deficiencies of the Harper regime. So that it has a wider readership than a comment would usually garner, I am featuring it as a guest post. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did, replete as it is with excoriating allusion, simile, and metaphor:

.. always good to hear from Peter MacKay on matters that have somehow seeped or leaked through his stolid or squalid dura mater .. I'm certainly not the brightest knife in the drawer, so surely most of Canada is noticing that MacKay is about as useful as a paperweight made of dried fake canada goose snot.

Unfortunately, his snotworthy 'legacy' is blowing in the downdraft of imaginary helicopters, churned by stealth snow MacVehicles and about as blustery and bogus as that of Treasury Tony Clement and the late lamented zombified other Peter.. Petered out Kent .. our dear and caring environmentalist

Why everyone is piling on poor Pammy Wallin or Mikey Duffy.. when they are simply ornamental and plump red Alliance herring with wings and double chins is beyond me.. In the field of opportunity, the really plump turkeys are out there gobbling & strutting in plain sight..

Fantino would be a fantastic feast.. and his lovely mysterious PMO compadre Stephen Lecce too.. plus the red goatee robo dude from Alberta

Keith Ashfield is a complete documented disaster waiting for a journalist or Frankie James to fricassee

Kenney rhymes with and lives with Mummy .. enuff said

Baird is getting a free pass for being gay .. Policy wise he's a glib asshat bullyboy
with the ethics, courage, morality and usefulness of a leaky septic tank located near a lake

That leaves us with petro circus barker, stock broker, lawyer, millionaire energy pimp Joe Oliver, Flaherty.. and strutting master Stephen Harper, his zombie trolls in the PMO and, the electoral dataminers and lesser quislings and remoras that like Peter MacKay.. thrive on eating Stevie's easterner shite .. along with the dung beetle Flanagans, Jenni Byrne's, Arthur Hamilton's and REAL Women et al .. those paramours and pretenders of Canadian Western Values that stand up for a political party that is a holding tank for swimming mutating unsentient creatures that define political animal evolution in swine excrement excellence..

Deary me.. I hope I haven't been too hard on Peter Mackay..
but swapping this pimply arsed entitled poser off from Defense of the land and China, to Justice left me gasping at the poetic brilliance of Stephen and Ray Novak..
So why not shuffle Fantino to pro-China Environment too ? He's an expert at 'containment' after all

And .. how did American Tom Flanagan fall so far he never made it to Great White Ottawa Chief of Indian Affairs and related treaty exterminator/fumigator ??

My goodness .. !! We haven't even gotten to the closets at Sussex Drive..
Who's clothes are those.. in the Royal Harper walk in closets ? Incroyable !!

How all these so called Canadians line up against Canada and Canadians and defend the toxic tainted deceits of Torontonian Stephen Harper simply blows me away.. I really have yet to comprehend how a sniff or whiff of power makes creating, then eating .. shite, acceptable.. or leads to appearances on the front page of magazines

UPDATED: The Dishonourable Minister of Duplicity

Yesterday I write a brief post expressing my disdain for the fact that Peter MacKay and his family are on the cover of the 'celebrity' magazine Hello! Canada. That disdain springs not only from his incompetent and dishonest performance on more than one occasion as a long-standing cabinet minister in the Harper government, but also from the fact that were it not for MacKays patent lack of integrity, the Conservative Party of Canada would not exist today.

Serendipitously, I came upon a podcast hosted by Global Research marking the ten years that have elapsed since Peter MacKay's betrayal led to end of the Progressive Conservative Party and the birth of the Harper mutation known as the Conservative Party of Canada. The rest, as they say, is history, albeit a sad one for many of us who care about this country.

