All Hat, No Cattle

                                                         http://quoteimg.com/

Chris Westdal, former Canadian ambassador to Russia, is not impressed by Stephen Harper:

I thought leaders in times of crisis were expected to keep calm and carry on, maintaining stiff upper lips and carrying sticks bigger than their tongues. Not our guy. He mongers fear across the land — fear of criminals, fear of terrorists, fear of Iran, fear of Russia — fear in every case gussied up with purple prose, proud to be certain, proud to be loud.

The proud to be loud meme has not done Canada's international reputation any good:

The Harper government has been, by Canadian standards, uniquely bellicose in the world. Our government has been vocally skeptical about a nuclear deal with Iran. Our government is the only one to have labelled Russia “evil”. Our PM is the only one who had to “guess” whether he’d shake Russian President Putin’s hand (although he made sure his press secretary let everyone know how brave he’d been). Other G-20 leaders saw fit to mind their manners. Of course, those leaders — unlike ours — might actually have some role to play in bringing peace to Ukraine.

Internationally, Harper is known as a Canadian Colonel Blimp -- all talk and no action:

If Vladimir Putin is the 21st century’s answer to Adolf Hitler, for instance, then why did Mr. Harper lead the opposition at NATO’s Wales summit against a U.S./UK pitch for a boost in defence spending? (It’s worth remembering that when President Obama convened a core-group Ukraine huddle at that summit, our PM — Kyiv’s most certain friend — was simply excluded.)

And we simply don't talk to people anymore:

Not only are we short-changing the military, we’ve apparently given up on negotiation. We shut our embassy in Tehran down. With Ukraine, we were the only country to withdraw our ambassador from Moscow at the height of the crisis in Crimea. Across the board, our diplomats have been muzzled and marginalized, their operations nickel-and-dimed to death.

So the next time you hear Stephen Harper tell you that you should be very afraid, consider how the rest of the world takes what he says. The Cowboy from Etobicoke is all hat and no cattle.

Old And Ugly

                                                        http://cms.asce.org/

Justin Trudeau is beginning to sound like his father. Michael Den Tant writes:

Monday evening in Toronto, Justin Trudeau delivered a 40-minute speech in which he attempted to provide a coherent, internally consistent philosophical frame for all his future policies and decisions. It was, essentially, a manifesto. It’s fair to say that no Canadian politician has delivered a speech quite like this, in recent memory.

De facto, Trudeau is attempting relieve the Conservative party of what remains of its intellectual high ground. In the process of calling out the Harper government for what he flatly termed anti-Muslim fear-mongering, the Liberal leader provided the most complete account yet of his political aspirations and motivation. Conservative partisans should not be surprised to discover that, once again, he has an eye to grabbing their lunch money; this time, the ideal of individual liberty itself.

In his speech, Trudeau reminded his listeners of  a long and ugly history in this country:

First, Trudeau’s observation that state-sanctioned fear of “the other” is nothing new in Canada: “the Chinese head tax, the internment of Japanese and Italian Canadians during the Second World War, our turning away boats of Jewish or Punjabi refugees, our own history of slavery. No Irish need apply. We don’t speak French here, so speak white. The discrimination faced by Greek and Portuguese Canadians in this very city.”

And then he drew a line connecting that history to the Harper government:

Next, the link he draws between these historical abuses and the Harper government’s recent monomaniacal focus on combating Islamism, even as it pointedly battles a court order striking down a ban on wearing the niqab at citizenship ceremonies, even where identity is not at issue. “Across Canada, and especially in my home province, Canadians are being encouraged by their government to be fearful of one another,” Trudeau asserted in the speech. “For me, this is both unconscionable and a real threat to Canadian liberty.”

The Harper majority rests on its appeal to immigrants who now live in Canada's suburbs. The Liberals used to own those votes. Trudeau wants them back. And the plan to get them did not materialize on the spur of the moment:

Monday’s speech and the strategy underlying it have been in the works for months, according to Liberal party sources. But the hook was a series of recent Conservative missteps — ­from a Facebook post caterwauling about a non-existent imminent attack on the West Edmonton Mall, to Immigration Minister Chris Alexander’s conflation of the hijab (headscarf) and the niqab, to Conservative MP John Williamson’s facepalm-inducing recent musings about “whities” and “brown people” –­ that together convey the impression that, contrary to all its careful messaging of the past two decades, this Conservative party may not be friendly to minorities, after all.

Clearly, Trudeau is linking Harper to what is old and ugly in this country. Time will tell if that strategy works.

A Pathetic Failure

A lot of electronic ink has been spilled of late on the subject of Bill C-51. And the effort has been called for. But the irony of all that spent energy is that it is working in Stephen Harper's favour.

