The CBC¹ article (23 June 2010) quotes CSIS director, Richard Fadden talking about the danger of the situation

“The individual becomes in a position to make decisions that affect the country or the province or a municipality. All of a sudden, decisions aren’t taken on the basis of the public good but on the basis of another country’s preoccupations.”

We recently saw that the chief of staff of former Conservative Industry Minister, Maxime Bernier, admitted that the Conservatives were pushing through copyright legislation purely to satisfy the preoccupations of the US.

This news is visible from a number of sites (NDP) such as the Speak Out on Copyright site. But its source is an analysis of digital copyright reforms called North American Digital Copyright, Regional Governance and the Persistence of Variation² (PDF – 1 June 2010), which covers Canada, the USA, and Mexico, and was written by Carleton doctoral student, Blayne Haggart. The document includes the following information about the Conservatives last (failed) attempt at revising Canadian copyright law.

“The 2007/2008 bill and its delay demonstrate the complex role of the United States and civil society in the Canadian copyright debate, especially in the context of a minority Parliament, and the supreme role of the Prime Minister’s Office and Privy Council Office as the final arbiter of legislation in the Canadian parliamentary regime. The decision to pursue DMCA-style TPM rules was purely political, the result of pressure from a Prime Minister’s Office intent on passing a U.S.-friendly law. As Michele Austin, then-Industry Minister Maxime Bernier’s (2006-2007) chief of staff, recounts: “The Prime Minister’s Office’s position was, move quickly, satisfy the United States.” When the two ministers responsible protested for political and technical reasons, the PMO replied “We don’t care what you do, as long as the U.S. is satisfied” (Haggart forthcoming).” [emphasis mine]

It’s difficult to see how that comment could be interpreted as anything other than Conservative office holders operating in the interests of a foreign power while disregarding the public good.

It might be argued that the comments were taken out of context and perhaps the Conservatives involved had made other additional comments about ensuring Canadian interests are satisfied. But giving them the benefit of the doubt presents a logical problem. When the US interests are at odds with Canadian interests, one has to give, and the speaker of the quote above makes it clear that it’s the Canadian one, which can be discarded.

Additionally, a benefit-of-the-doubt argument doesn’t hold up to the evidence of the last few years. With respect to copyright and digital rights types of issues, the Conservatives have not acted inline with Canadian interests. They disregarded popular Canadian opinion with respect to copyright policy in favour of foreign commercial and political interests. Even their latest contentious attempt still includes the worst of the US DMCA.

This is a betrayal of Canadian trust.

The Globe and Mail¹ (6 June 2010) reported on even Conservatives questioning this method of communication.

“The MEP is the crucial communication instrument for a minority government that values staying on message above all else — a transformation that federal officials and public-policy analysts say is undermining democracy.

While all governments try to control the message, the ambitious sweep of MEPs is unprecedented in federal politics. Critics say it contradicts the core campaign promise that brought Prime Minister Stephen Harper to power — introducing a new era of transparency and accountability in government.

“We discussed every single issue and micromanaged every news release — everything,” said one former Harper-era PCO official.”

The Canadian Press reportedly has about a thousand of these MEPs and they extend into all sorts of realms of discourse, including foreign relations and events. The Star² (8 June 2010) also reported on MEPs saying

“There’s no question it has a bit of a chilling effect on people, because they know that they have to avoid being off-message at all — and that’s what the government wants,” said one currently serving diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears of career reprisals.

The central direction of foreign service officers is unparalleled, says retired diplomat Gordon Smith, who served Conservative and Liberal prime ministers as Canada’s ambassador to NATO and the European Union, was a former deputy minister of Foreign Affairs and a senior official at PCO.

“What other conclusion can one draw? But it reflects a very considerable concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s Office,” said Smith, who left government to join the University of Victoria in 1997.”

When the Conservatives don’t want information spread they simply disappear a MEP. When they do want to manage how it’s spread, they approve the MEP and control its content. That way they can be prepared to respond to and test public perceptions. Furthermore it gives them the opportunity to always shape public perspective in favour of Conservative doctrine.

The CBC³ reported (7 June 2010) on one example of the use and effect of MEPs with respect to Canadian ivnolvement in Afganistan.

“The government used MEPs to script the words it wanted to hear from the mouths of its top diplomats, aid workers and cabinet ministers in 2007-08 to divert public attention from the soaring double-digit death toll of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.”

This is a frightening extension of control. It’s reminiscent of the propaganda techniques used in totalitarian regimes. In a democratic society we should not have a government exhibiting this degree of control over the context and content of information regarding our country and goings-ons.

We face a greater than $54 B deficit and many Canadians still have real and worthwhile needs that aren’t being met due to the continuing effects of financial crises and regular poverty. According to The Star report² (28 May 2010) the money could otherwise have been spent on

“Three years’ worth of vastly improved health facilities for women and children in developing countries; $1,000 tuition cuts for every student in Canada; 11,000 new construction jobs.”

Not to mention, it could of course have gone into decreasing the deficit, or as the NDP suggested, committing it to foreign aid, which would make a real difference to health services for women in countries that currently lack the means. That would have an effect, unlike the hollow intentions Harper promotes as his topic for the conference. The world is noticing this too, consider what Kenneth Roth, head of Human Rights Watch, said in the Winnipeg Free Press³ (8 June 2010)

“Canada punched above its weight. It was a nation to be contended with. Now, unfortunately, Canada is barely punching at all. . . . it is no longer seen as a strong moral voice on key international issues. . .”

Harper’s Conservatives are committing what in some reports (The Star⁴ 7 June 2010) may reach $2B for holding these questionable conferences. Since the Conservatives don’t appear to care about the more important things that money could be spent on. They’re instead getting a fake lake built in a pricey tourism pavilion, wide screen TVs, a steamboat retrofit that won’t be completed in time for the conferences, and lots of publicity (Financial Times⁵ 8 June 2010).

Harper considers the whole spectacle to be an opportunity to show off Canada and the region in particular to the world. The CBC⁶ reported (8 June 2010) him saying of the pavillion

“In fact, it’s a $2-million marketing project. . .”

I think that he has a point in promoting Canada on a global stage. Certainly getting publicity for such events can help to raise Canada’s profile in the world. However, that is not the purpose of the event. The event is for world leaders to discuss serious problems. I haven’t yet read a Conservative comment showing how all this marketing and wasteful spending serves that purpose.