An introduction to the podcast, written by Marjaleena Repo and Michael Welch, reminds us of some of the sordid history behind the incarnation of today's party:

David Orchard contested the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party back in 2003. Orchard relied on the support of grass-roots people, myself among them, who were opposed to government policies on free trade, environmental neglect, and Canadian support for imperial wars abroad. [7]

It was through Orchard’s support that Peter Mackay became leader of the party. Mackay then betrayed the condition of Orchard’s support by orchestrating a merger with the right-wing US-Republican style Canadian Alliance Party, which was then led by Stephen Harper. [8]

This betrayal, in addition to some of the other shenanigans which played out in the months during the leadership campaign and leading up to the vote to merge the parties in December provides a critical context for assessing this party’s commitment to ethics, responsible conduct and fair play.

An example of the shenanigans?

“They would do all kinds of things…Organizing meetings that didn’t happen or people would go to a delegate selection meeting and the address was a pawn shop in Regina so people stood at the street corner waiting for something and nobody came…There was a kind of planned confusion…by people who really wanted us to stay out, and I think these people were people who wanted the party to be taken over.” Orchard campaign manager and political advisor Marjaleena Repo

While dirty politics is hardly something MacKay invented, I feel a special animus toward him due to the long-term effects of his dishonourable behaviour.

You can listen to or download the podcast here.

UPDATE: I see that MacKay, the new Minister of Justice, is continuing his duplicity. In reference to American justice trends during an interview, he insists that Canada is moving in a very progressive way, despite the evidence that proves otherwise, evidence that MacKay dismisses as “partisan rhetoric”:

“They’re [the U.S.]talking about moving away from very harsh sentences that were handed down for, in some cases, simple possession. That we’ve already done, [This bold lie ignores the fact that growing six pot plants now requires a minimum six month sentence under Harper reforms] but there will remain very severe penalties in the U.S., in fact more severe than in Canada, for trafficking in narcotics and that is an area in which our government feels very strongly.”

Despite cuts to prisoner work programs and new rules that make it harder for ex-convicts to obtain pardons, MacKay maintains Canada’s approach is “balanced” and “doesn’t lose sight of the need to rehabilitate.”

To read the full extent of Peter's prevarications, click here.

My, My, My

The web blurb for Hello Canada! magazine states the following: HELLO! Canada brings you the latest celebrity & royal news from around the world.

This is what graces its current cover:

Impoverished indeed are we as a nation* if a minister as consistently and profoundly incompetent as Peter MacKay and his family are deemed worthy of celebrity status.

* Special thanks to Yoda for permission to use his always arresting syntax.

They Still Walk Among Us

I have always felt a deep, abiding respect and affection for people of integrity. During my career as an English teacher, I took special delight in teaching plays like Arthur Miller's The Crucible and Robert Bolt's Man For All Seasons, which told stories of real-life people who made the ultimate sacrifice to stay true to themselves and their beliefs.

Happily, those with integrity are not confined to either the history or literary pages. They still walk among us. People like Munir Sheikh, the former head of Statistics Canada who resigned his post rather than have his name, reputation and work brought down into the slime by the Harper regime. People like Nelson Mandela, who, rather than grasping at early release from prison in exchange for renouncing the African National Congress, served 27 years in prison and later became both the president and moral leader of South Africa.

People like Kevin Page.

Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer about whom I have written several times on this blog, will be completing his mandate and leaving office on March 25, no doubt much to the relief of the Harper regime, which has been persistently reminded of its fiscal ineptitude, lies, and manipulation of public information by his indefatigable quest for truth and accountability. The F-35 fighter jet debacle is perhaps one of the most obvious examples of the above litany of Harper shortcomings, and a steady target of the PBO, but not the last.

The Star's Tim Harper has a profile of the self-effacing Page in today's edition that is well-worth reading. As well, this editorial in the Montreal Gazetter, this piece in The Star, and this article from Macleans are also well-worth perusal.

For the sake of our national psyche, I believe it is incumbent upon us to honor heroes while they still walk among us.

I'll Have a Veggie Burger, Please

In light of the widespread dissemination of tainted beef by XL Foods, one has to ask the role changes made by the Harper regime in Canada's food inspection process played.

According to a Globe report,

The list of stores and products affected by the recall is now so long that consumers are advised to inquire at the point of purchase whether the beef they’re buying came from XL Foods.

