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By bigcitylib, on March 11, 2013, at 6:55 am An outdated and insulting column from an appointed hack. The dumbest bit:
Members of various ethnic communities are fed up with platitudes. They are active members of our society at all levels, and they demand no special status – they just want an equal opportunity to contribute to the continued development of their communities. That’s what they should expect and that’s what we should demand of them.
So according to Leo Housakos, immigrants get special status while the rest of us schleps pay the bills. I`ve heard that line before, and it is exactly the kind of toxic blithering that
. . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Preston Manning Is Gonna Shit A Phonebook!
By Greg Fingas, on February 8, 2013, at 8:56 am Assorted content to end your week.
- While we may sometimes lose track of the continuing differences between Canadian politics and those in the U.S., here’s a reminder of how we’re familiar with a far wider and more progressive range of public policy choices: while we’ve seen plenty of discussion about improving the standard for retirement benefits available under our national pension plan (even if public support for that expansion has been ignored by a right-wing government), Duncan Black’s call to do the same for Social Security is being raised as a voice in the wilderness: If the
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on February 1, 2013, at 8:21 pm Miscellaneous material to end your week.
- Lawrence Martin questions the media’s obsession with fabricating stories out of imagined motivations and insignificant shifts in poll numbers: In the year before an election, the media’s heavy focus on tiny political twists and turns is understandable. Here in Canada, a federal campaign is likely a long way off, the Conservatives’ numbers are stable and so are those of the NDP. But it doesn’t prevent the rash of pollster and media speculation about who is up and who is down and who might be headed in either direction.
A headline the other day
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
By Greg Fingas, on January 10, 2013, at 8:53 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Karl Flecker discusses how the Cons’ push to encourage employers to use temporary foreign workers will affect wages for everybody: In fact, what Kenney said was untrue. He has conveniently forgotten that his government significantly changed the wage rules for employers hiring high-skilled migrant workers. On April 25, 2012, after direct consultations with a select group of employers, Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources Skills Development Canada, announced a new “Accelerated Labour Market Opinion” to provide employers with “greater flexibility.” “Wages,” she said, “that are up to 15 per cent below
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on June 27, 2012, at 1:12 pm Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Derrick O’Keefe calls for a mass movement to stop the Harper Cons in their tracks now, rather than waiting for 2015: Thoughts of ousting Harper in 2015 are well and good, but not nearly sufficient at this perilous moment for democracy and social justice in Canada. Given Bill C-38 and the events of the past few months – think about the “robocalls” scandal and the F-35 cost fiasco, for starters – nothing less than an unprecedented mass movement in the streets will suffice to push back and change the correlation of forces
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on June 5, 2012, at 11:22 am This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- Lana Payne weighs in on the Cons’ goal of reducing wages for Canadian workers: As an economist, Stephen Harper must know what his government’s changes to employment insurance (EI), the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), the elimination of the Fair Wage Act and the assault on collective bargaining in the federal sector will mean for the wages and working conditions of Canadians.
Combined, they will result in a transformation of Canada’s labour market, erode the right to fair and free collective bargaining, and make workers more vulnerable, less demanding, more compliant. Combined,
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on May 26, 2012, at 7:47 pm This and that for your weekend reading.
- Doug Saunders points out that we have a relatively simple choice between seeking to exact revenge on criminal offenders and actually reducing crime: We know exactly why Norway has such lower recidivism numbers. Prisoners, being under constant observation, are very easy to study, and they’ve been studied like mad. Cambridge University criminologist Friedrich Lösel recently compared scores of studies in a dozen countries and found they reached almost identical conclusions.
He found that what causes prisoners to reoffend at lower rates, everywhere, is basic education, vocational and employability programs, anger management and
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
By Greg Fingas, on May 19, 2012, at 12:04 pm Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.
- Lana Payne tears into the Cons for being interested solely in developing a junk labour market where both work safety and income security are sorely lacking. And Chris Selley offers his own rebuttal to the “no such thing as a bad job” mentality: Mr. Flaherty’s sound byte might live longer than that, though. It certainly begs for inclusion in an NDP attack ad. If an Old Princetonian with a $235,000 public salary and a lavish pension is going to stand up and tell Canadians that “there is no bad job,” then at the
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on May 11, 2012, at 9:20 am Assorted content to end your week.
- Erin points out that there’s a relatively simple cure for Dutch disease – just as long as provincial governments are willing to put citizens ahead of resource extractors: (S)ince resources are priced in American dollars, the higher exchange rate further reduces provincial resource revenues in Canadian dollars. Saskatchewan’s recent budget estimates that each U.S. cent of appreciation in the loonie reduces non-renewable resource revenue by $34 million.
The solution is to increase royalty rates, which would moderate the flow of foreign funds into our resource industries and collect the public revenue needed
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on February 22, 2012, at 7:54 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Thomas Walkom points out that the McGuinty Libs’ choice to emphasize austerity rather than stabilizing Ontario’s economy may lead down exactly the same destructive path travelled by Greece and other countries: (T)he crises in Spain, Portugal and Greece occurred because government spending cuts designed to remedy debt problems sent those countries spinning into economic decline.
Throughout much of Europe, measures aimed at reducing debt have created a self-reinforcing spiral of doom.
Government workers are laid off to save money, which leads to higher unemployment. Higher unemployment reduces tax revenues, thereby widening fiscal deficits.