Finally, if this really is the time to showcase Canada to the world, and promote tourism or simply good will, wouldn’t it be a good idea to show what we really can do? Rather than fake lakes, show some of our many, beautiful real lakes and couple that with announcements of how we’re finally going to follow through with strong commitments to our environmental obligations.

Show some of our public hospitals and couple that with announcements of how we’re going to spend a significant amount of money helping impoverished nations improve their maternal health resources.

Bring out some fiscal leaders to announce that we’re going to participate meaningfully in banking and other economic reforms to ensure the world doesn’t undergo another devastating financial meldown.

Creating a Green Democratic Party (GDP) would solve a lot more than just NDP members’ occasional unease with the “New” in their name. Its combined members would provide a very strong third federal party. A GDP would embody the perspective and vision to be an exciting alternative to both the Conservatives and Liberals. The GDP merger could also garner the momentum to galvanize voters.

There are two ways I’d like to consider this. One way is to offer a critical examination of platforms and try to argue that the two are largely complementary (if not nearly the same) with only minor inconsistencies (by the end of this article I’ll propose what the union of the two might look like). The other way is to talk about fuzzier things like perception or emotion. I think it’s necessary to consider both ways but as much as I wish I could say the critical way provides a stronger motivation, I think the argument on perception and emotion is the more powerful motivator right now.

In political discussion, some people allow themselves to be swayed through logic and critical thinking. Often though, vote switching happens when people feel unhappy with their prior allegiance and have the perception that an alternate group is going to be the winning team. Additionally, voter malaise is reversed through sparking people’s emotions. So the parties need to play their logic to the right feelings and emotions for a successful strategy.

I’ve rearranged all of the data from the 2008 election, in a spreadsheet, to see how things would have looked (by riding and province), had there been a GDP (this was possible due to the data Simon Fraser University makes available for download here more info from the government web site here). I’ve also created an unfinished spreadsheet outlining a GDP platform with its NDP and Green Party correspondences (This is admittedly a long post… everything’s linked at the end – skip there now).

Here is a hypothetical scenario, summarizing how things might’ve looked, had there been a GDP in 2008.

A GDP would have caused both the Liberals and Conservatives to lose a few seats. In the details, it’s interesting to see that some of the seats the Conservatives would have lost were initially very close calls but a combined NDP/Green vote wins.

You might look at my summary chart above and think that a GDP would only have won 11 more seats than the NDP did on its own. But I’d like to argue that that seat number is less of interest than the total percent of the popular vote it would have won. At almost 25% it would have been neck-and-neck with the Liberal party and closing in on the Conservative party. With that sort of momentum, in a new election there is a chance it would start to sway additional voters or galvanize others out of their malaise, thus pushing even more votes to a GDP.

Before arguing either the critical or emotional sides, I think the first essential question is what are the problems the two parties currently face, which could be resolved by merging? Without identifying their problems it would be unclear what a merger should solve. Simply, neither the NDP nor Greens have ever received enough votes to form a government and according to ongoing polls, neither is improving its odds. To date, neither is capable of capturing the hearts and minds of enough of the population to govern.

Things the NDP Needs to Overcome

The NDP has accomplished significant things for a party that’s always been in opposition. The NDP must often realize its goals through a bargaining position, balancing the power of the dominant party (though not always, for example the recent environment bill). The NDP has generally been strong on vision but winning occasional concessions to accomplish a few goals isn’t wholly satisfying. Opposition status has grown stale.

In spite of Jack Layton’s frequent calls in the last election for voters to push the NDP high enough to form the government, the NDP remains more-or-less stuck in the polls. His calls were entirely appropriate—he needed to crystallize the goal of the campaign and make it as real as the Liberals and Conservatives. But the NDP needed a bigger boost than it got. To get that boost it needs something else.

The NDP has to break away from the all-too-common perception many Canadians hold of the NDP. While much of what the NDP wants, might actually be in-line with a large population of Canadians, I believe from what I’ve read and people I’ve talked to, that they somehow cannot see the NDP as a party that embodies the nature of the Canada they would like—but they don’t see this through a critical evaluation of current NDP positions, they see it through historical perceptions dragging on present day sentiments. There is a dissonance between what the NDP actually would like to accomplish and people’s preconceptions of NDP dogma.

The NDP is often accused (in various forms) of essentially being stuck in the rhetoric of a political past. Looking at the positions the NDP usually takes and issues it raises, I’d disagree. Nevertheless what’s undeniable about the accusation is the feeling expressed within it. A lot of people do perceive the NDP as stuck arguing yesterday’s class struggles and ideologies (even if they are still relevant). Much of the public perceives the NDP as an ideologically stuck party. People don’t see the NDP as a party with great understanding of how to approach our present problems. It’s seen as a party that lacks the political vocabulary to present a successful vision for building Canada’s future.

I’m talking about what I take to be general public perception and feeling, not necessarily the actuality of the NDP’s platform, perspective, or team. In fact, I think the actual NDP perspective and program is quite strong with vision and practicality, and merits support.

People don’t get past easy generalizations or stereotypes. This point was really obvious when Stephen Harper’s Conservatives first prorogued parliament to avoid the Conservative government’s collapse on non-confidence. The Conservatives successfully framed the NDP/Liberal & Bloc coalition using the word “socialist” to villainize the NDP, and then stick it with epithets that are easily lobbed by opponents and understood by the many. Even though I’d argue the perception is inaccurate, the socialist frame evokes a past that is more popularly linked with collapse and mistrust than know-how and vision; and in North America, it also invokes loss of freedom. These are emotional things the NDP cannot overcome.

The NDP is well-recognized for its social positions. We have our medicare system because of the early roots of the NDP. The NDP frequently takes positions, which are ahead of their time and while bashed early, often sees vindication eventually. Its well-founded stances and early insight on the best Canadian action would certainly be given greater weight if it had more influence.

Things the Green Party Needs to Overcome

Unlike the NDP, the Greens haven’t elected any MPs. The Green Party has been relegated to yelling from the outside, trying its best to motivate citizen action and sway opinion. The Green Party has been somewhat effective in increasing awareness of the issues it champions, which forces the other parties to shift their own positions if they want to prevent some of their own voters from moving to the Greens. But I don’t expect they worry too too much about losing significant numbers of voters to the Greens, which many still believe are an inexperienced, or worse, a naïve party.

