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By Greg Fingas, on May 12, 2013, at 11:52 am Miscellaneous material for your Sunday reading.
- Daniel Boffey catches one of David Cameron’s top aides saying what most Cons leave as an unstated assumption: that recession and depressed wages are good for business (as long as “business” is defined only to mean short-term profits based on exploitation): The prime minister’s adviser on enterprise has told the cabinet that the economic downturn is an excellent time for new businesses to boost profits and grow because labour is cheap, the Observer can reveal.
Lord Young, a cabinet minister under the late Baroness Thatcher, who is the only aide with his (Read more…)
By Simon, on May 11, 2013, at 3:42 am I have to admit that I have always disliked Pierre Poilievre. Something about him rubs me the wrong way.He's abrasive, he's yappy, he's arrogant. He looks and acts like a weird old young guy trapped in the Cold War era. And his recent comment that the "root cause of terrorism is terrorism" only reinforced my belief that he is a brutish right-wing ideologue.As well as an absolute idiot.Read more »
By Marc Lee, on April 12, 2013, at 11:51 am An oped based on my and Brock Ellis’ recent report, Canada’s Carbon Liabilities, was published in iPolitics (alas, behind a pay wall):
Canada’s economic development model is on a collision course with the urgent need for global climate action. Worldwide, extreme weather events from drought to floods to powerful storms and record-breaking temperatures are making a powerful statement that climate change can no longer be denied.
Hurricane Sandy, which rudely interrupted a US election in which candidates ignored climate change, pushed climate action back onto the US policy agenda. Costs are piling up, with one recent estimate of $1.
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Are Canadian investors headed for a carbon cliff?
By Marc Lee, on March 26, 2013, at 11:56 am Divestment from fossil fuels is an idea whose time has come. Sparked by Bill McKibben’s Rolling Stone article last summer, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math”, divestment campaigns are now up and running on over 300 university campuses in the US, with 4 early victories already notched. Students in Canada have declared tomorrow (March 27) Fossil Fools Day, a national day of action, with many campuses launching divestment campaigns.
This makes for great timing for us to release a new national report, Canada’s Carbon Liabilities: The Implications of Stranded Fossil Fuel Assets for Financial Markets and Pension Funds (summary below). We “do the math” on Canadian fossil
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Carbon bubbles and fossil fuel divestment
By Daniel, on March 24, 2013, at 11:29 am Conservatives like to portray themselves as hard-bitten “realists” who look objectively at the world as it really is and shake their heads at silly liberals with our rose coloured glasses. Yet I often find conservatives pushing policy ideas that are based on Utopian standards of human behaviour. This is where they make policies that will work only for people who act and behave in certain ideal or near-ideal ways, and fail miserably for people who don’t do X, Y or Z where most people realistically will not do X, Y, and Z for whatever reasons.
The prime example would be retirement savings.
. . . → Read More: Autonomy For All: Conservative Pension Behavioural Utopianism
By Lorne, on March 22, 2013, at 9:18 am
I have a bit of a busy morning ahead, so just a brief post for now. I have written many times about young Tim Hudak, the lad who aspires to become Premier of Ontario through rhetoric that demonizes the public sector, public sector pensions, and unions. Apparently, constructive policy and breadth of vision are beyond his ken.
Here are two letters from today’s Star that nicely capture the severe moral and intellectual limitations the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party labours under:
Re: Hudak takes aim at public sector pensions, March 18
I assume Hudak’s ambition is to ensure
. . . → Read More: Politics and its Discontents: Two Messages For Tim Hudak
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 December 22, 2012, at 12:47 pm Assorted content for your Saturday reading.
- Kate Heartfield worries that the NRA knows exactly what it’s doing with its jaw-dropping response to the Newtown shootings – and that it should be all too familiar based on the tactics of the Harper Cons: It’s ridiculous, but ridiculous works, time and time again. “Elite” no longer means rich and powerful. It means smart. It means anyone who takes the time to look at the evidence and construct a logical argument. Not to be trusted, that. So all academics and journalists are suspect. The only way a journalist can avoid being seen
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on December 21, 2012, at 8:50 am Assorted content to end your week.