The prime minister used to burnish his credentials as an "economist." No more. He has good reasons to not talk about his economic expertise. Tom Walkom writes:

At a fundamental level, the economy is failing. Any number of studies point to this fact. The latest was released this week by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. It says the quality of work in Canada, as measured by wages and job security, has fallen to a 25-year low.

More and more people are trapped in low-paying jobs. More and more are contract workers deemed to be self-employed.

Wage growth for those who already earn good salaries is high. Wage growth for those who earn little is low.

The study says the reasons for this decline are so deeply embedded in the structure of the globalized economy that they will be difficult to reverse.

This picture, of Canadians doomed to live in a world of precarious work, is deeply depressing. It is also a picture that affects far more people than terrorism ever would. 

To date, two people have been killed in what the government insists were terrorist attacks. And, this past weekend, we suffered our first casualty in Iraq.  The death of Sgt. Doiron may change that conversation. But Mr. Harper desperately wants to keep the conversation from circling back to the economy.

As an economist, our prime minister is a pathetic failure. Soon, on the subject of foreign affairs, the same judgement may await him.

Sometimes Wisdom Comes With Age

                                                         http://thetyee.ca/

The conventional wisdom holds that Stephen Harper's base is old and intellectually lazy. I suspect that's true. But we need be neither physically nor intellectually frail as we age. Michael Clague, who will turn 75 this year, reminds us of that simple truth. He certainly carries no brief for Harper's anti-government:

The very idea of government that Mr. Harper conveys is not in the tradition of our three great parties. His Conservative party campaigns on being anti-government. Previous debates among Progressive Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats were around how much government should itself provide programs and services, but all recognized that government has a responsibility to make sure they are provided. It was part of the social contract with citizens. Now our federal government takes no interest in the idea of a social contract. Let the chips fall.

This federal government does not inspire Canadians to believe in the best our country has to offer. It mobilizes us through fear. Fear of crime. Fear and anger of Big Government. Fear of external threats. Fear that environmental action will destroy our economy.

Like the man who has insisted that the present government bear his name, Clague knows that he and it are not who or what they claim to be:

I would have thought such fundamentalist conservatism would include a staunch defence of civil liberties, human rights, transparency, truthfulness and the need for public, democratic accountability. Instead, we have an aggrandizement of unaccountable political power in the prime minister and his office. Omnibus budget bills contain so much policy over so many subjects that profoundly affect Canadian lives that it is impossible for the opposition parties, the public and the media to decipher them for meaningful discussion and debate. 

And he knows what a true leader does:

Whether my next prime minister is 56 or 75, I'm looking for a leader who is frank with Canadians about the immense challenges that are shaping our future, who reminds us that there are no simple solutions, and who recognizes that compromise and give and take are essential. I'm looking for a leader who calls Canadians to public service and commits to making a difference for the health and well-being of all members of society. I'm looking for a leader whose inspiration engages us to take responsibility for building a better a country -- a leader who is accountable, who acknowledges her or his shortcomings, who encourages divergent views, and who does not pander to our base instincts.

Mr. Clague reminds us that, sometimes, wisdom comes with age.

Headpieces Filled With Straw

                                                https://www.learningpod.com/

For the second year in a row, Andrew Coyne was underwhelmed by the Manning Conference. It used to be, he writes, the home of the Conservative Party in exile:

It was the place where Conservatives, starved for talk about ideas by a leadership that long ago declared its contempt, not just for ideas, but even for the idea of ideas, mingled with conservatives, the broader movement outside the party, and recalled a time when it was still permissible to think that governments are elected to change things, not just to perpetuate themselves in power; that elections are opportunities to win a broad mandate from the public, not to dangle a few precisely crafted baubles of nonsense in front of the right micro-demographics; that governing is something done openly and through Parliament, not secretly and by any means at hand; and all the rest of what we have been educated, after these many years of misrule, not to expect.

But just as Harperism has seeped into the press, the military and the civil service, it has now firmly entrenched itself in what masquerades as a serious event:

The more open the conflict between what conservatives are supposed to believe and what the Conservatives have tended to produce, the more it has been resolved in favour of the party. As late as last year, when the party was at its lowest point in the polls, there was still a useful tension in the air, the odd veiled suggestion that the Conservatives had lost their way. But this is an election year, and the party is back in contention, and so this year’s conference has thus far broadly favoured politics over ideas, discretion over debate.

Conservatives have drunk the Harper Kool-Aide. Now the lust for power tramples everything and everyone in its path. Like the hollow man who heads Canada's Conservative government, it appears that the movers and shakers at the Manning Conference have "headpieces filled with straw."

Not A Very Bright Man

                                               http://montrealgazette.com/

Zunera Ishag hails from Pakistan. Gerald Caplan writes:

She came to Canada in 2008, passed her citizenship test five years later with flying colours, and is now ready to take the oath of citizenship. She’s been “imagining [this moment] for so long” because she’s anxious to be a full and active member of Canadian society. She and her husband chose Canada over other countries, she says, because “It is especially important to me to live in a country of religious freedoms since I am a devout Muslim.”

