Believe It Or Not

Readers of a certain age will remember an erstwhile popular feature carried in many newspapers, Ripley's Believe It Or Not. Each day we would be invited to view a vignette depicting something bizarre or outrageous that frequently strained credulity:



Were it still publishing such tales, I would offer the following for Ripley's consideration:

A $30,000 donation by TransCanada Corp. to the Northern Ontario town of Mattawa comes with a condition attached — an apparent vow of silence on TransCanada’s business activities.

One of the clauses in the agreement says this:

“The Town of Mattawa will not publicly comment on TransCanada’s operations or business projects.”

Commenting on TransCanada’s business is a sensitive point, as the company has several controversial pipeline projects on the go, in addition to Energy East.

According to Mattawa mayor, James Backer, TransCanada offered the town $30,000 toward a new rescue truck, if it agreed to provide services. (The pipeline runs just outside the town's boundaries.) It was all quite innocent.

But wait; there's more!

The ever-beneficent pipeline giant says that it is all just one big misunderstanding, and that the clause was inserted to protect municipalities from stress:

TransCanada spokesman Davis Sheremata said the no-comment clause was inserted to protect town councils from feeling pressured to support TransCanada projects elsewhere.

“In recent years, we have found that communities we enter into partnerships with have at times been targeted by opponents of our projects in Canada and the United States, and have felt pressured to make public statements on our behalf in support of projects not related to them and sometimes located thousands of miles away,” he said.

“The language in the agreement was designed to prevent municipalities from feeling obligated to make public comments on our behalf about projects that did not impact them and about which they had no experience or knowledge.”

“If the Town of Mattawa or any other municipality expressed a concern that the contract would in any way have limited their ability to take part in a full and open discussion about the Canadian Mainline or Energy East, we would have removed it,” he wrote.

As Ripley's used to say, "Believe it or not, folks."

Andrea Horwath: Her Smugness Takes A Hit

The other day, while watching some reactions to the Ontario Throne Speech, I couldn't help but note a truculent and smug Andrea Horwath, the leader of an NDP party now diminished by her foolish decision not to support a progressive budget, thereby triggering an election that few wanted. She opined that the now-majority Liberal government will have to make massive cuts in order to balance the budget by 2017-18. Indeed, she called the speech a Trojan Horse plan.

Who knows? She may be right, but the fact that she gambled and lost the leverage her party enjoyed in the legislature thanks to her decision to go for the brass ring of power has weakened considerably both her credibility and stature among voters. Perhaps this helps explain these results published in today's Star:

One third of Ontarians think NDP Leader Andrea Horwath should resign in the wake of her recent provincial election defeat, a new poll has found.

The poll, conducted by Forum Research, found 35 per cent believe Horwath, who triggered the election by announcing her party would no longer prop up the minority Grits, should step down as leader, while 43 per cent felt she should stay on and 21 per cent had no opinion.

In terms of personal approval, Horwath has dropped to 28 per cent compared to 41 per cent for Wynne. Last August, Forum found the NDP leader at 50 per cent and the Liberal premier at 36 per cent.

Lorne Bozinoff, the president of Forum, noted that the party got nothing out of Horwath's ill-considered decision to force the election:

They don’t have any more seats than they had going into the election and they lost control of everything,” the pollster said, referring to the NDP’s loss of the balance of power in a minority legislature.

“She took a real hit with the whole election thing and not supporting the budget. It just didn’t go well and I think she really did alienate some of her own supporters, the progressives”.

The article also notes the mandatory review Horwath faces in November, where tradition demands that she get at least two-thirds support from the delegates.

Will she meet that criterion? The NDP has few bright stars in its stable, and considering the real possibility that the Progressive Conservatives will pick a female leader (Christine Elliot is the early favourite), it is unlikely that the NDP will pick a male replacement. The only viable alternative, it seems to me, would be Cheri DiNovo. Currently the MPP for Toronto's Parkdale-high Park, she is a United Church Minister and much more a traditionalist when it comes to NDP progressive values.