The Greens weren’t capable of dispelling that perception in the last election. Embarrassing e-mails leaked pleading for barely qualified candidates to lend their names to ballots as Greens. Elizabeth May travelled the country by train, which rightly or wrongly many people viewed as a laughable way to campaign though it was reported as more likely due to insufficient funding. There were many positive elements to the train tour, especially considering the Greens were able to make a statement on the amount of pollution airplanes emit. Nevertheless in spite of some valiant attempts, the Greens were unable to popularly frame the conversation in their favour—and on an unfair meta-level that also spoke to the perception of inexperience.

The Greens have steadily increased their share of the vote but with the current parties it seems unlikely that the Greens’ current positions and appeals are likely to gain much more. Nevertheless they’ve been slowly building their support. Between the federal elections of 2006 and 2008, the Green Party saw an increase in the number of people voting for it; the Bloc, Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP all saw their numbers decrease (note the NDP saw the smallest decrease). So in spite of the Green Party’s singular momentum, in all current opinion polls it still consistently lacks the voting preferences of enough people to be much of a serious contender against the other parties.

The Green party has been ineffective at revealing itself to voters. Many Canadians don’t understand how the Green Party positions itself, frequently debating whether the Greens are left or right leaning. I’m not a fan of the left/right labeling of the political spectrum, I think it’s a distraction to public critical thinking, but a lot of people rely on the left/right short hand. The left/right label instantly indicates how a party’s priorities might line up with a person’s own thinking. To successfully dump the old left/right labels in the trash, the Greens need to affect a resounding game change on political discourse—but so far, they haven’t succeeded.

For the converted, the Greens however have built quite an interesting modern political vocabulary: abstracting environmental principles into all walks of life. It’s the only party that explicitly presents a holistic vision. The Green party’s focus on things such as prevention (health care), efficiency (waste and the economy), and interconnectedness, truly speaks to our culture. Even the Liberals’ Michael Ignatieff recognized some of this at the recent Liberal event envisioning the future Canada. He talked about a network model of governing.

In order to increase its share of the vote the Green Party will have to rely on getting people to the polls that don’t normally vote or else convincing voters from the other parties to switch. The “switching” option is unlikely. It’s unlikely the Greens will get many switchers from the Conservatives since they share very little in terms of platform, perspective, and ideology. The Greens do have some things in common with the Liberals and the Liberals have been suffering over the last few difficult years in terms of raison d’etre and organisation: they’re certainly losing some supporters. But the Greens also differ in many significant ways from the Liberals and will have a lot of convincing to do, to get Liberal supporters to change their minds. Furthermore, a more traditional switch for Liberal supporters would be to the Conservatives or NDP (depending on their leanings): it’s unclear how the Greens could overcome that.

The Bloc’s base could be a source of some new votes for the Greens since they share a number of similar stances to current issues but it’s very unlikely the Greens will be able to count on converting much of the Bloc’s base. The Greens certainly wouldn’t adopt a stance in favour of Quebec sovereignty—the major driver behind the Bloc’s existence.

That leaves the NDP. The Greens’ best chance lies in capturing the NDP’s base. Ideologically the two parties are practically indistinguishable (more on that shortly). If you’ll allow me some leeway, assume that the two parties *do* take a close-enough stand on the issues that would be of the most interest to NDP supporters. Why should an NDP voter switch to the Green Party? What is the advantage?

The Green Party isn’t promoting a particularly different perspective, they have fewer members, and unless a particular MP is above and beyond the NDP’s candidate, there’s no reason to assume that they’re going to be able to accomplish anything more than the NDP candidate. The Greens have a lot that is not clearly overcome to win over an NDP vote. And it’s never easy to change voting habits.

Edging Out the Others

The NDP and the Green Party ought to be beneficiaries of the voters that grew disillusioned with the Liberal party. The Liberals are probably closer in their positions to both the NDP and the Greens than they are to the Conservatives. So far however, neither the NDP nor the Greens have managed to capture those voters imaginations in a large-scale way. Together however, they might affect a real change in the political discourse.

Their individual problems are exacerbated by some frequent faulty logic employed by many voters. The rationale goes something like “I’d vote for the NDP (or Green Party) but they have no chance of winning, so instead I’ll vote for party x.” That’s self-defeating illogic of the worst kind. Every vote provides another shot at winning. The NDP and Greens do have just as good a chance of winning as any other party, so long as the voter casts his or her vote in their direction. Nevertheless this lousy line of reasoning is employed by a significant quantity of people. Both the Greens and the NDP must deal with it one way or another.

I propose that rather than try to convince each voter—that uses the above faulty reasoning—to change his or her perception. A combined NDP/Green party would instantly have well over 20% of the vote intentions from most polls. That means it would be an extremely strong contender beside the Liberals and Conservatives, which have tended to poll in the 20 to 30 percent range over the last several years. That displays competitive momentum in an obvious, public way. In other words people would start to feel like, “these guys have a chance at winning, I’ll vote for them.” An obviously strong third option that is both solidly rooted in Canadian history and promotes a fresh vision for our times, could motivate against malaise.

Platform – Creating the Green Democratic Party (GDP)

It’s ridiculous for parties to compete for the same voters without presenting us with any critical differentiation. Over the years, I’ve read and reread the NDP and Green platforms. I’ve been unable to discern substantial policy differences or even serious philosophical differences.

About half a year ago, I decided to do an experiment. I’d go through each party’s platform, line-by-line, and systematically match each position in a comparison grid. I wanted to see if my perception was correct or if there was indeed some significant difference between the parties. I made a lot of progress and then the Greens released an updated platform this year. Let me say that the new one doesn’t significantly change their positions, but it’s arranged and worded differently enough to thwart my experiment. It was too frustrating for me to start mapping things all over again. Nevertheless the progress I did make is what led me to be confident enough that my theory on the parties’ similarity was true. I’m making that spreadsheet public so that if anyone else is interested, they’re welcome to contribute to it.

I’d like to now summarize what I discovered in the two platforms and suggest what a framework of their union might look like. The framework combines the two parties’ issues and where the parties were not quite the same but complemented each other’s gaps, I’ve tried to compose a perspective that integrated them. I found it almost impossible to identify anything in the parties’ platforms that was irreconcilable.

The Green Party may not have been entirely able to shed its early image as a single issue party but it does have a comprehensive platform and environment issues are near the top of most peoples’ minds in our era.

The Green Party has developed as a global movement. Granted, Green parties in different countries have their differences but it’s significant that the Greens have pushed the range of discourse well beyond national boundaries as an inherent part of their make-up. This fact of the Green Party’s DNA lends inherent consideration to international relations.