Exactly how could this have happened? Despite the fact that it was September 4th when E.coli was first detected in the plant, it wasn't until three weeks later that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency acted.

The answer seems to lie in cost-cutting changes implemented by our government 'protectors' in Ottawa which naively (or is it ideologically?) place a great deal of faith in the industry's capacity to self-regulate.

As noted in the preamble on the CFIA website,

The CFIA and industry both have roles to play in achieving safe, wholesome products for consumers. The CFIA conducts inspections, tests products and verifies that industry is complying with the regulations that the CFIA enforces. Industry plays an important role in keeping Canada's food safe by identifying and managing food safety risks and by complying with all of Canada's food safety regulations.

A far more detailed breakdown of the responsibilities of industry can be found on the site, but amongst the most noteworthy is the following:

It is in the food industry's best interest to comply with regulations. In fact, industry works to:

Identify potential sources of food contamination

Update production practices to eliminate risk

Comply with the inspection and testing protocols

Pull unsafe products from the marketplace

Clearly, this did not happen with XL Foods, whose list of recalls now numbers over 33 pages, recalls that were not initiated until CFIA suspended its licence three weeks after the discovery of E.coli.

But don't expect the Harper cabal to admit their complicity anytime soon. When questioned in the House of Commons by both Thomas Mulcair and Bob Rae, misdirection was the order of the day. I won't bother reproducing the lies here, but please do check them out on the Macleans website.

All of the political jockeying amply demonstrates one thing: our representatives are very adept at protecting themselves; it is unfortunate that they are unwilling to do the same for us.

Harper's Lack of Vision and Corporate Timidity

Canada is cursed with a Prime Minister who pretends to be an economist, one apparently intent on returning us to an era when the country was primarily a hewer of wood and drawer of water thanks to his enthusiastic endorsement of a shortsighted prosperity achieved through oil and gas exports.

Is it really surprising then that Corporate Canada is sitting on $526 billion that it refuses to invest in worthwhile and necessary pursuits like research and development, plant expansion, new equipment, etc. etc.?

The Government's Three Wise Men?

I thought you might enjoy this editorial cartoon courtesy of The Hamilton Spectator:

More Fabrications from MacKay

The Indefensible Defense Minister, Peter MacKay, continues to insult the intelligence of all thinking Canadians. As one who has followed the F-35 jet issue somewhat closely for the past year, I am astounded by his latest contemptible 'explanation' that he says proves there was no intention on the part of his government to mislead anyone on the acquisition costs of the jets: an accounting nuance explains the $10 million discrepancy between the real cost of $25 billion and the $15 billion the government adhered to.

I won't even bother wasting my time or yours in pointing out the absolute inadequacy of his explanation. The moral bankruptcy surrounding this issue and indeed the entire Harper regime is obvious for all to see, as is their contempt for all of us.

One more note: As pointed out recently by the always thorough Sixth Estate, throughout the election campaign the Tories referred to the inviolate contract they had for the purchase of the F-35 jets at $75 million a pop. Recent weeks have seen those same Tories claim no contract has been signed, and so no money is in jeopardy. In today's Globe, MacKay warned there would be a cost to cancelling a multi-billion-dollar purchase deal with Lockheed Martin, the lead contractor.

You figure it out. I'm going to pour myself another cup of coffee and get on with my day.

The Latest On The F-35

While the militaristic Canadian Conservative regime, led by flyboy fan Steve and aggressively supported by his Defence Minister, the dishonourable member from Central Nova, continue to champion the acquisition of the F-35 as Canada's next big toy, it is apparent to almost all who keep themselves informed that the plane is both inappropriate for our needs and experiencing huge cost overruns in its pre-production phase. Those are facts that no Harper-led denials and progaganda can change.

The latest information about the plane from a rational source suggests a surprisingly inexpensive alternative to what will become a financial albatross if the Harperites get their way. You can read Peter Morton's thoughts here.

Confess Now, Before He Finds Out

Tell Vic Everything. You'll feel better for it.