So it would seem that the party has some intensive soul-searching to do leading up to the November review.

Lest We Forget

While the right wing is all atwitter over Moody's reassessment of Ontario's debt from stable to negative, it is perhaps a propitious moment to highlight a few inconvenient facts about the credit rating agency:

As recently reported in The Huffington Post,

Moody's Corp and Standard and Poor's triggered the worst financial crisis in decades when they were forced to downgrade the inflated ratings they slapped on complex mortgage-backed securities, a U.S. congressional report concluded on Wednesday.

In one of the most stark condemnations of the credit rating agencies, a Senate investigations panel said the agencies continued to give top ratings to mortgage-backed securities months after the housing market started to collapse.

Why did they commit such fraud? Greed is the simple answer.

As explained by Global Research,

S&P and its main competitor, Moody’s Investors Service, played a critical role in the vast edifice of financial speculation and fraud that came crashing down following the bursting of the housing bubble in 2007.

S&P, Moody’s and Fitch Ratings are all private, for-profit companies. As previous US government investigations have documented, S&P and Moody’s made huge profits between 2004 and 2008 by landing contracts from Wall Street banks to rate residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which were assembled by the banks from home loans and sold to other financial institutions and investors around the world.

Greed and self-interest drove credit rating agencies to misrepresent the quality of the derivatives that ultimately resulted in the housing collapse that triggered a worldwide recession:

Wall Street drove mortgage lenders to sell high-risk, high-interest subprime home loans to people who could not afford them, bought up the loans from the mortgage companies, bundled them into RMBS and CDOs, and sold off these toxic investments, making massive profits in the process. The entire US and global financial system was infected as a result by what was, in essence, a vast Ponzi scheme.

While US bank regulators looked the other way, the credit rating firms facilitated the fraud by giving triple-A ratings to RMBS and CDOs backed by mortgages they knew were headed for default.

The credit rating firms had a financial interest in inflating the ratings on RMBS and CDOs, since they were paid by the banks whose securities they were rating.

So I can perhaps be pardoned for finding it hard to take a corrupt Moody's seriously when it warns about Ontario's debt. It lost its credibility when it destroyed the lives of millions of people, sacrificing its fiduciary integrity for Mammon. And yet strangely, one is hard pressed to find such reminders of corruption in our domestic press. I wonder why?

Disingenuous At Best, Hypocritical At Worst

To listen to post-election Ontario Tories and to take them at their word would suggest that the lot of them were simply dupes of Machiavellian forces over which they had no control. Up to and including the day of the election, they all appeared to be solidly behind their leader and his plans. After their abject failure to win the hearts and minds of Ontarians, that narrative quickly changed, most notably in Lisa MacLeod's disavowal of both her leader and his program.

The latest exercise in what many would describe as arrant hypocrisy was evident in newly-appointed Tory interim leader Jim Wilson's public musings yesterday:

Coming from a former cabinet minister during the savage Mike Harris years, Wilson's disavowal of both tactics and tone are a little hard to take seriously. Consider this statement:

... the party has been “attacking people for a decade and in my heart and my caucus colleagues heart we not that kind of people . . . we are going to be Progressive Conservatives.”

Not that kind of people, eh? Well, perhaps Mr. Wilson could tell us exactly what kind of people enthusiastically put forward their names to run as candidates for a party that thrives on division, whether the attacks it has so wholeheartedly embraced over the years have been directed against teachers, union bosses, the Rand formula, civil servants and their 'gold-plated pensions,' progressive taxation, etc. etc. ad nauseam.

And while we're at it, he might also address what kind of people, as soon as they are denied power, so openly and ignominiously turn on their erstwhile leader? To be sure, young Tim Hudak was never fit to lead the province, but that apparently was never obvious to his many 'loyalists,' who unsheathed their knives with such unseemly dispatch as soon as the direction of the political winds became apparent to them.

What kind of people are the Progressive Conservatives, Jim? Allow me to try to answer that. They are opportunistic, cynical people who, now frustrated because of a failed strategy, are desperate to reinvent themselves into a party of inclusion and sensitivity. In other words, since all else has failed, they have decided it is time to try that 'sincerity thing.'