- Jim Stanford is the latest to point out that the Cons see accountability and transparency solely as punishments to be inflicted on their perceived enemies, not as values to be applied to their own decision-making: Following Mr. Hiebert’s logic, any organization in society that benefits from a tax expenditure (no matter how indirect) should be required to post similarly detailed and intrusive financial and expenditure data on a government website. Here is the current listing of federal tax expenditures. Every organization connected to any expenditure listed in that catalogue (whether the personal, corporate,
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
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 18, 2012, at 9:00 am With official forums on hold until January but the holiday lull not quite yet here, Saskatchewan’s NDP leadership candidates have been fairly active over the last little while. So let’s take a look at the latest developments.
- The latest fund-raising numbers are available here, and charted by Alice below:
What looks most noteworthy from November is a push by Ryan Meili in both fund-raising and expenditures. While his campaign has trumpeted its continued lead in donations, Meili also outspent his competitors substantially for the latest month, leaving him as the only candidate to end November with less cash
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: #skndpldr Roundup
By Greg Fingas, on December 16, 2012, at 12:09 pm This and that for your Sunday reading.
- Bill Curry reports on Jim Flaherty’s arbitrary choice to declare that Canadians can’t have any more CPP retirement security than the most callous provincial government in the country is willing to grant them. And Martin Regg Cohn rightly responds that our reaction should be to pressure Flaherty to instead look out for the interests of retirees present and future: The real scandal is that, after two years of delay, concrete reforms are finally within reach. Yet Flaherty seems determined to sabotage the process.
A 30-page discussion paper obtained by the Star lays
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
By AppalledBC, on December 15, 2012, at 10:26 pm “Flaherty said Friday the federal government is concerned about increasing CPP contributions at the current time because it would slap an additional financial burden on employers during fragile economic times, potentially threatening their ability to hire workers. The federal government can’t unilaterally change the CPP; amending it requires the backing of two-thirds of the provinces representing two-thirds of the population. “This is not the time to put another burden on employers and dampen employment prospects for Canadians. That’s my view. Not everyone agrees with that view,” Flaherty told reporters Friday in Ottawa.
Flaherty open to growing CPP — if (Read more…) . . . → Read More: Politics and Entertainment: Premiers Goal to Increase CPP both Pragmatic and Desirable
By Lorne, on November 19, 2012, at 3:41 pm In a valiant effort to not be forgotten by a fickle public, Tim Hudak is at it again, advocating a policy that is guaranteed to find favour with the public: going after the pension plans of civil servants. Unfortunately for young Tim, this repetition … . . . → Read More: Politics and its Discontents: Nothing New Here
By cityprole, on October 19, 2012, at 11:29 am
While the Cons huff and puff and try to simply blow our House of Parliament down, let me play devil’s advocate here and rant about something that no one else (that I’ve been aware of) seems to be mentioning, in all the foofaraw about increasing the golden handshake contributions…
What’s all this about pensions? In their rush to seem to be onside with covering their own butts re pensions, both the Liberals and the NDP are falling into that old Con trap of not thinking beyond their own terms.. How is creating even less of an economic return for
. . . → Read More: Left Over: Shaking Hands with the Devil You Think You Know….
By Nancy Leblanc, on September 19, 2012, at 7:34 pm
I agree. Could have done without the use of the word handsome but otherwise, spot on.
Also, look for MP pension reform to be included in the omnibus bill for public relations purposes, always a paramount priority: When Peter Van Loan announced Monday that scaling back MP’s retirement nest eggs would figure into the fall’s budget implementation bill, it lay an obvious trap: vote against what promises to be another hefty and likely controversial budget bill and the Conservatives can tell voters you voted against pension reform from now until 2015.