I’d like to claim that a defining element of our current era is interconnectedness, particularly because of the way the Internet has changed society. The concepts and ways of seeing connections (links) between issues extends beyond just technology. We live in an era of free trade agreements (for better or worse), international treaties, and great collaborative concerns in recognition of worldwide issues. We know what goes on around the world and care, we care so much that we intervene in all kinds of ways that are not just commerce or battle. The Greens get this. The Green Party platform is structured for a holistic approach.

On the other hand, the NDP’s platform is inherently social. It’s infused with the care Canadians have for one another and presents a Canada joined together in humane and increasingly egalitarian, well-being.

The NDP platform starts immediately into the jobs front as its primary lense toward other issues. It groups things like food safety, affordable housing, consumer protections, workplace fairness standards, and innovation through that labour lens. Even on health care and the environment, it approaches these issues from the top as a manner of employment, or human engagement with the activities. So it is already moving, from one perspective, toward what the Green Party platform attempts: approaching things holistically.

The NDP is the root of our respected and socially innovative Medicare system. Although this system has some problems, there is a lot of will from both parties to improve it. In particular something the Greens can add is their approach to preventative care (and focus on efficiency). This is an under-appreciated area of work, that could alleviate much of the stresses on our current system.

The NDP is at the forefront of thinking on issues like copyright reform. While it is not explicitly explained in its platform, MPs like the NDP’s Charlie Angus have great understanding of the issues central to the Internet and digital media. These are not to be brushed aside; they profoundly impact Canadian culture and business. The Green Party, while less-vocal on this front, explicitly calls for a free and open source software strategy in its platform. To make this distinction shows that the Green Party has studied issues around cognitive liberty involved in the digital age. It indicates a strong likelihood that the Greens’ position on copyright reform and related topics would be in-line and complementary to those espoused by the NDP.

When it comes to workers’ rights and workplace equity, the Green Party might as well be cheerleading the NDP’s positions. They talk a bit differently but they call for the much of the same. I used the word “surprisingly” here because many people still think the Green Party resembles the Conservatives in this respect, but their platform does not hold up to that impression at all.

The one, perhaps glaring difference became public during the 2008 election when the NDP’s Jack Layton argued primarily for a cap-and-trade approach to addressing some of our environmental problems, while the Greens’ Elizabeth May argued primarily for a tax shift. Though they argued differently, their platforms don’t really exclude the possibility of the other.

For example, the NDP’s platform promotes tax shifting it just doesn’t call it that. Under the rubric of “creating jobs and innovation in a new energy economy” the NDP argues that each region and industry should have a strategy designed for it (not a single overall strategy that doesn’t respect the region/industry), which includes tax – reform centered around environmental well-being and broad public interest. That sounds like another way of referring to a green tax shift. The NDP’s platform actually speaks in this way in a few sections, promoting green industry through tax incentives.

Clearly then the NDP is not closed to this method of environmental reform, but perhaps wisely, it talks about it differently than the Green Party did. And why do I say “wisely” because the Conservatives have succeeded in villainizing any discussion on taxes unless it’s about decreasing them. As Stéphane Dion discovered in the prior election, it’s very difficult to get the wider public to see the value in a tax shift on subjects not-easily-made-concrete, especially when being attacked by the glossy, energetic, propaganda machine of the Conservatives.

The point here however, is that what appeared in debates as a critical platform difference turns out not to be. Those are just a few examples, I could go on pulling examples from the two platforms. It would only continue to show that they’re two parts of a complementary program.

While I previously argued that the Green Party has a lot to offer in terms of a modern political vocabulary the NDP’s political savvy and experience is essential to properly wielding this vocabulary.

Joined together, the goal of a GDP would likely be human well-being through a holistic lens, which integrates the environment, culture, and common fundamental societal needs with particular respect to economic fitness and constraints.

In broad strokes, the NDP’s platform was structured in the following categories: jobs, health care, environment, and other key priorities (which include things about accountability, human rights, communities, and global relations among other things). The Green Party’s platform was structured in the following categories: economy, averting climate catastrophe, preserving and restoring the environment, people, planet needs Canada (about gobal relations), and good government.

I’d propose that all of the items within those categories can be well organized in a Green Democratic Party platform structured with the following categories: Work and the Economy, Environment, Well-being, The Greater Community (global relations), and Governance.

After studying the two parties’ platforms I filled in my proposed GDP platform structure with the main concerns in each of its categories—roughly 70 items. I was in the middle of (before the Green Party released its newest platform) identifying the passages of each individual party’s existing platform where they clearly show support corresponding with the proposed GDP platform.

Although I started this project mostly to satisfy my own curiosity, if you’re interested, you can

• download the GDP platform union in ODF spreadsheet format (OpenOffice.org Calc)
• access the GDP platform union on the Google Docs publicly shared spreadsheet (it’s shared, feel free to contribute).

I’ve rearranged the data from the 2008 election to see what it would have looked like if the NDP and Green Party merged as a GDP. If you’re curious to see what would have happened in your riding or how it would have changed the election results, you can download it here (ODF format) or view it online through Google Docs.

And finally, I’m not the only one to consider this possibility. I notice that there are two Facebook groups: GREENDP and NDP & Green Party Merge devoted to an NDP/Green merger and a very interesting discussion under the context of fair electoral reform.

We’ve been hearing reports about the Conservatives secret negotiations on ACTA and CETA. While there is public outcry over the stipulations in these agreements (now that we’ve finally learned, for example, the complete ACTA text) the Conservative government acts unconcerned. In Canada, our laws don’t seem to line up in a way that easily enable regressive, old-economy thinking like “digital locks” and other copyright-oriented failures–and that’s a source of concern to certain special interests.

What is Harper’s gang of Conservatives doing? They’re pushing a new bill, that reportedly will disregard the thousands of Canadian voices consulted on copyright last year. This new bill is already being likened to a Canadian DMCA; Michael Geist writes about Heritage Minister James Moore’s apparent about-face (5 May 2010)¹

“Moore has argued for a virtual repeat of Bill C-61, with strong digital locks provisions similar to those found in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and a rejection of a flexible fair dealing approach.”