Trouble is, Jim, people can spot insincere sincerity a mile away. Next strategy, anyone?

We really Are Limited Only by Our Imagination

I think this story and the accompanying video amply demonstrate this:

On Federal Byelections

It is commonly held that Stephen Harper chose June 30 for the four recent byelections in the anticipation that turnout would be low. Even the advance polls, which were set for Friday and Saturday of what for many would be a long weekend, offered little motivation for the winter-weary to cast their ballots before escaping town. The turnout statistics show that the Prime Minister got his wish:

Fort McMurray-Athabasca (15.2 per cent)
Macleod (19.6 per cent)
Scarborough-Agincourt (29.4 per cent)
Trinity-Spadina (31.6 per cent)

However, according to Tim Harper, not everything worked out according to plan. He points out the following in his column today:

...there is a federal political trend that is unassailable — in nine trips to the polls under Justin Trudeau, Liberal voting percentages have grown nine times, in ridings as diverse as Labrador, downtown Toronto and Montreal, rural Manitoba and rural and northern Alberta.

Having achieved victory in two out of the four contests,

... it is the growth of the Liberal vote in Manitoba and Alberta in contests over the past seven months that could hold an omen for 2015.

In Brandon-Souris last November Trudeau grew the Liberal vote by 39 points, and in rural Provencher he grew his party’s vote by 23 points.

Monday, in the seemingly impenetrable Conservative vaults of Macleod and Fort McMurray-Athabasca, the Liberal vote grew 13 points and 25 points, respectively since the 2011 general election.

These numbers should worry Harper for two reasons. The first is obvious, if indeed a Liberal trend has been developing. The second, more ominous indicator, however, is that Harper's base, at least if the byelection numbers are to be taken as harbingers, are losing their own motivation to turn out at the polls; if this proves an accurate assessment of their mood, implications for the general election next year should be disturbing to Dear Leader.

Having won the 2011 election with 39.2% of the popular vote in which only 61.4% of eligible voters bothered to turn out, Harper knows that two things are eseential for next year's contest: a low general turnout and a high turnout from his base.

It would seem that the second part of his strategy needs some work. The first falls to the rest of us, if we indeed truly care about this country and its future.

Happy Canada Day

I was originally going to take the day off from blogging, but then, after reading the editorial in today's Star along with some letters reflecting what people would wish for Canada, I decided to briefly add my own thoughts.

Certainly, there are a number of challenges we face both as a country and as a society; traditional values of inclusiveness, consultation, negotiation, and compromise have all suffered badly under the Harper regime. But perhaps the gravest consequence of that cabal's rule is our aspirations as a nation; once grand in scope and vision (think, for example, of the nation-building involved in consturcting a rail system linking all parts of Canada, or the development of a national health-care system) they have grown muted, mercenary and small-minded. (Think, for example of Martha-Hall Findlay's recent sad assertion that building pipelines is a nation-building exercise.)

My own life-experience has taught me that we are at our best, both individually and collectively, when we have a deep sense of purpose; indeed, as we get older, no longer encumbered by the structure that defines so much of our lives during the working years, maintaining or rediscovering that sense of purpose is vital to the continuance of a meaningful life. The same is true, I believe, with nations. Under our current government, of course, there is no such purpose, unless you think it noble and worthwhile to despoil the environment, contribute to the growing catastrophe of climate change, or pay as little income tax as possible. Such cribbed conceptions reflect the souls of bean-counters, not leaders of society.

There is no dearth of projects to which Canada could aspire to, and in the process inspire the hearts and minds of the people. A national pharmacare program is eminently doable. Responsibly building a green economy would be another. A national housing strategy, a national childcare program, perhaps even a guaranteed annual income - all are within our reach.

We are approaching a turning point in our evolution as a nation. The upcoming election in 2015 will likely have far-reaching consequences for our future. Which vision will prevail, 'business as usual' or a bold rediscovery of our potential as a people and as a nation?