But Ms. Ishag has run afoul of "Conservative values:"

The story begins in 2011, when then-immigration minister Jason Kenney arbitrarily decreed that faces couldn’t be covered at citizenship oath-taking ceremonies. This was a direct blow to Ms. Ishaq. She is prepared to unveil herself in private to an official before taking the oath, but will not appear unveiled at the public ceremony. She approached the University of Toronto’s legal aid clinic who put her in touch with Lorne Waldman, one of Canada’s top-notch immigration lawyers. Mr. Waldman went to court to challenge the government and won. In his words, “The Court found that the policy of requiring a woman to remove her facial covering, where there is no question of identity or security, was illegal. The government is required to follow the law.”

Well, not so fast. Never mind the law. We’re talking about politics here. The government has decided to appeal the ruling against them, as just one of their battery of pre-election attacks against Muslims here and abroad. For what I believe are crassly political motives, they are deliberately inflaming Canadians against each others. Now we know what Conservatives mean by “Canadian values.”

Quite simply, the Conservatives have decided that she is a useful weapon in their re-election campaign. By scapegoating her while introducing their much-criticized new anti-terrorism bill, they hope to convince frightened voters that the Conservatives are their best hope against dangers of all kinds. But in doing so, they are instead actually jeopardizing the country’s security. Stephen Harper and his minions are actually subverting the work of our security forces by alienating much of the Muslim community.

If the Harperites were serious about fighting terrorism, they would know they need the cooperation of devout Muslims:

Yet even moderate Muslims – the large majority – are outraged by the way the government has, among other things, been picking on this one harmless Muslim woman, and in the process mocking the right of all Muslims to follow their religion in the way they want. Out of sheer political opportunism, Stephen Harper is undermining that community’s trust in official Canada while very likely estranging and radicalizing some Muslims, perhaps dangerously. How can he possibly not understand this?

How can he not understand? He makes no attempt to understand. That would mean "committing sociology." The simple truth is that -- all his self generated hype aside -- the prime minister is not a very bright man.

What's Behind It All?

                                                 http://netizenbuzz.blogspot.ca/

I wrote yesterday that Canada's newest piece of proposed tough on crime legislation is unnecessary. In fact, Stephen Harper's whole tough on crime agenda is unnecessary. So what's behind his latest move? Michael den Tandt and Tasha Kheriddin believe Harper has found his wedge issue for the next election. And so does Michael Harris:

There is always a sub-plot with everything done by the sneakiest prime minister Canada has ever had. And it’s always basically the same: Steve doesn’t care about doing the right thing, he cares about doing the right thing for the base. The Conservative base likes the idea of locking up perverts forever, just as it liked the idea of shutting down free injection sites for degenerate heroin junkies.

Never mind that the legislation will turn Canada's prisons into ticking time bombs:

Warden Steve also seems to have forgotten another thing — if these changes are made, Canada’s prisons will instantly become far more dangerous places. As any correctional officer who works in one of Canada’s 52 federal institutions will tell you, it is tough, dangerous work at the best of times. Death can make an appearance over something as trivial as a purloined cigarette, or not enough mashed potatoes on the food tray.

 So just imagine what it will be like for guards to deal with lifers who know they are never getting out. Think about it. By taking away all hope of parole — no matter how small or distant — you have turned that inmate into a time bomb. He is no longer human — just one of the living dead. He has no reason to play by the rules, no reason to rehabilitate, and absolutely nothing to lose. Double-bunking people is bad enough in the volatile world of prison; burying inmates alive behind bars strikes the match and lights the fuse.

But that's a minor irritation for Harper. Two things really irritate him: The Supreme Court and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. His proposed legislation is an attempt to make an end run around both.

That what's really behind it all.

For Harper, Fear Trumps Facts

                                                    http://psychcentral.com/

Back in 2008, Stephen Harper decided to cut public funding to the opposition parties. As the head of a newly elected minority government, it was a stunningly stupid move. When they threatened to revolt and form a coalition government, he prorogued Parliament and went around the country declaring that coalition governments were illegitimate and would lead to political Armageddon.

Now, with his economic leadership in tatters, he has proposed two pieces of legislation to "keep Canadians safe." Bill C-51 vows to protect  Canadians from the jihadists who Harper claims are at the gates. Yesterday, he proposed legislation to protect Canadians from the "heinous" criminals who are within.

Both pieces of legislation are unnecessary. The second bill, which Andrew Coyne has dubbed the "Throw Away The Key Act," was announced at a campaign stop and underscores the new Conservative campaign slogan -- "Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid:"

According to the government, the measure is needed “to keep Canadian families and their communities safe” from “heinous” (that word again: has it ever been used except in front of “crimes” or “criminals”?) criminals, those “whose actions mean we cannot risk permitting them on the streets.” The suggestion is that Canada’s streets are menaced by a wave of elderly jailbirds, released on parole after a scant 25 years in the slammer.