See the underlying implication? Geist pointed it out in his article, noting how the bill would immediately impact the other global negotiations (ACTA). That’s a concern. First off, the Conservatives repeatedly claimed that things like ACTA would not force Canadian law changes. The CBC reported last year (1 December 2009)¹ on Conservative Industry Minister, Tony Clement’s response to the NDP’s Charlie Angus (Angus has been a rare fount of intelligence when it comes to modern copyright reform) “The ACTA negotiations are in fact subservient to any legislation put forward in this House. . .” In other words the domestic changes now, allow the Conservatives to claim they didn’t lie. They’ll change Canadian laws in a way that just happens to be in accord with ACTA, prior to signing ACTA.

Remember, after getting a couple attempts at new copyright legislation wrong, the Conservatives set up a ruse to distract the public. The copyright consultation ended up being a bit of a catharsis for a frustrated public and a publicity stunt for the Conservatives. In fact, the public consultation on copyright issues was a great idea, if the Conservative government were actually prepared to listen to the public’s desires for fairer, less restrictive regulations.

Failings of the DMCA

The United States enacted its DMCA in 1998. Plenty of people from all perspectives expressed their dismay with the huge problems it would cause, unfortunately the DMCA took effect anyway. In March 2010, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) published a study³ (PDF) on more than 10 years of consequences of the DMCA. It found the following

“The DMCA Chills Free Expression and Scientific Research.
Experience . . . demonstrates that it is being used to stifle free speech and scientific research. . . have chilled the legitimate activities of journalists, publishers, scientists, students, programmers, and members of the public.

The DMCA Jeopardizes Fair Use.
By banning all acts of circumvention, and all technologies and tools that can be used for circumvention, the DMCA grants to copyright owners the power to unilaterally eliminate the public’s fair use rights. Already, the movie industry’s use of encryption on DVDs has curtailed consumers’ ability to make legitimate, personal-use copies of movies they have purchased.

The DMCA Impedes Competition and Innovation.
Rather than focusing on pirates, some have wielded the DMCA to hinder legitimate competitors. For example, the DMCA has been used to block aftermarket competition in laser printer toner cartridges, garage door openers, and computer maintenance services. . .

The DMCA Interferes with Computer Intrusion Laws.
Further, the DMCA has been misused as a general-purpose prohibition on computer network access. . .”

In the Canadian context, back in 2008, Michael Geist wrote up a bunch of reasons that a Canadian DMCA was problematic⁴. Although the Conservatives swapped out their Industry Minister and we’re talking about a new bill, much of Geist’s rationale still holds. Here are some of the things he pointed out about the prior Conservative DMCA attempt, if their new version is like the old, we’ll have to worry about the same problems.

“Supreme Court of Canada has emphasized the importance of balance between creators rights and user rights, the Canadian DMCA eviscerates user rights in the digital environment by virtually eliminating fair dealing. . . Canadian DMCA erects new barriers for teachers, students, and schools at every level who now face the prospect of infringement claims if they want to teach using digital media. . . Canadian DMCA will render it virtually impossible to protect against the invasion of privacy by digital media companies. . . Canadian DMCA means that consumers no longer control their own personal property. . .”

If you were to buy a media device like an iPod, your use of it is controlled by a third party. This already happens with Apple and other companies to some degree. Consider this excellent piece by Russell McOrmond⁵ (3 May 2010). He’s talking about DRM (initially known as digital rights management but more aptly called digital restrictions management for the way it is truly used), he’s not talking about the DMCA or copyright changes. However DRM is a problem compounded by DMCA-like laws because those DMCA laws prevent people from lawfully circumventing the silly (and I’d argue unethical and abusive) DRM that already exists. Russell makes it simple:

“. . . we have a scenario where people are buying something, but where they are not expected to retain ownership-like rights. To me it is obvious that if I own something that it is me, and not someone else, that maintains the keys for any locks applied to what I own. . .”

It’s worse than that though. If you continue reading, McOrmond points out a significant transformation in how we interact with our cultural manifestations.

“Anti-competitive locks on content threaten to cause a transformation of traditional retail content distribution from where the product is the content and the customer is the audience, to one where the product is the audience and the customer is the copyright holder. If a small number of locked platform providers are able to dominate the distribution networks for copyrighted works it will then be these platform providers, not copyright holders, that are in control of the business models.”

You see, the copyright holder has the reins on what the audience can get however the device manufacturers manage how. Together these manufacturers and copyright holders control everything the audience is allowed to experience. And that’s to be codified in law. No wonder major music and movie industries push so hard for these new copyright laws, they stand to control so much.

Look, it’s fine to try to appeal to everyone’s tangible pleasures with the points about not controlling your own “property”. But our very rights to interact and share our own culture are on the line. Our rights for freedom of expression are at risk of being restricted and that is going to hurt in unimaginable ways.

Why do these old industries need laws to coerce everyone into accepting their control. The control they want is contrary to the digital medium where information flows infinitely and effortlessly reproduces itself. The control they want is wrenched–flawed–from a physical realm in which control was tangible and nothing really could be reproduced infinitely or effortlessly.

Canada needs to evolve and build its economy, especially as we move out of a recession and face a huge opportunity with digital media. The way many old media companies (those pushing for DMCA-style restrictive, unbalanced copyright reforms) used to make money is irrelevant in the digital realm. This is the greatest bone of contention that I have with the push for DMCA-like copyright reform. It’s biased toward ways of thinking that simply don’t pertain to our modern culture, economy, and way of living. It’s biased toward industries that need to evolve or be put out of their misery. Helping irrelevant non-evolving industries to struggle along just puts Canada at the very back of an emerging world economy. And it will do it at the cost of enslaving our culture making criminals out of innocent citizens.

This post is not so much about what the Conservatives have done, but rather what they’re about to do. It’s time to once again get up in arms, protest, write letters, and spread the word about the impending shortsightedness of an upcoming Conservative copyright bill. And in case copyright still sounds like a dull and arcane issue, please understand that the way these copyright bills have been going (under the Conservatives and in certain other countries’ sorry legislations) they will have profound, deep-reaching impacts on your life.

Geist recommends writing (physical) letters to your MP as well as the ministers and PM responsible, “No stamp is required – be sure to include your home address and send it to the House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6″. There’s some more information from the Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights

We cannot yet fully understand the first issue because of the second issue. The second issue remains cloudy because the Conservatives have denied, attacked, and generally misdirected any attempts to understand the first issue, and now we know that they’ve done so in breach of parliamentary privilege. So to get to the bottom of the first issue, we’ve got to start by resolving the third. Fortunately, yesterday’s (28 April 2010) ruling by Commons Speaker, Peter Milliken¹ finally gets things moving.

