The Harper Legacy: Empty Mantras And Empty Ideology

I hope readers don't think I have grown lazy or burnt-out when I reprint letters from The Toronto Star. It is just that their observations and ideas are frequently so nicely expressed that I think they merit some exposure in the blogosphere.

Today's offers a sharp rebuke to the tired Tory ideology of low corporate taxes as the path to prosperity, a mantra that has been repeatedly shown to be as devoid of value as the head of their leader and our Prime Minister is devoid of ideas and vision.

Re: Canada hit by unexpected rise in jobless rate, Jan. 10

When asked about the December job losses, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty lamely trots out his usual PMO-approved talking point that we must “keep taxes low to create the environment where job creation can flourish.” Translation: Slash government.

Not just hogwash, sir — stale hogwash!

Taxes are already low enough. It is the continual bleeding by mass employers that drive these kinds of losses, like plant closures announced by Kellogg in London, Heinz at Leamington, CCL Industries in Penetanguishine and others that have already occurred over the past several years, including the steel industry. True, many closures are in Ontario, but that’s because that province traditionally formed our industrial heartland.

Indeed, some jobs are lost because of technology but the majority are because U.S. head offices are taking jobs back to the U.S. or other firms are moving to low-wage countries that Canadians can never compete with, with labour rates as low as $1 a day, such as the garment industry.

If the Conservative government in Ottawa is serious about job creation, it will formulate and actively promote an industrial strategy for Canada, one that goes beyond the Alberta tar sands and the oil industry. Elsewhere, tinkering with a few high-tech projects may create a relative handful of well-paying work but not the thousands of jobs and steady wages that industry can provide.

The Tories demonstrated that they knew this sort of thing could work when they pumped life-saving public funding into GM of Canada and Chrysler Canada when those two industrial titans were threatened with bankruptcy. It’s that or reverse course on slashing government, the only other mass employment sector we have left.

In the end, it seems the Harper government is rendered impotent on jobs creation by its own narrow-minded ideology based on fantasy and blind to the reality of our preventable national decline.

Brad Savage, Scarborough

Good Tim, Bad Tim

Tim's Contemplative Face

Anyone who reads this blog regularly is probably aware that I am no fan of Ontario's Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak. A callow lad at best, a duplicitous mini-demagogue at worst, the lad who would be premier has always struck me as one with limited imagination and no real vision, content as he is to spout the usual right-wing bromides (unions bad, workplace democracy good).

With a spring election looking increasingly likely in Ontario, young Tim has lately shown his egregious contempt for the electorate's intelligence by attempting to reinvent himself with a private member's bill he is planning to introduce that promises the creation of a million jobs over eight years, a plan that has come under considerable criticism. For me, what is most striking is that there is no reference in this bill to Hudak's previously-touted mantra of union-busting as the path to prosperity.

Are we to take it that Tim simply misspoke on all those previous occasions about the need for euphemistic right-to-work legislation? It is indeed difficult to reconcile his anti-union screeds with this rhetoric:

“Your odds of getting a minimum-wage job – they’ve doubled under the current government’s approach, supported by the NDP. If you want a good, steady job, with benefits and better take-home pay, look at my plan. It will create a million of these good, well-paying jobs in our province of Ontario again. But we’ve got to make these choices to get on this path.”

Rather beguiling, his promises, aren't they?

As usual, Toronto Star readers are exercising their critical-thinking skills and have much to say about Tim's plan. There are a number of very good ones, and I offer the following only as representative examples:

So Tim Hudak is going to save Ontario. He is going to freeze the public service. Perhaps he didn’t notice that freezing the public service wages over the past five years to give tax breaks to corporations did not create jobs. Instead we lost 45,000 jobs last month. What did Kellogg’s and Heinz do with their tax windfall? Those two stalwarts of Ontario called the moving trucks.

He is going to create one million jobs. That would be 400,000 more than we need, or will the unemployed need two jobs to make a living at those created? His plan to reduce public sector jobs and replace them with low-paid private sector jobs will not help the economy and training for skilled trades won’t produce workers for these former government jobs.

Maybe by driving down the standard of living Mr. Hudak believes that he can lure back some of the manufacturing jobs other Tory governments helped leave Ontario. Surely cutting the green energy subsidies won’t create but will eliminate skilled jobs. Training skilled workers is a great idea if there are jobs for them to go to after the training.