Conservatives and democracy, they just go together. Like
By GroupThink ReSpun, on September 19, 2012, at 1:31 pm So, did you get a 3% raise last year? The average Canadian did. See the first chart below.
If not, you’re behind the average Canadian. And even with a small offset of increased hours worked going up by only 1% for the 12 months ending last June, at worst, the average Canadian saw a 2% raise. And if you want to see if people in your province earned even MORE than that 2%, scroll all the way down. Hint: only 3 provinces were below the average.
So did you get a 2% raise? If not, do you know who, politically,
. . . → Read More: Politics, Re-Spun: So Did YOU Get a 3% Raise Last Year?
By Jim Sadlemyer, on August 28, 2012, at 11:16 am
By Greg Fingas, on August 11, 2012, at 11:17 am Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher keep up their reporting on Robocon by noting that Elections Canada’s trail seems to have gone cold with the use of an unsecured wifi connection to hide the identity of Pierre Poutine. But as Susan Delacourt points out, that fact only confirms that the Cons’ election fraud seems to have been rather deliberately planned to escape detection.
- Meanwhile, Delacourt also laments the effect of “churnalism” in which the media serves largely as a conduit for government or business talking points: Harper has not held a news
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on August 9, 2012, at 9:56 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Mitchell Anderson discusses the Ten Commandments that have ensured that Norway’s oil wealth is preserved for the benefit of citizens. But it’s particularly worth contrasting Norway’s philosophy surrounding non-renewable resources against the frenzy to extract everything today at any price (which of course currently dominates western Canadian politics): Norway was in no rush to develop their oil resources, and determined that it would only be on their own terms with a clear benefit to Norwegians. So strong was this sentiment that an all-party parliamentary white paper itemized “10 commandments” (see sidebar) for
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
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 May 21, 2012, at 7:32 pm Thursday, April 26 saw ample discussion of private members’ business – and if the Cons are now cracking down on such debate, the results of the day’s proceedings might give us some clues as to why.
The Big Issue
While it didn’t receive as much media attention as another issue which was debated for substantially less time, Irene Mathyssen’s motion to reverse the Cons’ attacks on OAS produced plenty of noteworthy discussion. Mathyssen pointed out how the move would increase poverty rates among senior women in particular. Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe noted that private pension plans might not be designed to account
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Parliament in Review – April 26, 2012
By Andrew Jackson, on April 12, 2012, at 10:24 am The C D Howe Institute have put out a study on later retirement by Peter Hicks, a former senior official with HRSDC and the OECD who has written a lot on the policy implications of ageing societies. I find this to be one of his less convincing efforts.
The argument – with parenthetical comments – is as follows.
1) Employment rates of older workers, including those over age 65 have been rising rapidly, and this trend can be expected to continue “without any policy action” (p.20). Indeed, employment rates can be expected to rise significantly higher and future retirees
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Later Retirement: A Win – Win Solution?
By Greg Fingas, on April 3, 2012, at 9:30 am This and that for your Tuesday reading.
- Alison nicely debunks the Cons’ latest Robocon talking points. Paula Boutis offers her own suggestions to strengthen Elections Canada in investigating vote suppression. And Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report that the Cons have been working on funneling federal money through a charity to their choice of call centre operators.
- Adam Radwanski unloads on Jim Flaherty for his constant attacks on his home province. But the explanation presumably lies in the Ontario government’s inconvenient recognition that Canadians would be far more secure with an improved Canada Pension Plan than with the
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
By Andrew Jackson, on March 30, 2012, at 9:00 am The Budget justifies raising the age of eligibility for OAS and GIS on the grounds that the long-term fiscal sustainability of the program is being undermined by rising life expectancy.
No estimates of savings are provided. They will be very modest.
Given that average life expectancy at age 65 is 20 years, raising the eligibility age by two years could only save a maximum of 10% of projected spending on future retirees if implemented immediately.
However, the government proposes to phase in the increased eligibility age between 2023 and 2029 which will hugely reduce any savings relative to current projections.
. . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: OAS, the Budget and the Baby Boomers
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