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By thescottross.blogspot.com, on March 26, 2013, at 12:18 am After the Quebec Conference, at a gala dinner hosted by George-Etienne Cartier, Canada’s Fathers of Confederation held a toast; it was offered as encouragement to face the difficulties still before them in forming a nation, but the verse stands today as encouragement for us to face the difficulties in now strengthening it.
Then let us be firm and united One country, one flag for us all; United, our strength will be freedom Divided, we each of us fall.*
*From Richard Gwyn’s John A: The Man Who Made Us
By Greg Fingas, on March 25, 2013, at 11:09 am If a non-Con federal government even hinted at this kind of policy in dealing with provinces, the western Village would collapse under the weight of its own hysterical shrieking. But because it only involves Stephen Harper trying to extort resources from First Nations, I don’t expect to hear of it again.
By Greg Fingas, on February 18, 2013, at 10:17 am Miscellanous material for your Monday reading.
- Will Hutton recognizes that an unregulated market can lead to disastrous results for everybody concerned – and that conversely, effective regulation can help to ensure the success of businesses which best meet the long-term needs of their workers and customers: What the Paterson worldview has never understood is that effective regulation is a source of competitive advantage. If Britain had a tough Food Standards Agency, it would become a gold standard for food quality, labelling and hygiene. British supermarkets and food companies could become known for their quality at home and abroad, rather
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
By Matt, on February 11, 2013, at 11:06 am Kathleen Wynne’s new Ontario cabinet is being announced today, and my local MP, Liz Sandals, has apparently been tapped to become the new education minister. But that’s not the observation that leapt out at me from today’s Toronto Star article about the cabinet shuffle. Authors Robert Benzie and Rob Ferguson note that former Education Minister Laurel Broten has been “demoted” to Intergovernmental Affairs, calling it a “a ministry so junior McGuinty ran it himself for years.”
[ETA: Interesting to note that the updated version of the article calls Intergovernmental Affairs: “barely a stand-alone department because the premier
. . . → Read More: Pample the Moose: Define "junior", oh great Toronto Star!
By Greg Fingas, on February 7, 2013, at 10:24 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- John Studzinski describes how a sense of social responsibility and a country-wide commitment to making jobs available have placed Germany in a better economic position than its European neighbours: Let me highlight some of the features unique to the Mittelstand model that I believe everyone should learn from – and imitate if they can. The first is what we might call the Mittelstand ethos – that business is a constructive enterprise that aims to be socially useful. Making a profit is not an end in itself: job creation, client satisfaction and product
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on January 30, 2013, at 12:26 pm Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Alison highlights the attempts of Sun TV to rally the most extreme reactionary movements in the country behind its bid for mandatory carriage. And the question of whether we want to publicly sanction a network beholden to such interest groups would seem to answer whether the application is justified.
- Paul Krugman comments that the Republicans’ attacks on disabled workers are both thoroughly contrary to any sense of fairness, and utterly useless in practice:
(W)hen Reagan ranted about welfare queens driving Cadillacs, he was inventing a fake problem — but his rant resonated
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
By Song of the Watermelon, on January 30, 2013, at 12:25 am National unity is back in the news after the NDP tabled a private member’s bill yesterday, a bill that would repeal the Clarity Act and set the bar for Quebec sovereignty negotiations at a mere 50 percent plus one in a clearly worded referendum.
We all know what that means. The NDP, it will be claimed over the coming days and weeks, is “in bed with the separatists” and willing to “tear our country apart” for partisan advantage. There is nothing those treacherous socialists won’t do to preserve the Faustian bargain that won them Quebec in 2011!
Never mind
. . . → Read More: Song of the Watermelon: Quebec, Referendums, and Formulas for Secession
By Greg Fingas, on December 20, 2012, at 8:35 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Thomas Walkom discusses the meaning of the Ontario Libs’ attempt to take collective bargaining rights away from teachers in the context of the wider labour movement: The union movement is one of the last remnants of the great postwar pact between labour, capital and government.