This is — does it even need saying? — nonsense. Not every prisoner is paroled after 25 years: only those judged at low risk of re-offending. Those designated as “dangerous offenders” can already be kept locked up for life. Parole, further, does not mean prisoners are simply set loose in the community, or released unconditionally: rather they remain, as a backgrounder by the Parole Board of Canada explains, “subject to the conditions of parole and the supervision of a … parole officer.” For how long? “For the rest of their lives.”

What sort of risk do they represent? According to figures from Correctional Service Canada, of 658 “murder offenders” released on parole between January 1975 and March 1990, just five — an average of one every three years — were convicted of a second murder. None of the five had originally been convicted of what was then called capital murder, the equivalent of the Harper government’s “heinous” crimes.

To be re-elected, Mr. Harper has to convince Canadians  that they are at the mercy of the depraved. In his own mind -- like Richard Nixon before him -- he is surrounded by enemies. And all of them are depraved.

He is convinced that he sees the world as the majority of Canadians do. If that is true, the country is lost. Because in such a country, fear trumps facts.

History Is His Enemy

Stephen Harper has always made two claims: 1) that he knows how to manage Canada's economy; and 2) that the Liberals would lead Canada on the road to ruin. Lawrence Martin writes:

The Liberals, [Harper] declared, would turn Canada into another debt-drenched Greece. His government had achieved good results “by pursuing sound economic policies, reducing taxes, focused investment, balancing our budget, all of the things the Liberal Party opposes, all of the things the Liberal Party would reverse to give us the kind of result we have in Greece.”

But former finance minister Ralph Goodale begs to differ:

Under the Liberals, there were nine straight surpluses beginning in 1996. Under the Conservatives, a string of seven deficits. On the pertinent matter of national debt (as per any Greek comparisons), it went down significantly under the Liberals but has gone up by more than $160-billion under Mr. Harper. The Liberals posted not a single trade deficit while the Harper Conservatives have had one practically every year. The Conservatives have been more impressive on tax cuts, although the Liberals did bring in one of the largest in history. On employment, it’s no contest – the Liberals in a walk.

It's true that Harper was in office throughout the Great Recession. However, it seems clear that the Recession was the result of the policies Harper advocated -- just as the Greek situation resulted from policies which Harper urged upon that nation after the G20 summit in 2010.

The problem is that Harper -- like Henry Ford -- lacks historical perspective:

Studies show that economic growth has been on average more than 2 per cent higher under Liberal governments than under Conservative ones. On budget balancing, the Tory historical record is one to run from.

Much in the respective records has to do with timing, circumstance and the turn of fortune. Conservative prime minister R.B. Bennett, for example, served during the Great Depression. But even Pierre Trudeau, considered one of the weakest Liberal economic performers, posted GDP numbers more than twice as high as the Harper government.

And that's why Harper has spent so much money on propaganda. He believes it can erase history. And history is his enemy.

Money Counts. People Don't.

                                                  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

The Harperites are always hell bent on going to war -- as long as someone else is willing to fight it. They are hoping to win the next election on the meme that they protect Canadians. But they don't do the protecting. Canada's veterans are tasked with that job. And Harper's treatment of veterans is appalling. Tasha Kheiriddin writes:

While terrorism is good business for the Tories, they continue to fail the people who fought it on the frontlines — Canada’s veterans.

Just last week, the case of former master corporal Paul Franklin, who lost both legs in Afghanistan, made news again for all the wrong reasons. Franklin’s defenders, including comedian Rick Mercer, tore Veterans Affairs Canada to shreds in early 2015 for demanding that the former soldier prove every year that his legs were still missing, to qualify for a government-funded wheelchair.

So Pierre Lemieux, parliamentary secretary to the Veterans Affairs minister, announced on February 27 a mindbogglingly insensitive change in policy: Franklin and similarly disabled vets will instead have to provide proof every three years that they are still disabled — that their missing limbs have not miraculously grown back. If they don’t, the federal government could, for example, repossess their wheelchairs — as it has done to Franklin twice in the past.

Governments take on the characteristics of their leaders. And so, the Harper government is Stephen Harper personified -- paranoid and devoid of people skills:

Also in the past week, the public learned that the Tories had shelved a survey of veterans’ satisfaction with government services. Last conducted in 2010, VAC’s “national client survey” found that while veterans of older conflicts were generally satisfied with the department’s performance, vets who served in more recent conflicts such as Afghanistan were not. Satisfaction levels among those modern-day veterans had dropped from 80 per cent in 2007 to 68 per cent in 2010.

