This Just In

According to a CBC report,

EU lawmakers are threatening to block a multi-billion dollar trade pact between Canada and the European Union — a blueprint for a much bigger EU-U.S. deal — because it would allow firms to sue governments if they breach the treaty.

The agreement with Canada, a draft of which was seen by Reuters, could increase bilateral trade by one fifth to $37 billion (26 billion euros).

But European consumer and environmental groups say a mechanism in the accord would allow multinationals to bully the EU's 28 governments into doing their bidding regardless of environmental, labour and food laws and would set a bad precedent for the planned EU-U.S. trade pact.

Although the neoliberals leading our government don't care about a loss of sovereignty rights, other do:

Tiziana Beghin, an EU lawmaker from Italy's anti-establishment 5-Star Movement who sits on the parliament's influential trade committee, called the EU-Canada deal an "affront to democracy".

"Giving corporations the right to sue governments for loss of anticipated profit would be ridiculous if it were not so dangerous," she told Reuters.

Let's hope that a European revolt leads to a restoration of sanity in trade pacts. Corporate greed has been setting the agenda for far too long.

Our Anti-Democratic Democracy

This morning, in my print edition of The Toronto Star, I saw the following headline: Canadian scientists to be placed in isolation. While it turned out to be a story about the evacuation of a Canadian medical team helping to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone, for a brief moment I thought it concerned the latest efforts by the Harper regime to muzzle our scientists.

I can perhaps be forgiven for my initial confusion. Reading Paul Wells' book on Stephen Harper, The Longer I'm Prime Minister, two things become apparent: the Harper regime is in constant re-election mode, and a foundation of that never-ending campaign is the almost complete control it exercises over government sources of information.

Having studied what brought down previous governments, Harper et al. have almost always refused to hold national inquiries or House committee investigations into contentious matters. Such would involve too many variables that could wind up embarrassing the government and providing fodder for the opposition (a.k.a. 'enemies'). And woe to he who 'commits sociology.'

Yet of course these restrictions of information, these eliminations of the tools whereby patterns can be detected, these constant and crass manipulations of the Canadian people are all grave disservices to our democracy, predicated as it is on the essential freedoms that the Harper Conservatives find so threatening.

One of the most egregious examples of the Harper contempt for democracy is the regime's muzzling of government scientists, those civil servants who are funded by the taxpayer and whose research is, at least in theory, intended for the public good. Apparently that takes a back seat to the political good of the Conservative Party.

An essay recently appeared in The Toronto Star by C. Scott Findlay, an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Ottawa and co-founder of Evidence for Democracy, a organization that advocates for evidence-informed decision-making by governments. In it, the writer shows the absurd lengths to which the cabal goes in its never-ending re-election efforts.

He starts out by making reference to a Postmedia investigation that uncovered the following:

In 2012, as the Arctic ice hit the lowest point ever recorded, scientists at the Canadian Ice Service were keen to tell Canadians about the stunning ice loss.

Given the ominous implications for climate change of reduced ice cover, Canadian Ice Service chief of applied science, Leah Braithwaite, wanted to hold a “strictly factual” technical briefing for the media to inform Canadians how the ice had disappeared from not only the Northwest Passage but many normally ice-choked parts of the Arctic.

Reports Findlay:

Documents obtained under an Access to Information request show that the approval process for the briefing implicated nine different levels of government, from the director of CIS to the environment minister. Even the communications folks at the Privy Council Office felt obliged to put their imprimatur on a communications plan that was weeks in the making.

Yet despite the herculean efforts of CIS scientists to inform Canadians on the state of Canada’s arctic ice, a briefing that was planned for months was eventually cancelled.

But, he says, this should surprise no one, since the federal government’s obsession with message control is well known. In February, CBC News reported that tweets from Industry Canada are planned for weeks, scrutinized by dozens of public servants, revised by ministerial staff, and leadened by a (wait for it) 12-step protocol. (Emphasis added.)

Findlay laments the waste of taxpayer money expended in the suppression of publicly-funded research and information, but addresses the heart of the issue this way:

But the real costs of Orwellian message control are far greater. An uninformed public, which — as Thomas Jefferson noted — is the scourge of democracy. A federal public service whose motivation, creativity and productivity is being steadily eroded by the signal failure of politicians and political mandarins to treat public servants — scientists, managers and senior administrators alike — like responsible professionals, fully capable of making decisions about things like technical briefings.