That pact provided Canadians with things they still value, from medicare to public pension plans. Good wages in union shops kept pay high, even in workplaces that weren’t organized. Unions agitated for and won better health and safety laws that covered all.
True, union rules made it
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on December 13, 2012, at 10:04 am Thanks in large part to an extremely active provincial leadership campaign, I haven’t discussed the evolution of the federal NDP over the past few months in as much detail as I’d like. But while there will be plenty more to talk about over the next little while, I’ll comment on a couple of the new stories emerging at the end of the fall sitting of Parliament.
Let’s start with this from Lawrence Martin: For New Democrats, it’s time for a national powwow. National leader Thomas Mulcair is planning to bring together all provincial NDP leaders for a party conference in
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: On needed advantages
By Greg Fingas, on August 7, 2012, at 9:57 am This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- The Star-Phoenix editorial board comments on the need to crack down on tax havens: (T)he scale of the avoidance Mr. Henry detailed in his report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, drives home just how immoral is the practice of tax avoidance, particularly at a time when even rich countries such as Spain and the United States are staggering under their debt loads and deficits because they can’t raise enough tax revenue.
As Gwynne Dyer, a Canadian journalist based in Britain, notes in a recent column published in Embassy magazine, despite efforts by
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on August 1, 2012, at 12:47 pm Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- The presidents of Canada’s provincial Federations of Labour highlight how the provinces need to respond to the Harper Cons’ efforts to push down wages and trample on workers’ rightst: Canadians need our country’s premiers to denounce this low-wage agenda and stand up for what is in the best interest of working people.
When the premiers meet this fall to discuss the economy, we believe the labour market ought to be front and centre in that discussion. They must denounce the exploitive expansion of the (temporary foreign worker program). They must collectively demand that
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on July 27, 2012, at 10:53 am The reports on fiscal arrangements and health care developed in the lead up to this weekend’s meeting of Canada’s premiers have both received some coverage. But there are a couple of points worth noting which seem to have been largely neglected so far.
On the fiscal arrangement side, we now have agreement among the provinces as to the effect of the Cons’ unilateral changes to health care. And while those paying attention may have known all along, Table A.10.B. neatly lays out how Alberta is receiving $8.3 billion in new health care funding over 10 years while
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: On cooperative efforts
By Greg Fingas, on July 10, 2012, at 9:39 am This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- Barbara Yaffe discusses Thomas Mulcair’s strong start in winning over B.C. voters. And Martin Regg Cohn notes that Stephen Harper is starting to face some real (and needed) pressure from Darrell Dexter and other premiers to start actually talking to the provinces, rather than retreating from shared responsibilities.
- Sure, we should pay attention when public resources are used to make sales pitches for corporate interests. But what’s most noteworthy about Jason Fekete’s report on the Cons’ CETA PR push is the point they didn’t even both to answer: Parliamentarians have
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on June 7, 2012, at 9:14 am Here, expanding on this post as to the importance of a functioning federal system as a means of counterbalancing regional declines – and the forces working to limit anything of the sort in Canada.
For further reading…- Frances Russell also laments the Harper firewall model based on the need for national-level planning and coordination. – Pat Atkinson notes that Alison Redford’s goal of a national energy strategy serves as an ideal case in point. – Finally, the Florida vs. Spain comparison is drawn from here. And for some bonus Krugman…
By Song of the Watermelon, on June 4, 2012, at 8:46 pm Three months ago, I wrote a post warning of coming Senate elections here in British Columbia. Now it seems that the private member’s bill providing for such elections, despite Premier Christy Clark’s support, will not be making it through the … Continue reading →
By Greg Fingas, on June 2, 2012, at 6:12 pm Paul Krugman compares the effects of burst housing bubbles in Florida and Spain to point out how the EU’s lack of genuine fiscal federalism has exacerbated its crisis. But there’s an important lesson to be learned for Canada as well.
After all, the Harper Cons and their big-business allies are doing their utmost to criticize precisely the stabilizers that have helped to prevent North American sub-national jurisdictions from facing the same calamity as countries like Spain and Greece. From general equalization payments to targeted health care funding to employment insurance benefits, each of the stabilizers that helps to prevent regional
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: On federal cases
By polygonic, on April 20, 2012, at 12:26 pm A year, now, since Québec first crested the Big Orange Wave, and still, the NDP continue to thrive. It prompts a brand-new big idea: isn’t it time to build a provincial New Democratic Party in Québec?
