More From Star Readers

Whenever I need a morale boost, I look to the letters' section of The Toronto Star. There I find regular confirmation that progressive notions are far from dead in this country, despite the best efforts of the Harper regime:

Re: Underemployment reshapes Canada’s job market, Opinion March 14

During the 2008 recession, some of my well-employed friends smugly asked, “What recession?” They would probably say that the trends in today’s job market aren’t troubling at all; they indicate that we are finally realizing the “leisure society” promised log ago by improved production and technology. This view is delusional.

Last year, our society transitioned from well-paying full-time jobs (less than 20 per cent of all new jobs), to lower-paying and “precarious” part time jobs (almost 80 per cent of all new jobs). This is not merely troubling, but cause for concern, if not panic.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ “Seismic Shift” tells us that 125,000 more Ontarians are unemployed today than before the recession, that fully one-third of part-time workers are frustrated by their inability to find full-time jobs, and we know that many Canadians are forced to take on more than one part-time job — just to make ends meet.

Unless these part-time jobs are freelancing gigs or busking at subway stations, this kind of work is not indicative of a leisure society but, rather, of slavery. We are condemning hard-working citizens to a daily grind that leaves them very little time for family, rest and recreation. This is hardly “progress.”
The golden lining on this storm cloud is that it presents us with an unprecedented opportunity to implement a guaranteed annual income. Are political leaders listening?

Salvatore (Sal) Amenta, Stouffville

We can have full employment in bad times if we adapt the German system Kurzarbeit, the largest work-sharing program in the world. The program included 64,000 workplaces and 1.5 million workers at the peak of the recession in mid-2009.

The Economist magazine, the most read magazine by CEOs and politicians, praises the German system, in which employers reduce hours rather than cut jobs in recessions: “Germany’s gross domestic product fell by 4 per cent in the two years to the end of 2009, twice as much as in America. Yet its employment rose by 0.7 per cent while America’s plunged by 5.5 per cent.”

Joseph Polito, Toronto

It's Definitely Not Democracy

That's the conclusion fundraising expert Harvey McKinnon draws in this interview during which he discusses the Harper regime's targeting of groups that oppose the Tory policy of environmental despoliation, about which I wrote previously.

McKinnon also offers this startling information: Statistically, one in 100 charities are audited each year. This Revenue Canada has gone after seven out of 12 charities this year. According to a statistician on his staff, the odds of this happening randomly are one chance in a billion.

Draw what inference you will from that.




H/t Occupy Canada

Bye Bye, Zach

I have a busy day ahead, so for the time being I shall offer a brief update on the fortunes of young Zach Paikin, about whom I wrote earlier. It appears that Zach has bid farewell to the Liberal Party over what he perceives as Trudeau's interference in the nomination process. You can read all about it here.

Perhaps the young man will now gravitate to the party of his true ideological calling, the Conservative Party of Canada?

Another Informed Star Reader

Christine Penner Polle of Red Lake offers some observations that I suspect few but the most ardent ideologues would dispute:

Re: Ottawa plans cuts to climate programs, March 12

Have we Canadians fallen down the rabbit hole? We are living in a Mad Hatter world where our federal government is slashing funding to Environment Canada’s climate change efforts at the same time scientists are raising the alarm about the threat of an unstable climate to our civilization, and where even staid, small “c” conservative institutions such as the IMF and the IEA are urging swift action to decrease emissions from fossil fuels.

This kind of cost-cutting is false economy, for the longer we delay in addressing climate change the more expensive – and dangerous – it becomes.

The federal government could address the climate crisis by putting a straightforward and transparent price on carbon through a carbon fee and dividend policy that (finally!) charges industry the true cost of carbon pollution, and rebates the money back to Canadian households, helping us all make the shift toward the clean energy economy of the 21st century.

At the same time, the market will be allowed to pick winners and losers in the energy race, rather than government through inefficient sector-by-sector regulation. Sounds like a solution that might get Canadians back to a saner, safer reality.

Kevin Page On Canada's 'Grotesquely Wrong Elites'

Former Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, about whom I have written many times on this blog, is without question one of Canada's true heroes. The reason? He insisted upon doing his job with the kind of thoroughness and integrity that exemplify the highest ideals of public service. Like Munir Sheikh, who resigned his position as head of Statistics Canada rather than allow the Harper government to use him to legitimize its abandonment of the mandatory long-form census, Page deserves our respect for fearlessness in exposing the lie that is our current regime.

Presumably, once his term ended last year, Page was expected by the Harper cabal to slowly fade away like any former government employee. Happily, that has not been the case as he continues to shine a very public light on the regime's abuses of democracy and criminal withholding of information that would allow our elected representatives to make informed decisions in Parliament.

In a very recent interview in The Tyee, Page shows that he is as concerned as ever about the concealment that has become the modus operandi of our current government. At the same time, he articulates what he sees as the main reasons his office fell into the cabal's cross-hairs.

I am reproducing but a small part of the interview here; I hope you will set aside a bit of time to peruse the entire piece.

Why is an office like the PBO necessary? Why does it matter to the good functioning of our democracy?

"In our Westminster parliamentary democracy, the 'power of the purse' rests with the House of Commons. No money should be spent or tax legislation changed unless the executive gets approval from the House of Commons. We want members of Parliament to have access to financial information before they vote. An independent PBO can help level the playing field between the executive/public service and the legislature with respect to access to financial information before money is authorized. Without this information -- there is no accountability. The system breaks down. The current system is badly broken. We do not have the necessary checks and balances in place. MPs are often forced to vote without the information it needs. MPs have lost the power of the purse. They need to regain it."