Musical Chairs Belong At Children's Parties, Not In The Senate

I really have nothing to add here. The absolute puerility of the Conservatives speaks for itself:

OTTAWA—The so-called house of sober second thought witnessed the kind of contest normally associated with first-grade birthday parties, as a showdown erupted over seating arrangements this week.

The newly elected chair of the Senate banking committee, Conservative Irving Gerstein, didn’t want the vice-chair, Liberal Céline Hervieux-Payette, sitting next to him.

When he asked her to step away from the head table, she refused.

So Gerstein, elected this week as chair, called a vote to kick Payette out of her seat.

With a Conservative majority on the committee, the motion passed Wednesday and the game of partisan musical chairs ended with Payette being forced to sit farther away.

Will the Conservatives next be claiming that girls have cooties?

Tim Harper on Caterpillar's Betrayal of Canadian Workers

As it hauls its billions in profits south of the border, Caterpillar executives should make a detour and stop in Ottawa to drop off the money they owe Canadian taxpayers.

Failing that, the Conservative government should be waiting for them at the border demanding the tax break and handout cash looted from the federal treasury.

But since both scenarios are highly fanciful, it is time for an end to the scattershot, no-strings-attached tax breaks being tossed from Stephen Harper’s government to large multinationals that are using it to drive down the standard of living in this country.

And those are just the first three sentences in Tim Harper's excellent and trenchant analysis of the Electro-Motive debacle, which I highly recommend.

Martin Regg Cohn On The Wider Implications of the Electro-Motive Debacle

So the first lesson of the London massacre: Ottawa must be vigilant about vetting foreign investment and retaining jobs, but also mindful of valuing — and anchoring — our homegrown intellectual property. Why underwrite our companies if we willingly sell off our embedded brainpower to foreign bidders who leave Canada cash-rich, patent poor and jobless?

That, and the following, essentially sum up an excellent article by Cohn found in today's Star:

Another lesson: When it comes to the economy, empathy isn’t enough. Premier Dalton McGuinty adopted a reflexively tepid tone from the start, expressing the vain hope that both sides would come to their senses. Belatedly last week, he ratcheted up the rhetoric by exhorting the plant’s owners to play fair.

But he never picked up the phone to the employer. Nor did he reach out to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to forge a non-partisan common front. When a company treats its workers like dirt, a premier should leave no stone unturned.

But of course, the one error Cohn makes in his piece is the underlying assumption that either Harper or McGuinty really give a damn about ordinary people in this country. Proof that this is a misguided assumption: our 'leaders'' virtual silence on yet another instance of unfettered capitalism wreaking havoc in this country, and the aiding and abetting role they played.

Educate, Educate, Resist

I have to admit that nowadays I am feeling the pessimism of old strongly reemerging, not to the point of giving up my blog and whatever value it might serve in the fight against the extremists who now control the Canadian government, but to the point where I realize that the battle is lost without the willingness of Canadians, no matter how hard their daily struggles might be, to educate themselves about the issues and keep current with as many facets as possible of the neoliberal agenda being relentlessly advanced by those who pretend to represent us.

To that end, I list the following for your consideration in today's Star:

Caterpillar shutdown: U.S. company bails from London, Ont.’s Electro-Motive Diesel plant

Walkom: Caterpillar closing part of a coordinated attack on unions

Chantal Hébert: Conservative reform plans aimed beyond 2015 election

To be passive, to excuse our lack of activism with a facile dismissal of politics as 'not being interesting,' to continue to narcotize our minds and infantalize ourselves with the latest electronic gadget or reality show diversion is to reject both the rights and the responsibilities of citizenship, and to condemn future generations to a hardscrabble existence.

Thus endeth the sermon.

The Voice of Labour Roars

Although those in the embrace of neo-liberalism would have us believe that unions and worker solidarity are but a quaint historical artifact, the size of yesterday's rally in London, Ontario protesting the predatory practices of Catterpillar Inc. suggests otherwise.