Some background:

Since at least 2007, groups like the Canadian Military Police Complaints Commission, Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association have been attempting to uncover what may be an improper way in which detainees in Afghanistan were handled. They uncovered a fair amount of information to raise serious red flags. Sworn testimonies from senior officers that countered Conservative, Peter MacKay’s comments attempting to dismiss the allegations.

Back in 2007, we also started learning how the Conservatives’ orchestrated themselves to disrupt parliament. The Conservatives censored documents that they knew would prevent parliament from further investigating the Afghan detainee potential problem. But that was 2007. Things only got worse (from the perspective of accountability, transparency, and democratic governing) as the Conservatives launched a vicious attack on the respected whistle-blower Richard Colvin, then boycotted a special parliamentary committee that was supposed to look into the detainee abuse allegations. The Globe and Mail² has a timeline of some of the events that transpired between 2007 and 2010.

“November, 2009: The Commons committee reports to the House what it considered to be a breach of its privileges in relation to its requests for documents from the government.

December, 2009: It is revealed that the government has blacked out large sections of relevant files handed over to the MPCC inquiry. The Commons committee’s efforts to obtain information, including the unredacted reports of Mr. Colvin, are similarly stymied.”

The great problem is the third point that I mentioned at the beginning. The Conservatives repeatedly censored or otherwise blocked parliament from seeing the information they had. Often they reported that they had to do this in the interest of security. But that’s not a believable statement. It’s unlcear how it can be ok for your own party to see the documents but not others in the House of Commons elected by the Canadian people. It’s never been clear why non-Conservatives operating with all kinds of other sensitive issues to run the country could be considered a security risk–and as I’ll point out below from Milliken’s ruling, it’s also contrary to how our form of government is supposed to work.

Fortunately, after significant and careful consideration, Speaker Peter Milliken ruled on the issue. The CBC³ reported (26 April 2010)

“The federal government breached parliamentary privilege with its refusal to produce uncensored documents related to the treatment of Afghan detainees and must provide the material to MPs within two weeks, Speaker Peter Milliken has ruled.”

And this all goes toward the title of this post… a dose of democracy. Harper’s Conservative government hasn’t been operating within our democratic framework. Milliken’s ruling re-sets our expectations–it is simply not acceptable to abuse our democratic institutions. Milliken remarks in his ruling on the gravity of what he had to determine:

“As Speaker, one of my principal duties is to safeguard the rights and privileges of Members and of the House. In doing so, the Chair is always mindful of the established precedents, usages, traditions and practices of the House and of the role of the Chair in their ongoing evolution. It is no exaggeration to say that it is a rare event for the Speaker to be seized of a matter as complex and as heavy with consequence as the matter before us now.”

Referring to parliament’s power to have access to the documents, Milliken said

“In the arguments presented, the Chair has heard this power described as ―unabridged, ―unconditional, ―unqualified, ―absolute and, furthermore, one which is limited only by the discretion of the House itself. But this view is not shared by all and so it is a privilege whose limits have now been called into question.”

Who was calling those limits into question? Harper’s Conservative Government, by refusing to deliver upon the Hosue of Common’s request. Milliken’s logic on this is quite clear. After he enumerates previously established expert insight on parliamentary power and procedure, all of which support the point that parliament has unlimited power to request the documents in question, he discusses the Conservative government’s position.

“With regard to the extent of the right, the Chair would like to address the contention of the Minister of Justice, made on March 31, that the Order of the House of December 10 is a breach of the constitutional separation of powers between the executive and the legislature. Having noted that the three branches of government must respect the legitimate sphere of activity of the others, the Minister argued that the Order of the House was tantamount to an unlawful extension of the House’s privileges. This can only be true if one agrees with the notion that the House’s power to order the production of documents is not absolute. The question would then be whether this interpretation subjugates the legislature to the executive.”

In other words, the Conservatives (wrongly) tried to make parliament subservient while at the same time (rightly) reaffirming that the branches of government had to respect the “legitimate sphere and activity of the others.” It turns out the House hadn’t made an unlawful extension of its privileges. Thus the Conservative government must obey the House’s request.

“No exceptions are made for any category of Government documents, even those related to national security. Therefore, the Chair must conclude that it is perfectly within the existing privileges of the House to order production of the documents in question. Bearing in mind that the fundamental role of Parliament is to hold the Government to account. . .”

To finish things off Milliken gave the Conservative government two weeks to work with parliament to comply with the document requests. According to an article in the Toronto Star⁴ (27 April 2010)

“If they don’t, the Conservative government could stand charged with contempt of Parliament and the supreme law of the land.”

We’ll have to wait and see if the Conservatives take the ruling to heart and decide to operate in accord with our democratic institutions, rather than obstruct them.

(PS, here’s a link explaining the relevant parlimentary procedure)

In January the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), Kevin Page, explained that the deficit had become structural, meaning it’ll keep existing when our economy is back up to snuff (if it gets there). I’ll have more to say about the budget another time, but consider an element in what happened today, the decrease of corporate income taxes.

The Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson explained¹ (4 March 2010) that Harper is determined to eliminate the deficit by 2015. Of course, we know that Jim Flaherty presents this as happening largely through an upbeat economy, one that grows so well he doesn’t have to raise taxes and simply must prevent spending increases. But this message has been somewhat confusing. Flaherty used to talk about not allowing spending to grow. Later the Conservatives appointed Stockwell Day as the man to make cuts. Their messaging seems to vacillate between limiting spending growth and making cuts. They certainly aren’t going to raise any taxes.

The CBC reported³ (4 March 2010) on Flaherty’s perspective

“The government’s plan to get ahead of its $54 billion deficit is built largely on the back of $17.6 billion worth of savings over the next five years that will come from streamlining and reducing the operating and administrative costs of government departments. That plus a broadening tax base as the economy improves will be enough to bridge the gap, Flaherty said.”

Ibbitson reminds us early, what the PBO reported: the deficit is structural and regardless of Flaherty’s optimism, it’s very unlikely to go away as Flaherty says.

Now, switching topics a bit, Ibbitson writes

“With costs rising by 2.5 per cent a year, after accounting for inflation and population growth, health care is consuming nearly half of the budget in some provinces, even as the baby boom heads into retirement. Canadians need to confront the truth that the health-care system as it exists simply can’t be sustained.

“The federal government will be under intense pressure from the provinces, who will not be able to make ends meet because of the explosion in health care spending,” warns Pierre Fortin, an economist who teaches at the Université du Québec à Montréal. “The provinces will always be at the door, asking for more money.”"