Hudak has no plan for reducing energy costs even though he cites this as a reason for job losses. Too many friends at OPG?
He is from an era where cutting taxes was the mantra to create jobs. Employers who get tax cuts keep the money. They rarely invest in job creation without government welfare assistance. Families that get tax relief need the money to meet rising energy and fuel costs. Tax cuts will not now, nor have they ever, created jobs. Ideas from the 20th century that didn’t work then definitely won’t work now. Ontario has a business friendly tax structure and we are still bleeding jobs.

Do we need recycled Mike Harris ideas? I think not. Hudak’s plan is to continue the Conservative ideology of lowering the standard of living for working Ontarians and giving more to the 1 per cent will not save Ontario. We need to concentrate on the economy with 21st century solutions that will create sustainable jobs that pay above the poverty line.

Bob File, Hamilton

I am wondering what exactly Ontario Tory leader Tim Hudak is referring to when he states, as part of his five-point plan for improving Ontario’s economy, that he will “end the bureaucratic runaround that inhibits job creation.”

Is he talking about lifting environmental restrictions on businesses and resource development? Is he talking about changing laws around workplace safety? Is he talking about changing laws relating to the use of part-time and temporary workers — so called “precarious employees” — who already have to scrabble to make ends meet without the benefit of job security, benefits and an employer provided pension?

Laws that favour business owners and resource developers over Ontario workers and citizens line the pockets of the rich while eroding quality of life for average Ontarians.

Brian O’Sullivan, Stouffville

Tim's Mad Face

Little Did They Know

My son alerted me to this video from 1981. After watching it, be sure to read Rosie DiManno's observations about workplace leave-taking, the second part of which deals specifically with the newspaper industry.

A World Badly In Need Of Inspired Leadership

Since he was elected to the position, I have written several posts related to Pope Francis; several of them express a renewed hope that the plain-speaking pontiff can generate some hope in a world badly in need of inspiring leadership, something almost wholly absent in our current crop of politicos, obsessed as they are first and foremost with the attainment and retention of power.

In response to a recent article by the Star's Carol Goar, readers offer their perspective on what politicians could learn from Francis:

Goar: World leaders respond to Pope’s message, Opinion Jan. 12

Carol Goar’s piece on Pope Francis highlights the amazing influence that Pope Francis musters — not only with key global political leaders but also with his unlikely admirers such as the influential gay rights magazine The Advocate, that praised the Pope’s impressive “stark change in rhetoric.”

It is befitting that this simple, humble, affable lead pastor, who has successfully focused world attention on the worsening plight of the poor and the marginalized, was placed fourth on the list of the world’s most powerful people by Forbes, the leading American business magazine.

This is clearly a clarion call to politicians, globally and especially in Canada. Such timely notice, that immediate steps must be taken to heed public opinion and address inequality in a responsive and progressive manner, will not be lost on our politicians. It is easy to see that “trickle down economics” has not worked, except for the top 1 per cent who conveniently help to promote this mantra, ad nauseum.

Let us hope that the political pendulum will swing in unison with the aspirations of Canadians going forward. The will of the electorate should result in welcome winds of change — shaping a better and gentler Canada.

As Winston Churchill famously said: “If one does not bend with the wind, one will end with the wind.”

Rudy Fernandes, Mississauga


Canada is in the final stages of creating a national holiday to honour Pope John Paul II. Yet it is Pope Francis who recently called us to pay attention to the extreme poor whose plight is often ignored. He has decried our indifference towards those who die of hunger and suffer as a result of malnutrition, while we have the tools and the resources to end hunger and poverty in a single generation.

In fact, over 1 billion people live in extreme poverty, earning $1.25 or less per day. And 400 million of the world’s extreme poor are children.
We need the voice and moral force that Pope Francis and all leaders from the world’s faiths can provide. We also need an economic plan that is equal to the task.

Canada has established one leg of the stool — the Muskoka Initiative, which Prime Minister Stephen Harper presented in 2010. It aims to reduce maternal and infant mortality and improve the health of mothers and children in the world’s poorest countries by strengthening health systems, preventing and treating the leading illnesses and diseases that kill women and children and improving nutrition.

Canada should ensure the Muskoka Initiative is extended and expanded into a legacy program deserving of a national holiday.