The survey was scheduled to be repeated in 2012-13. That never happened. The government decided to skip it — an irresponsible decision for several reasons. When a study shows a marked decline in satisfaction, it’s a good idea to conduct a follow-up to find out if what you’re looking at is a blip or a trend. And the Conservatives have profoundly changed the way services are delivered to vets by closing offices and moving to a Service Canada and online access model; one would assume Ottawa would want to know how that’s working out.

But Mr. Harper doesn't want to know how things are working out. He only wants to know whether or not he'll win the upcoming election. Charles Dickens would recognize him immediately, just as he recognized an earlier character:

But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.

For Stephen Harper and Ebeneezer Scrooge, money counts. People don't.

Caveat Emptor

                                          http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/


We should approach the next election with caution. That's because the nature of electoral politics in Canada has changed. Michael Harris writes:

The old electoral politics of presentation, explanation and proof are mostly dead. Politicians no longer court you, they stalk you. They don’t campaign, they spy, cheat, chisel and connive their way into office.

There have always been rainmakers, fixers, and crooks hanging around politics like flies in a barnyard. But the new technologies, and the access to personal information they bring, have turned them into pure predators. American conservative strategist Vincent Harris is the latest incarnation of this phenomenon, though he has many predecessors like Frank Luntz and Karl Rove.

For public consumption, people like Vincent Harris say they advise the media teams of politicians. Their real task is to create public opinion and herd the masses by way of distortion. They push and pull voters as if they were an accordion.

The folks who run campaigns are essentially running cons and we are the marks. They consider most of us easy marks. Therefore, Harris recommends a few strategies to keep the con men at bay:

Your first line of defence against the election bandits is your telephone. Never, I repeat, never listen to a telephone recording, let alone act on one. A lot of people who did in the last federal election exercised their legs, not their franchise. Now that Harper’s strategically weakened new elections legislation makes life markedly easier for would-be cheaters, we are certain to see the sequel: Son of Robocalls. When you know it’s a recording, just hang up. Don’t let them use your telephone as a Trojan horse to enter your head.

Vote for somebody who actually appears and answers your questions, face-to-face, in a way that satisfies you. As for the one who shoves his literature in your face while asking if he can expect your support, all in 30 seconds, tell him to come back in a week and you’ll talk about it. If he doesn’t come back, line the bird-cage with his bumph.

Take pollsters with a grain of salt – and make that a five-pound bag when they are doing their surveys for an election that hasn’t been called. Remember that not all polls are created equal. There are real pollsters with proven methodologies and there are those who fly by night. There are professionals who aim to reveal public opinion, and partisans in pollsters’ clothing who use pretend polls to generate their own public opinion.

Technology has made it easier to con voters. But there is one rule that remains true:

Inform yourself. Look at what the people who want their power renewed have done with it so far, and at what those who seek power say they will do if they get it.

Thomas Jefferson was an advocate of public education because he believed that democracy couldn't function without it. The people running the show assume we wish to remain stupid.

Caveat emptor.

 

When Will They Get Their Act Together?

                                              http://www.montrealgazette.com/

Ralph Surette has had Stephen Harper's number for a long time. He's a veteran journalist and he knows a charlatan when he sees one. Bill C-51 is a superb example of how Harper operates:

Not that the bill doesn't have some good points -- but that's Harper's genius. He starts with a vaguely decent argument, then takes it to extremes -- but only to that precise extreme that can be muffled by the repetition of talking points.

But the bill itself is only the half of it. The deeper, ignored part is that the Harper government can't be trusted with laws of any kind. The omnibus bills delivered on short notice and passed in a whiz to avoid debate, the error-ridden bills passed with flagrant arrogance, the crippling of parliamentary committees and the abuse of parliamentary process at every level, the attack on the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and ultimately the two-faced hypocrisy of running a "law and order" government that abuses the law whenever it suits its ideology -- none of this gets into the talk. Harper is a repeat offender whose previous record is never taken into account.

What really disturbs Surette is that the opposition parties seem incapable of blowing the whistle on the prime minister:

Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair has made himself into an effective prosecutor-style interrogator in the Commons, but 90 per cent of his performance doesn't get past the Ottawa bubble. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau muddles as we await further policy. Neither focuses the big picture. (The Green Party's Elizabeth May, on the other hand, does -- but hers is a small voice). Mulcair and Trudeau are both trapped in the business of scoring points on the 24-hour news cycle. That's Harper's rink, where he stickhandles around them handily. As long as the focus is on the here and now, yesterday's dirty tricks are forgotten.

Harper has given them lots to work with:

It has always baffled me, given the richness of the material, that the opposition leaders didn't do this: keep a crisp little mantra of the Harper record in their coat pocket and recite it every time they speak in order to keep the Harper agenda in view: the electoral fraud, the destruction of environmental and fishery laws, the crippling of the census (done to protect privacy, no less -- no sign of those concerns in the terror bill), the muzzling of scientists, the tax persecution of environmental groups and charities considered unfriendly to Harperism (even a bird-watching group in Ontario that called last summer for a pesticide to be banned had Revenue Canada sicced on them), the veterans, the hundreds of millions of tax dollars wasted to promote the party, the bung-ups in military procurement, the chopping up of the tax system for partisan reasons ...