In response to the company's attempt to halve the wages of its workers at Electro-Motive Canada and severely reduce pensions and other benefits,

A crowd of more than 10,000 descended upon this city’s Victoria Park to support local workers who have been locked out of their jobs since the new year. They came from all over, from Timmins, Sudbury, and Pennsylvania in scores of buses. They came to protest corporate greed and Stephen Harper.

Ken Lewenza, president of Canadian Auto Workers, offered a sobering warning to the Harper government, which permitted the sale of the company to U.S.-based Caterpillar, and now seems egregiously unconcerned about the disastrous consequences that decision has wrought:

“If the government doesn’t step in, Canada will become a low-paid workforce .... We need to protect the middle class if we want a more equal society.”

Apparently any concern for the fate of the middle class is trumped by Mr. Harper's ideology, an ideology which seems to believe that unfettered capitalism can do no wrong.

More Joy in Heaven

The above title, taken from both The Bible and the title of a Morley Callaghan novel, suggests the possibility of redemption. There was a report in yesterday's Star amply demonstrating that potential.

When 37-year-old Maxwell Beech was facing sentencing for gun and drug-related charges seven years ago, he expected the worst. The veteran of youth court offences was assuming he would be receiving a sentence of at least four years when the Judge, Hugh Atwood, did something he hadn't anticipated.

“I could see you're a changed man,” Beech remembers the judge told him. He repeats this phrase like a badge of honour.

Atwood sentenced Beech to serve just 90 days on weekends, reporting to Metro West detention centre on Fridays and released Monday mornings, to go home, and raise his son.

“This man gave me another shot. Another opportunity at life,” Beech said.

On Tuesday, Beech returned to Judge Atwood's court to thank him for his mercy, something that set him on a corrective life course, resulting in his now running his own business installing blinds and home security systems.

I mention this not because I do not believe in harsh sentencing for serious and violent offenses (I do), but because a followup story in today's Star discusses how the discretion used by Judge Atwood in Beech's case will no longer be an option because Bill C10, expected to pass into law in Canada by the end of March, will make second chances a thing of the past. Instead, the bill’s mandatory minimum sentences will make sure that people like Maxwell Beech go to jail.

Bill C10, one may recall, is being enacted at a time of sharply declining rates of crime, something the ideologically-drive Harper government seems to think is irrelevant.

The article serves to remind us that to acknowledge the humanity in others, as did Judge Atwell, is also to experience it within ourselves.

The Star's Gloomy Assessment of Corporate Depradations

Today's Star editorial offers a gloomy but apparently realistic assessment of the direction Canada's manufacturing is headed in. Abetted by the federal and Ontario McGuinty provincial governments' seeming indifference to the corporate depredations underway, the most recent occurring at Electro-Motive Canada, and unions that are hamstrung by the refusal of companies to negotiate reasonable contracts, the outlook seems very bleak.

Sunday Insight From A Star Reader

I'm reproducing another insightful letter from a Star reader, this time from Edward Carson of Toronto, who writes about how ideology reigns supreme over reality in the Harper government:

The Harper government’s “tough on crime” agenda through Bill C-10 is a policy and fiscal disaster in the making.

A government so focused on this country’s financial resources is putting into place an already discredited solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, one that is certain to strain those very resources. And yet all the evidence is simply being ignored.

The reason is rooted in Harper's adherence to ideology over common sense, but driving that ideology is a mix of easily recognized personal psychology and organizational behaviour resulting in a habit of going to great lengths to avoid a perceived loss — a win-at-all-costs mentality, not unlike that found in sports, that refuses to re-evaluate strategies, ideas or actions inconsistent with the facts.

We see this tendency to undermine rational action or thought in a range of things the Harper government does, from responding to questions in Parliament or media interviews with predigested answers that bear no relation to the questions asked, to larger issues such as their rejection of the long-form census or refusal to adequately address the actual cost of new jets. The initial, often ideological perspective is maintained in the face of empirical evidence to the contrary or the wisdom of a wider collective experience.

Edward Carson, Toronto