It would appear that in Harperland, (public) ignorance is bliss.

Well-Said

Those Star letter-writers nail it yet again:

Under Ottawa's microscope, Insight Aug. 23

If it is not OK for charities to use the money sent to them for the intended purpose of trying to change government policies that threaten the well-being of Canadians and the future of the world, why is it permissible for the Harper government to spend the money we pay them in taxes on billions of dollars worth of useless offensive weapons, while witholding funds from health care, payments to the unemployed and transfers to provinces for infrastructure renewal?

Can we not disagree with a minister like Joe Oliver, who has no grasp of the fundamentals of what he is dealing with?

Instead of forcing charities to waste the money we give them on pointless government requirements, the government should give the public that funds it full disclosure as to how our money is being spent. This is a basic requirement of democracy, flouted only by would-be dictators.

Jenny Carter, Peterborough

It seems odd that a tax-receipt issuing organization like the Fraser Institute is immune from the scrutiny of CRA audits. I see this organization as 100 per cent political and therefore not entitled to issue tax receipts.

Is it possible that a current politician is running interference?

Gerald Berish, Richmond Hill

A New Addition To The Harper Enemies List

But then again, no surprises here, except that it is being leveraged into a fundraising appeal.

But it is a bit rich, isn't it, that given their expertise in the area, the Harper cabal should be carping about disgusting personal attacks?



Is hypocrisy too obvious a word?

I Want To Believe

But it will take more than an interview by George Stroumboulopoulos to convince me that Justin Trudeau has the right stuff.

Nonetheless, I was impressed by the Liberal leader's relaxed manner, especially striking since it is beyond my powers of imagination to envisage Stephen Harper in such a pose.

These Pictures Reflect The Peril Of Our Times

Click here to find out what has them so worried.

Harper's Reign Of Terror - A Closer Examination

While Stephen Harper's attacks on charities have been followed here and elsewhere, the Star presents a good overview of how the offices of the CRA have been subverted by a vindictive regime that brooks no opposition to its neoliberal agenda.

The article begins with the egregious case of CoDevelopment Canada, a small Vancouver charity that works with its Latin American partners in helping to fund programs that assist the poor. Apparently, if that assistance threatens to upset the corporate status quo, a crime has been committed in Harperland.

One of CoDev's Latin American partners is the Maria Elena Cuadra Movement for Working and Unemployed Women (MEC), which is based in Nicaragua. MEC’s goals include helping to modernize labour relations in Nicaragua’s free-trade zones by promoting the notion that human, labour and gender rights for workers must be upheld.

In 2013-14, CoDev and its Canadian partners sent MEC nearly $38,000. The money was used for causes such as MEC’s legal clinic, which that year handled 2,000 cases — 1,600 involving women — pertaining to issues such as labour-rights violations and gender-based violence.

Previously, the charity vigorously opposed Ottawa’s decision to sign a free-trade agreement with Colombia, a country [Barbara] Wood [CoDev’s former executive director,] describes as having “massive displacement and violence.’’

Wood muses about whether CoDev’s criticism of the government played a role in putting it on CRA’s radar.

Consider the tale of CoDev's two audits. Their first, in 2009, was a relatively innocuous affair:

The auditor came for about four days to the group’s small second-floor office in east Vancouver on June 10, 2009. A few glitches were spotted. For example, CoDev had been reporting some of its money in the wrong boxes on its tax returns, and filing cabinets in the charity’s office containing donor information weren’t being locked.

Case closed, right? Not quite. In 2012, 'Uncle' Joe Oliver, then Natural Resources Minister, in an open letter warned that environmental and other "radical groups" are trying to block trade and undermine Canada's economy.

It wasn't long after this that nonprofits critical of aspects of government policy suddenly found themselves the centre of the CRA's attention. The David Suzuki Foundation, of course, was one of them.

In mid-October, a new audit wass ordered of CoDev, one that began in January of 2013, this one involving three investigators, an auditor and two others whose area of specialty was program funding. They ultimately imposed onerous stipulations on the four-person office, including the translation of all Spanish documents into English. More specific details outlining the Harper-directed CRA vindictiveness can be found here.

Most reasonable people will draw the conclusion that these audits are far from innocent. In the simplistic and bifurcated world of Stephen Harper, you are either with the government or you are with its 'enemies'. If you fall into the latter category, beware the consequences.