On the question of the relationship between Harper's budget-cutting and silencing his critics, Page has this to say:

"I am deeply concerned about the lack of transparency, analysis and debate on the choices and impact of government programs and operations that are being eliminated and scaled back in the name [of] deficit reduction. This includes reductions in spending to support information and knowledge at Environment Canada, Statistics Canada and elsewhere.

As a consequence of information being withheld, MPs are voting on departmental spending plans without the information they need to assess austerity impacts. We are closing veterans offices in the name of efficiency but spending more on recreation trails. MPs should debate these issues.

One of the most compelling parts of the interview, for me, was Page's explanation of how the PBO ran afoul of the Prime Minister and his operatives, providing, as it does, a further window into Harper's vindictive soul. It would seem that truth, to Dear Leader, is anathema:

1. A week before a government update that offered a rosy view of the economy, the PBO projected a recession and deficit. When it became apparent the world economy was in a recession, the opposition parties started talking of a coalition government. The prime minister quickly prorogued Parliament and came back with a new outlook and budget.

2. The PBO released a report in 2011 saying the cost of the F35 fighter planes were going to be significantly more expensive than indicated by the defence minister over its life cycle. Despite rabid denunciation of the Office by Harper and his acolytes, the Auditor General confirmed those numbers, suggesting the government had purposely misled the public.

3. Mr. Harper claimed that Old Age Security was unsustainable, and thus the age of eligibility was raised to age 67. The PBO, using similar numbers as the chief actuary, prepared annual long-term fiscal sustainability reports and indicated that the program was sustainable. Harper was caught in his lie a second time when the government released its own analyses and indicated that the federal fiscal structure was sustainable and since OAS was funded by general revenues, it too was sustainable before the government changed the age eligibility requirement."

All in all, a lot for an inflexible martinet to stomach, and hence the animus that persists to this day against Kevin Page.

A Petition Worth Your Consideration

Don Aitken has started a petition on the Care2petition site calling on the government to stop politicizing Canada's Election Act.

Given the abuses inherent in the Fair Elections Act, about which I have written several times, I hope you will consider signing it.

They Tell Tales Designed To Frighten Children

They, of course, are all who comprise the Harper cabal, that conglomeration of feckless, ambitious and disloyal louts who, through their lies, distortions and propaganda, would frighten, confuse and bully the uninformed into surrendering much of what it means to be Canadian.

People will recall, for example, the infamous lie told by Maxime Bernier of the thousands of complaints his office had received about the long-form census and its intrusion into people's lives. A closer analysis suggested that three complaints had been filed.

But of course, ideologues never let logic supplant hysterical distortions, and the mandatory long-form was thus abandoned.

In more recent times there was the whopper told by Tory MP and lapdog, Brad Butt, who, in loyal service to his masters claimed, not once but twice, that he saw people root through garbage and recycling in apartment buildings, then pass on voter information cards to others to be used for wrongly casting ballots. Given such a cautionary tale, the provision in the Fair Elections Act to prohibit the use of vote identification cards and vouching was clearly a justified measure to prevent widescale voter fraud.

Except, of course, Butt later admitted to having 'misspoke' (Toryspeak for lied) and had never actually witnessed such egregious criminal activity. Happily (for him) the good representative of Mississauga-Streetsville escaped unsanctioned, thanks to the parliamentary cover provided by Mr. Harper and his fellow travellers.

But, as noted earlier on this blog, he did not escape the wrath of a Rick Mercer Rant.

The fact that falsehoods are an integral part of the Harper arsenal formed a very interesting piece by Susan Delacourt in this morning's Toronto Star. Entitled Veiled voting furor’s unlikely ending, Delacorut reminds us of the furor that ensued back in 2007 when

Elections Canada ruled that Muslim women were allowed to vote while wearing burkas or niqabs in Quebec byelections.

In perhaps one of the seminal moments when the body first came into the sights of the Prime Minister,

Harper publicly chided Elections Canada (not for the first or last time in his tortured relationship with the organization.) He said he was “very disappointed” with the ruling and presented its decision at odds with the will of Parliament.

Several days ensued of wild stories of masked marauders at the ballot box and what horrors could unfold if we gave the franchise to people who showed up to vote wearing hockey helmets or Darth Vader costumes.

To counter the attempt to whip up the hysteria and anti-Muslim racism so favoured by the regime,

... [Chief Electoral Officer Marc] Mayrand pointed out that Canada’s election law actually does allow people to vote without showing their faces — voting by proxy or by mail, for instance, as tens of thousands of voters have done the past few elections. Singling out one constituency for a show-your-face voting requirement, namely Muslim women, could be problematic in a pluralist nation.

He and various Muslim spokespersons also pointed out that there was no great surge in people showing up at the ballot box with their faces covered — and no demand for it, either. Muslim women had already been removing their veil to vote.

Thus, rationality, logic and empiricism ruled the day, and that particular Tory attempt at frightening the electorate faded away.

Never one to take defeat lightly or graciously, the Harper cabal, apparently converted to the old adage that revenge is a dish best served cold, has bided its time and, with the Fair Elections Act, will be able to both mete out retribution to Elections Canada and achieve its goal of voter suppression.

A shame we can't call in the United Nations to help protect us from this rogue regime.