When are they going to get their act together?

Saving Capitalism From Itself

                                                http://www.qohel.com/

The American economist  Richard Wolf maintains that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. Unchecked, it produces greater and greater inequality, until it collapses upon itself. Tom Walkom agrees:

Experts may tie themselves up in knots over the precise trajectory of inequality, depending in part on what is measured and when.

But the general point is beyond dispute: On its own, the free market is providing increasingly less equal rewards.

That inequality, in turn, hampers the very forces that favour the free market.

Thus, those who wish to preserve capitalism should protect capitalism from itself. Those protections include public pensions, public healthcare, unemployment insurance and public employment.

After the Second World War, business and labour reached a grand bargain, which included these four safety valves. But things changed:

Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government began the job of dismantling the so-called welfare state. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are finishing it.

But the factors that really killed the old bargain were globalization and the changing nature of work.

The old welfare state was built for a world where much of the workforce laboured in big factories.

Now, big factories are passé. The new normal is part-time work and alleged self-employment.

Rather than responding to changed circumstances, our politicians have been deer in the headlights. Walkom  has some suggestions about what they should do:

Build a national pharmacare program. This would continue the process, begun in the 1960s, of socializing the costs needed to keep workers healthy.

Reform the employment insurance system. The aim here should be to ensure that all who are involuntarily unemployed, including part-timers and the self-employed, have full access to EI.

Rebuild the entire collective bargaining system. Developed in the 1930s and ’40s, the current one was premised on a world of factory production. A new arrangement would have to take into account the dramatic new changes in work.

The Harper government has no such plans. But a new government -- if pushed -- might.

An Early Election?

                                                 http://www.evidentia.net/

Two days ago, rumours were circulating that we were in for an early election. So far, nothing has materialized. But, having mastered the art of fear and smear politics -- and having passed Bill C-51 -- Michael Harris writes that there are lots of reasons for Stephen Harper to call an early election:

It would let Harper campaign on terrorism, not his record. He has his emotional issue: “I am the strong man who will protect you from the beheaders.”

A defence brief recently obtained by the CBC under Access to Information implies Canada’s failure to procure the F-35s may be damaging our relationship with our international allies: “Canada often struggles to meet timelines to participate in international co-operative activities.” Read: Canada needs those F-35s so we can protect everyone by bombing the Middle East.

If Harper wins the election, Canada will get those planes, no matter what they cost, even though they may not be fully operational until 2019 due to a newly-discovered computer glitch with the plane’s main gun. Not a small problem, by the way — it could prevent the F-35 from firing during close air support operations. The Pentagon, which milks the American taxpayer like a prize cow, has denied there will be a delay.

Harper wouldn’t have to present a budget that he can’t balance.

He’d escape blowback from the Mike Duffy trial, where Nigel Wright might have to tell the truth under oath, instead of a carefully constructed version of the truth designed to protect the prime minister. Meanwhile, Patrick Brazeau’s preliminary inquiry is set to begin June 1. Mike Duffy’s trial will still be on at that point — bad timing for the PM.

The trial of Bruce Carson, a former senior aide to Harper, on charges related to a water purification company for First Nations starts September 8.

If Harper calls an early election, there will be confusion at the polls because of changes under the new Elections Act. Many voters will turn up without the proper ID — although you can bet Conservative voters will be well prepared. You now need two pieces of official ID, at least one with your street address. Yes, due to a hard-fought amendment, someone can vouch for your address if they know you — but you both have to swear an oath and that takes time, meaning long line-ups at the polls. Just what you need when you have to pick up the kids at daycare.

Harper has never been a man of principle. But he has always been a desperate opportunist. Is anyone taking bets?

A Cabal Of Fools

You may have missed it. But, recently, the Harper government pulled funding for the Palestinian organization, MIFTAH, which is headed by Hanan Ashrawi. Paul Adams provides some context:

For more than twenty years, Hanan Ashrawi, an ethnic Christian and a moderate, has been a prominent Palestinian leader. In 2006 she was elected to the Palestinian parliament as a member of the Third Way, an almost laughably small party which has tried to provide a democratic, centrist alternative to the corruption of Fateh and the violent Islamism of Hamas — the two dominant Palestinian political factions.

She founded a non-governmental organization called MIFTAH; its mandate is human rights but it has carved out a role primarily as a promoter of women in Palestinian life.

But Ashrawi ran afoul of John Baird:

On his farewell tour of the Middle East a few weeks ago, Baird said Palestinians were crossing a “red line” — a favourite expression in the region when laying down an ultimatum — by accusing Israel of war crimes before the International Criminal Court.