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on February 5, 2012, at 10:50 am Thanks to an end-of-week conference it’s been a few days since I’ve done a general roundup on the NDP leadership race. And based on the pace of activity, it looks like we’re into the home stretch as candidates enter the last couple of weeks in which to sign up new members.
- Niki Ashton unveiled the support of MP Carol Hughes before participating in the National Student Day of Action.
- Nathan Cullen earned a column’s worth of discussion from Chris Selley, albeit with the conclusion that his electoral co-operation plan likely won’t fly.
- Paul Dewar unveiled a plan
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Leadership 2012 Roundup
By Greg Fingas, on January 21, 2012, at 6:40 pm Yes, we’re at the point in the campaign where we can’t go a couple of days without plenty of developments – even in the absence of formal debates or other major events. So let’s take a look at how the week ended on the campaign trail.
- Niki Ashton received a glowing review (if not quite an endorsement) from Joe Comartin in the course of a visit to Windsor – while also drawing what may be a noteworthy contrast to Thomas Mulcair as to her choices about citizenship.
- Nathan Cullen is fitting a request for online pledges of support
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Leadership 2012 Roundup
By Greg Fingas, on January 8, 2012, at 11:25 am Miscellaneous material to end your weekend.
- Chris Selley rightly points out that for all the damage the Cons can do in a term of majority government, we shouldn’t overstate how much of it is irreversible. And more importantly, while it’s well worth putting time and effort into defending the institutions under attack to the extent possible, the opposition parties may be able to accomplish far more by planning out what comes next after the Cons’ wrecking crew is done.
- Which isn’t to say there isn’t plenty to be outraged about in the short term – from putting Canada’s
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on December 16, 2011, at 8:00 am Assorted content to end your week.
- pogge points out the Cons’ suppression of news that a lack of running water on First Nations reserves facilitated the spread of H1N1 – offering a case in point as to both how neglect of social needs can carry widespread ramifications, and how little interest the Cons have in improving matters. But the story looks like another prime example as to how we could and should be doing better for people facing third-world conditions in our midst – as Dan Gardner rightly points out.
- Of course the Harper Cons’ end-of-session spin is
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on December 13, 2011, at 9:05 am This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- Yes, it’s absolutely asinine that the Cons’ attacks on Muslim women have been extended to denying citizenship based on a particular type of clothing. But after the Cons’ repeated efforts to suppress veiled voting, we shouldn’t expect anything less from them. And indeed the goal looks to be the same: having been rebuffed in their attemps to prevent citizens from voting while wearing burqas, the Cons have apparently decided instead to deny suffrage to a substantial group of immigrant women by decreeing that they’re not allowed to become citizens in the first
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on December 7, 2011, at 10:07 pm Assorted content for your evening reading.
- Alex Himelfarb finds a few positives in the Cons’ ramming their dumb-on-crime bill through the House of Commons: Thankfully many are not willing to “get over it”. How heartening, for example, to hear Leadnow.ca announce that they were simply regrouping for the next stage of their campaign for better justice policy. So, here are some reasons not to turn the page, instead to continue the fight.
1) Those who spoke to Parliamentary Committees, wrote letters and op eds, called their MPs or took to the streets have made a difference.
All the
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Evening Links
By Greg Fingas, on October 4, 2011, at 12:47 pm This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Chris Selley points out the absurdity of Ontario’s Libs and PCs both running away from the idea of a coalition just as needlessly as their federal counterparts. But let’s remember that since the NDP spoke up for… . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
By awreeves, on September 13, 2011, at 9:57 pm In the effort to reduce a budget shortfall of $774M in the City of Toronto, we may find that the city our forebears worked so hard to create will be drained of its essence. After promising in the 2010 mayoral election that taxes would be cut and services would be left alone – that tired … Continue reading » . . . → Read More: the reeves report: Toronto mulls deep service cuts to begin meeting $774M budget shortfall
By Jymn, on August 27, 2011, at 8:21 pm In an almost heroic effort, Selley waxes almost poetical in his description of Jack Layton’s funeral and the role of the press in the days preceding it.I’m not above rolling my eyes at excessive displays of grief, or of anything else. Since Monday mo… . . . → Read More: Chris Selley brings some much-needed respectability to the National Post
By Greg Fingas, on August 27, 2011, at 7:52 pm Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Chris Selley nicely summarizes Jack Layton’s celebration of life today: I can just hear people kvetching: Was this a funeral for a great man, or a rally for his party? But again, this is surely to mi… . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
By Greg Fingas, on August 23, 2011, at 9:09 am Another day, another set of commentaries on the life of a great Canadian leader. – Chantal Hebert notes Layton’s contribution to Canada’s broader political scene: (Layton) taught Canada’s jaded chattering class that retail politics and the attending a… . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: More Layton Links
By Greg Fingas, on July 25, 2011, at 9:51 pm Not much to add on this end to the news that Jack Layton is taking a temporary leave of absence to deal with a new form of cancer. But let’s note a few of the pieces which stand out in the day’s coverage. – The CP reviewed the outpouring of best wishes… . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Layton Announcement Roundup
By Greg Fingas, on July 16, 2011, at 11:18 am Assorted material for your weekend reading.- Paul Wells puts his observations about Stephen Harper’s inexplicable warnings about Canada’s eventual disappearance into column form. But I have to wonder whether Harper is really just taking the logical nex… . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
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