I think this is significant commentary. Take stock, a structural deficit is established, and now the Conservatives are on track to further decrease the amount of money the government takes in by reducing corporate taxes even more than they already have. According to page 67 of the budget² (and mentioned throughout)

“The federal general corporate income tax rate was reduced to 18 per cent on January 1, 2010. It will be further reduced to 16.5 per cent on January 1, 2011 and to 15 per cent on January 1, 2012.”

That means Canada will have the lowest corporate income tax rate in the G7. The hope is that that will attract more investment. But at what cost?

Losing the federal surplus meant we lost our safety buffer. If something unexpectedly worse occurs than this recession, which we seem to be leaving, we’re in trouble. But that’s a big if. The heart of the worry here is that faced with the inevitable stresses of both the health of an aging population and the fact that there will be fewer people generating revenue for the government, now the government is giving itself further stressors by decreasing another source of revenue, corporate income taxes. Even in good times, that means there’s less the government can do to promote Canadian well-being.

So why do this? Are the Conservatives making a big gamble that the economy is going to improve so much, our worries of greater problems will not come to pass? Or are they being irrational? I don’t think they’re gambling or being irrational. They’ve calculated exactly what’s needed to bring about a widespread crisis in the government’s ability to fund the programs we expect. The Conservatives need to bring about a crisis in order to implement their vision.

A crisis makes arguments for drastic change seem required, people react. And after gradually being lulled into a low-tax stasis without much effort, it will be easy for Conservatives to make the degraded services around us seem unworthy of funding. It’s much harder to rebuild something anew than to maintain and improve upon what is working well. I can just hear the arguments “look at the state of health care, our equipment is useless, we don’t have the staff, etc. clearly the public option doesn’t work!” of course forgetting that it can work quite well when funded and operated properly. People will just see it in crisis state.

A government lacking the funds to do much, is one that cannot ensure health care and social services to its people. Indeed, when our health care system is so far extended beyond capacity, watch, the Conservatives will argue that the only solution is to bring in the private sector. And health care is only one example, there are many other government services that will suffer similar fates probably even sooner.

(P.S. I remember a time not long ago, when one of the arguments for doing business in Canada was our health system. The argument went something like, without companies having to foot the cost of health insurance, like they do to some degree in the US, an expense is saved along with a lot of bureaucratic work that doesn’t have to be done. Cut back on your HR team! More efficient employees because they’re healthy and on-the-job! That kind of stuff. If the Conservatives’ budgeting steps really do cause the crisis I’m suggesting they’re designed to, we’ll see what happens to this little bit of persuasion.)

“The government has increased its spending on the promotion of the January, 2009, Economic Action Plan by $5-million – on top of the initial allotment of $34-million – for a 15-per-cent increase.”

It’s problematic that the amount being spent on these ads is so massive. Surely there are a multitude of ways to spread this information that would not cost an outrageous $40 million of taxpayer money, which could otherwise be spent on the actual action.

Conservative spokespeople justify the ad spending as a form of educating the public on what is available to help, which seems like a good idea in principle. Interesting that much of the actual help provided, for example assistance to the unemployed, is available against the Conservative’s wishes. They were largely forced into that one by the NDP.

The tone of the ads tends toward optimistic and uplifting, suggesting lots of government help is available and things will be better. Again, this seems good in principle, but the frequent intentional public linkage of Conservatives with these ads, ties that strong, action-bound feeling in the ads with one party in particular–the Conservatives. It’s not too hard to find images in the press featuring Conservatives against the backdrop of the EAP imagery. And that’s no accident. Stephen Harper’s iron-fisted control of information and imagery is notorious (there are often press reports of not being allowed the normal freedoms in the photos it takes of him, and pre-made shots are provided instead).

The photograph in this CBC article³ (9 November 2009) on the subject of the American company contracted to produce the EAP signs. I don’t know who took that picture or under what conditions. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it–just the PM seeming to give a talk about the EAP. But when these images pop up frequently and are positioned so that that’s what is maintained in the public eye, something starts to feel wrong–like we, the public, are being propagandized for one party’s message.

A Canadian Press² article (10 October 2009) had an in-depth article on the subject, mentioning:

“The Privy Council Office, the non-partisan bureaucratic arm of the Prime Minister’s Office, has never been comfortable administering the website for the Economic Action Plan – and informed Harper of its misgivings at the time of last January’s federal budget. . . . While the story is being denied by both PCO and PMO, the extraordinary claim originates from several sources within the famously discreet Privy Council Office.”

Notice the screenshot on that page laden with Conservative imagery and photos. Rather than being a useful non-partisan service about what the government is engaged in, it appears to be serving as ads that help guide public sentiment toward the Tories.

Rick Mercer pokes fun at the controversy in this clip

Notice the images in the background–they cycle through various Conservative publicity pics involving the EAP. Mercer’s bit manages to call attention to all three controversies. The Tory tie-in, the amount being spent on the ads, and the not-to-be-missed irony, that the EAP signs themselves weren’t even produced in Canada (tax payer money paid to a foreign company rather than helping a Canadian one, all for the sake of promoting the idea that the EAP is here to help).

Dani Rodrik‘s thoughtful post on Share the World’s Resources¹ (15 September 2009) explains

“The beauty of a Tobin tax is that it would discourage short-term speculation without having much adverse effect on long-term international investment decisions. Consider, for example, a tax of 0.25 percent applied to all cross-border financial transactions. Such a tax would instantaneously kill the intra-day trading that takes place in pursuit of profit margins much smaller than this, as well as the longer-term trades designed to exploit minute differentials across markets.”

Why does he say “the beauty”? Because the type of speculation under concern can be problematic in a number of ways. He mentions the resources it consumes. There is also the notion that countries have to increase their interest rates to deal with some of the fallout from speculation activities. That can be a big problem for a country’s economy and thus the citizens that have to deal with that problem.

A Tobin tax also could raise, overall, extremely large quantities of money without causing an undue burden on those taxed. Currently, it’s that money that would get raised, which is attracting interest in the tax. The money could be used to cushion banks in the event of further economic disaster, or else be put to important use for various problems like world health or environmental improvements.

An article in The Globe and Mail² (5 February 2010) quoted French Minister of Economic Affairs, Industry and Employment, Christine Lagarde saying “I am, economically speaking, a liberally minded person – I’m not a state interventionist. . .” and yet she is in favour of the tax, recognizing the potential for raising money that world governments could use in myriad beneficial ways.