In a press release, Ashrawi fired back that the red line Baird was trying to draw was a form of impunity for Israel, and she called Baird an apologist (that word again) for those complicit in war crimes.

In a strange little episode, Canadian officials abruptly demanded a letter of thanks from Ashrawi for their $27,000 contribution to MIFTAH. When it was not forthcoming, they cancelled the grant.

Adams points out that MIFTAH  receives the bulk of its funding from the Republican Party in the United States. It's not a left wing love child. But when John Baird said something stupid -- as he has done frequently -- Ashrawi called him out.

Our present government is petty and mean spirited. That's because it's led by a cabal of fools.

They Own Him

                                                   http://pando.com/

It's been a relatively silent coup. The wealthy have successfully bought our political system. If you have doubts, consider two key pieces of Harperian policy -- income splitting and Tax Free Savings Accounts. Both policies amount to robbery of the federal purse. Rhys Kesselman writes:

Income-splitting has been extensively assessed and widely criticized for its revenue cost, its tilt toward higher-income families, and its failure to accomplish anything beneficial for the economy.

Soon the other shoe may drop: The Conservative Party of Canada’s second major tax promise from the last election was to double the contribution limits for Tax-Free Savings Accounts. 

The Conservatives market TFSA's as the salvation of the little man and they now propose to double contribution limits:

Yet doubling the TFSA limits would share the deficiencies of income-splitting as public policy — or even surpass them. It would drain revenues from both federal and provincial treasuries, with deceptively small initial sums adding up to costs far greater than those incurred through income-splitting. The long-run benefits would be far more sharply skewed toward the wealthy and high-earners. And doubling the TFSA limit would not benefit the economy in tangible ways.

Once the existing TFSA provision has fully matured in 40 to 50 years, it’s estimated to cost the federal treasury up to $15.5 billion annually — more than seven times the cost of income splitting. Provincial treasuries were insulated from the revenue impacts of income-splitting; they will not be so lucky with TFSAs, losing up to $9 billion per year when the scheme matures.

The government’s vow that TFSAs will never be considered in federal income tests for tax and benefit provisions carries further revenue costs. By mid-century, TFSAs will raise the Guaranteed Income Supplement’s cost by $2.8 billion annually and reduce recovery tax from Old Age Security by $1.2 billion annually. These figures are the official estimates; the sums projected by an independent analyst run far higher.

Stephen Harper argues that the age for Old Age Security must be raised because we don't have the money to pay for it. But he doesn't tell you why the money won't be there.

The wealthy could not ask for a better servant. And they will see that he is properly compensated. They own him.

Look Somewhere Else

                                               http://www.cepec-tortues.fr/

Stephen Harper talks tough. But when things get tough, Harper hides. Andrew Mitrovica writes:

The prime minister, simply put, is a nasty piece of work. His every act and statement is a product of a petty, parochial political calculus; the quaint notion of ‘nation-building’ isn’t part of his lexicon. And like any unrepentant bully, Harper prefers adversaries who can’t fight back — hence his venomous attack on Radio-Canada journalists.

When people fight back, he heads for cover:

You probably saw this iPolitics report — about how the PM quietly invoked parliamentary privilege to escape being grilled by lawyers representing the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM). Not exactly the stuff of profiles-in-courage, is it?

The NCCM sued Harper and his freshly departed PR guy, Jason MacDonald, for libel after MacDonald appeared on Sun News Network to slime the NCCM by insisting it “has documented ties to a terrorist organization … Hamas.”

Anyway, the NCCM argues that MacDonald’s attack had his boss’s implicit, if not explicit, approval. Make no mistake, the explicit intent of that slur – based on laughable, discredited information culled from an obscure court case heard in the backwoods of the Lone Star state – was to malign all the loyal, hard-working Muslim-Canadians working at NCCM as Hamas sympathizers or worse. When Harper and company refused to retract and apologize, the NCCM sued the pair last May.

The overall effect, of course, is a blot on Harper’s carefully cultivated tough-guy image. A bad hombre wouldn’t hide behind his lawyer’s pinstriped pants. No sir. He would waive parliamentary privilege, agree to appear at discovery with his former spokesman — who, by the way, is still being represented by a government-hired lawyer — put his hand on a Bible and say: Fire away.

If you're looking for heated rhetoric about Muslims or Russians, Harper's your man. But, if you're looking for courage, look somewhere else.

A Non-Liberal State

                                            http://www.notable-quotes.com/

Last week, Ralph Nader declared that Stephen Harper was unsafe at any speed. Michael Harris writes:

According to the former U.S. presidential candidate and long-time consumer advocate, this prime minister is a combination of Chevrolet’s doomed Corvair and Dick Cheney: A lemon and a warmonger — all rolled up into a consumer dud begging for a recall.