Randy Rudolph, Calgary


A very good article, and an eye opener to those political leaders whose eyes are still “closed” and minds shut — “fixed” on doing only what will bring them back into power.

A quick comment/suggestion I would offer is a review of our tax system. Yes, keep taxes low for the low-income earners, however, the marginal tax rate should be increased dramatically for the higher income earners — CEOs and other executives who are paid salaries and bonuses that are way, way, way beyond what they need to live extraordinarily luxurious lives.

The marginal tax rates for these people should be increased, incrementally, from the current maximum of 46 per cent up to 70 per cent (and this will not hurt their lifestyles).

And the revenue generated should be used to pay for proper child care, further education, the homeless in our society, seniors’ benefits, our First Nations and veterans benefits.

Al Mathias, Mississauga

Some Interesting And Encouraging Poll Results

According to a Huffington Post survey, more than 60 per cent of Albertan respondents backed Neil Young's condemnation of the tarsands; as well, an Edmonton Journal online poll found more than 70% approval for his comments.

That has got to be an encouraging sign.

An Awakening Public?

I certainly applaud the spirit of this Star letter:

As the mayors of the GTA come together to ask for funds to clean up from the recent ice storm, I hope that they will recognize the likelihood that this disaster and recent GTA floods were “acts of man.” While most climate change scientists, conservative as they are, will not point at a single extreme weather event and proclaim it the result of global climate change, they do recognize the resultant increased frequency of severe weather events.

The provincial government has followed through on a promise to close coal-fired power stations as one step toward reducing CO2 emissions in Ontario. The Harper government has done little except interfere with efforts to reduce human caused climate change. Driven by the dictates of the fossil fuel industry, the federal government continues to pave the way for tar sands expansion and the transportation of dangerous and CO2 emission-rich products in the form of bitumen.

I implore the municipal mayors to seek relief funds from those who have contributed to climate change and profited (directly and/or indirectly) from the expansion of the tar sands. The costs of global climate change are mounting. Ontario citizens should not have to pay for this.

We must seek compensation from those who are increasing the risks of extreme weather events, namely the fossil fuel industry and their puppet regime, the Harper government.

James S. Quinn, Professor, Biology Department, McMaster University

With the latest Nanos poll suggesting that Canadians are awakening from their long slumber, perhaps the idea isn't as far-fetched as some might think?

Can Loyalty Oaths Be Far Behind?

In yet another development in the dangerous drift toward autocratic rule, the Harper cabal, under the guise of a private member's bill introduced by Mark Adler, the Conservative MP for York Centre, wants parliamentary watchdogs and their employees to disclose previous political activities.

Bill C-520, which has the full backing of Mr. Harper,

would require every applicant for a job with an agent of Parliament — such as the auditor general, or the chief electoral officer — to disclose if they’ve held a “partisan position” in the previous decade. The legislation would be retroactive, requiring any current employees to publicly disclose past political activity.

Here is a summary of the bill:

This enactment establishes a requirement for every person who applies for a position in the office of an agent of Parliament to make a declaration stating whether, in the 10 years before applying for that position, they occupied specified politically partisan positions. The enactment also requires the persons who work in the office of an agent of Parliament and these agents to make a declaration if they intend to occupy a politically partisan position while continuing to occupy the position as agent of Parliament or work in the office of such an agent. The declarations are to be posted on the website of the office of the relevant agent of Parliament.

As well, the enactment requires an agent of Parliament and the persons who work in his or her office to provide a written undertaking that they will conduct themselves in a non-partisan manner in fulfilling the official duties and responsibilities of their positions.

The bill would also allow MPs and senators to ask Parliamentary watchdogs to investigate an employee’s conduct, should the politician suspect they’re performing their duties in a “partisan manner.” No definition of partisan activities is given in the bill, which, of course, opens the way to what many are calling a witch hunt.

For example, one can only imagine the grief the Harperites would have caused former Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page had they been armed with this bill. No doubt Page's propensity for pointing out this government's myriad lies and examples of ministerial incompetence would have constituted 'partisan activity' in the twisted Tory mind.

So much for Parliamentary officers' independence.

Given the extraordinarily partisan and vindictive nature of the Prime Minister, it is yet another example of the government's contempt for the intelligence of Canadians when Harper's director of communications tells us that the bill reflects the Conservatives’ “principles of transparency and accountability.”

Can loyalty oaths be far behind?