Will six be enough for the thirsty masses?
There used to be one, though we’re forgiven to have forgotten. The federal party prompted a divorce from its wayward disciple (and forced a name change) years ago, as the provincial NDP-Q narrative became too nationalistic, its friends too unsavoury, and its aims too divergent from the English Canadian federal party.
Those conditions have changed. The
. . . → Read More: Polygonic: The case for an NPD-Q
By Jeff Jedras, on April 18, 2012, at 11:51 am
Since the election of former Quebec cabinet minister Thomas “Tom” Mulcair as leader of the NDP last month, much attention has been paid to the political situation in Quebec and the consensus seems to be the Liberals are screwed in the province.
Consolidating NDP gains in Quebec is certainly a priority for the party, and as a high-profile former minister in the Charest government whose departure from cabinet was spun as a matter of principle, Mulcair gives the NDP their best shot at holding and building on those gains. Already, commentators such as Chantal Hebert are touting Mulcair as the . . . → Read More: A BCer in Toronto: Liberals need to rethink their Quebec approach
By Greg Fingas, on January 7, 2012, at 11:35 am Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Brian Jones writes that we’re well on our way to an only slightly-sanitized version of feudalism: According to news reports this week, the average annual income of the Top 100 CEOs is $8.4 million. That’s less than is paid to superstar puckster Sidney Crosby, but then, the headaches one gets from running a major corporation, though significant, don’t necessarily rival “concussion-like symptoms.”
Also newsworthy was that the average Canadian earns $44,366 per year, and the average Top 100 CEO had already earned that amount by 2:30 p.m. on the first
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on December 23, 2011, at 5:20 pm Yes, a couple of the Cons’ more odious bills have already made their way into law. But let’s at least resume a look back at the arguments they so flippantly ignored in pushing through their first set of legislation – with the November 1 debate on the gun registry offering plenty of cases in point.
The Big Issue
Once again, the main topic of discussion was the Cons’ choice to trash the gun registry and the underlying data – with particular emphasis on the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s public statement that the gun registry data could be shared with a
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Parliament in Review: November 1, 2011
By Nancy Leblanc, on December 19, 2011, at 7:02 pm As exercised by one of our intrepid cabinet ministers: Mr. Duncan described the provinces as being blindsided by Mr. Flaherty behind closed doors. “He put the document in front of us and said, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’” the Ontario Finance Minister said. “We all kind of paused; we all looked at each other.”
Oh to be a fly on the wall in that room. Welcome to the majority government roll out of Harper’s federalism!
The health care deal from on high runs until 2024, when we may possibly be driving flying cars or commuting
. . . → Read More: Impolitical: Cooperative federalism in action
By Greg Fingas, on November 5, 2011, at 12:54 pm Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Dan Gardner highlights how Stephen Harper is imposing exactly the kind of costly, top-down policies on Canada’s provinces that he once railed against:This week, at least five provincial governments, starting … . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on October 23, 2011, at 4:25 pm Friday, October 7 was the last day in the House of Commons before the week-long Thanksgiving break. And there was plenty to chew on as MPs left their final mark before heading home.The Big IssueThe main point of debate was once again the economy as the… . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Parliament In Review: October 7, 2011
By Greg Fingas, on October 8, 2011, at 12:24 pm This and that for your weekend reading.- Armine Yalnizyan points out what a “Buffett tax” could do for Canada:Put Larry and his 99 fellow CEOs together, and they could put almost a 10% down payment on a national program to bring dental care to school k… . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Jeff Jedras, on August 3, 2011, at 11:50 am Who says political summers need to be boring? A well-timed leak to the Globe and Mail about new NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel certainly livened things up, with the revelation that Turmel was very recently a member of two Quebec sovereigntist parties… . . . → Read More: A BCer in Toronto: Is she still Nycole from the Bloc?
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