With police state powers about to be handed to Canada’s spy agency based on a factitious threat, Nader pointed out that the PM’s talents run to hyperbole, not to truth-telling or accuracy. (Time allocation has once more killed sensible debate on major legislation, this time it’s Bill C-51.)

“When Prime Minister Harper says jihadi terrorism is one of the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced, one is entitled to say ‘oh really?’. What about Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin? It is just a wild exaggeration,” Nader said.

Speed is what Harper is all about. There was little debate. He declared closure and sent the bill off to committee. That's dictatorship, not democracy. There are interesting parallels, writes Harris, between Stephen Harper and Viktor Orban, the man who has sabotaged Hungary's newly won democracy. Orban recently told The Guardian:

We are parting ways with Western European dogmas, making ourselves independent from them. We have to abandon liberal methods and principles of organizing a society. The new state that we are building is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state.”

Exactly.

There's Reason To Be Apathetic

                                               http://www.personal.psu.edu/

Robin Sears writes that two recent incidents speak volumes about why Canadian voters are apathetic:

What is a first-time potential voter to make of the nonsense from Premier Kathleen Wynne that her number 2 employee is both her taxpayer-paid deputy chief of staff and her party’s campaign director? Is this on alternate days or partisan until noon but public employee after lunch?

Such an absurd insult to common sense might be seen as a good reason not to vote.

And, of course, there is the case of Eve Adams:

Then there is the case of the weather vane MP and her gormless new political love. Imagine a hockey player whose agent is secretly negotiating to move her to a new team, swearing all the while no such plans were afoot. She plays against her “about-to-be” team until the night before the announcement of her switch, trash-talking them to the end! And what would we think of her new coach sappily smiling beside her and claiming he “had always respected her, was delighted . . . blah blah.” This would not pass a five-year-old’s ethics or credulity test.

The Harperites have made this kind of politics commonplace. They have left us a swamp that will have to be drained:

Yes, Stephen Harper skilfully employs religious prejudice, national security angst, angry regional tensions, and even our deference to authority to serve his partisan interests, daily. Yes, there will be a lot of cleaning up to do after the lost decade of Harperism: rebuilding trust in government, morale in the public service, and Canada’s standing in the world, among a much longer list of damage to be repaired.

But Sears asks an important question -- a question our party leaders refuse to answer:

But why would anyone competing for that cleanup role think that smearing themselves in the same political mud was a good idea? Why would a premier chosen in part for her pledge to clean up the stench that surrounded the sad closing months of the McGuinty premier’s office allow herself to squander her reputation for integrity so carelessly?

Voters want good government. Our leaders want victory. The gap between our leaders and we the people is the reason 40% of us stayed home in the last federal election.

So Let It Be Written. So Let It Be Done.

                                                 http://www.sodahead.com/

Stephen Harper hasn't shown up to debate Bill C-51. He just announced it at a campaign rally. And he's letting Joe Oliver do the talking about the economy. Heading into a meeting of finance ministers last week, Oliver declared:

Our Government’s sound economic management and unwavering commitment to balance the budget this year — while creating jobs, growth and long-term prosperity for Canadians — has resulted in a resilient economic performance in a challenging global economy. 

But, given the facts, what Oliver has been saying is pure gibberish. Scott Clark and Peter DeVries write:

This government has adopted an austerity-led growth strategy. We got the austerity — we just didn’t get the growth. Annual economic growth has fallen in every single year since 2010. Forecasters, including the Bank of Canada, are lowering their growth forecasts for 2015 to below 2 per cent, a far cry from the almost 2.5 per cent they were forecasting only a few months ago. The Canadian economy is in a deep freeze, and the only thing Oliver and Prime Minister Harper can think to do is more of what they’ve done: cut spending.

The drop in oil prices has forced economists to revise down their outlook for inflation. Nominal GDP — the broadest base for calculating government revenue — is now expected to be significantly lower than the earlier forecast. In the November 214 Fiscal Update, Oliver forecast nominal GDP growth at 3.7 per cent for 2015. Now, most private sector economists expect it to be around 2 per cent. This will result in much lower federal revenues going forward.

Oliver says the government has an “unwavering commitment to balance the budget.” Trust us — absolutely no one in a position to know believes that Oliver can do it without some budgetary voodoo.

Apparently, Mr. Harper believes he is the New Pharaoh. Facts like these simply don't matter:

The unemployment rate is stuck between 6.5 and 7 per cent. The labour force participation rate is at its lowest level since 2002. In January, the increase in employment was due primarily to part-time and self-employment. Full-time employment actually fell. And we can expect things to get worse in the coming months, as we begin to see the direct impact of falling oil prices on employment.

Last year, the G20 agreed to boost spending on infrastructure "to raise global GDP by 2.1 per cent by 2018." But Oliver insists that balancing the budget comes first.

So let it be written. So let it be done.