The article explains some technological hurdles, which are easy to overcome. One point it mentions is that

“The world would need to design a centralized financial clearinghouse for all transactions. As it happens, this idea is popular elsewhere, notably among governments hoping to put an end to tax havens and other tax-avoidance schemes.”

So, an unintended consequence of implementing a Tobin tax might also be to clean up tax havens. But let’s return to Flaherty and the Conservatives. On 7 November 2009, the Financial Post³ quoted him saying

“It’s one of the ideas that’s on the table, but is not particularly attractive to me as finance minister of Canada. . . We have been a government that has been reducing taxes.”

I’ve argued previously that reducing taxes in Canada has generally not been a good move, but the momentum of reduction seems to be the basis for which Flaherty doesn’t want to consider a completely different sort of tax. He doesn’t seem to care about the reasons the tax could be useful or not. According to another Globe and Mail article⁴ (19 February 2010) the Harper Conservative government stated

“Canada will not be supporting the introduction of a new global tax on financial services and urged countries instead to adopt sound regulatory practices like Canada’s. . .”

I’m not suggesting that adopting sound regulatory practices is a bad idea, it’s not, it’s a good one. Rather I’m calling into question why the Conservative government will not also consider the Tobin tax as a means for generating revenue that could be used to help it dig its way out of things like, the structural deficit it’s created? Or even further the safeties provided by sound regulatory practices.

Finally, I’d like to sum up with commentary from The Council of Canadians⁵ (22 February 2010) blog.

“At only 0.05% on top of speculative banking transactions, the Tobin Tax (named after the economist, James Tobin, who proposed it in 1972) or Robin Hood Tax (named after a new British campaign) could help all countries meet essentially all today’s pressing needs: food insecurity, climate change mitigation, underdevelopment, water pollution and lack of access to public services, etc. By the way, Harper — this tax you oppose could help mothers and children, too.”

For more information about the Tobin tax idea, take a look at the UK’s Robin Hood Tax Web site. It explains how it works, who it really affects, and why it’s needed.

According to the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) 28 January¹ 2007, Harper committed in 2006 to

“. . . support women’s human rights and I agree that Canada has to do more to meet its international obligations to women’s equality. If elected I will take concrete and immediate measures, as recommended by the United Nations, to ensure that Canada fully upholds its commitments to women.”

Instead, he started off by cutting 43% of the operating budget from the Status of Women Canada by closing 12 of the federal agency’s 16 offices. But that’s just to start.

Consider this column in the Winnipeg Free Press² (10 February 2010) about Harper’s Conservatives’ deeds.

“In late summer 2006, the Conservatives killed the internationally acclaimed $2.75-million Court Challenges Program created in 1978 to provide federal funding for women and minorities to fight systemic inequality and discrimination. . . .

Also that year, they removed the advancement of women’s equality from the mandate of Status of Women Canada. . .

They have been diligently rewriting Canada’s foreign affairs language to erase advocacy and empowerment. The phrase “gender equality” has been replaced with “equality of men and women.” Currently, the federal cabinet is being lobbied by a group of its own backbenchers to end funding to the International Planned Parenthood Federation.”

The article points out that in order to advance women’s health, you need to take into account the various interconnected issues that contribute to health problems, particularly with respect to rights covering “. . . sexual violence, child marriage, sexual trafficking, female genital mutilation and lack of economic autonomy, political representation, land rights and inheritance rights” Unfortunately the Conservatives continue to be less than great proponents for birth control or abortion safety.

The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) is making press with its report (PDF) on the backwards slide of women’s status in Canada since 2004. The CBC published news³ (23 February 2010) about this report

“Women currently account for 22.1 per cent of members of Parliament, even though they make up just over 50 per cent of the population. And while that’s the highest political participation rate for women in Canadian history, it’s inched up only marginally over the past dozen years.

The report also slams the government for scrapping a nascent $5 billion over five years national child care program and contends that “senior advisers within the office of the prime minister [have] strong links to anti-feminist organizations.”

It’s true that there are some areas in which we’ve seen slight improvements such as better access to higher education but the larger setbacks are the more telling story. Consider the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap reports. As you can see from this image from the report (PDF), Canada has dropped to 25th in 2009 from 14th in 2006 in terms of worsening gender inequality.

It’s also clear that Canada is behind the sample average on the economy, education, and health: that’s three out of four of the dimensions being graphed.

The Toronto Star⁴ (23 February 2010) also reported on the topic. It focused more on some of the differences over the last several years, leading to the reports claims that we’ve seen an erosion in the status of women.

“Kathy Lahey, a professor of law and gender studies at Queen’s University, whose research is part of the report sent to the UN this week, says Canada can’t claim many bragging rights.

She points out, for instance, that while more women may be in the workforce and at post-secondary institutions, their wage gap with men was actually worse in 2001 than it was in 1981. . .”

There may be a lot of different factors contributing to these declines, but it’s clear that the concrete cuts Conservatives have made to federal programs assisting women, do not help. If Harper really wants Canada to lead on women’s health, he’s got to do more than doublespeak on an international stage.

“At a low-key news conference in Calgary, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said Canada’s new goal is to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent below its 2005 levels by 2020. He said this puts Canada’s target in step with what is planned in the U.S.”

In April 2007, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government had promised to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% from 2006 levels (GHG plan from 2007²). While this sounds admirable at first glance, it’s actually quite weak. It puts Canada far short of the amount we agreed to in our original Kyoto commitment (6% below 1990 levels by 2012). An IPS article³ from 26 April 2007 noted that “…Canada’s emissions have shot up 30 to 35 percent since 1990…”

While continuing to trounce Kyoto, the Conservatives also pull a fast one in terms of our Copenhagen commitment. The aforementioned Vancouver Sun article states that Canada’s emissions in 2005 were actually higher than in 2006. So the Conservatives have decreased the commitment both by percentage and in total.

The Toronto Star⁴ (01 February 2010) wrote

“Prentice told an audience at the University of Calgary Monday that business needs to work closely with the provincial and federal governments to ensure a greener exploitation of the sandy bitumen stores in northern Alberta and achieve the goal of making the country a clean energy superpower.”

Jim Prentice is beginning to sound like he’s co-opting NDP messaging about “green-collar” jobs. The NDP and other parties have certainly pushed the notion of creating jobs by boosting new green industries in the face of looming environmental disaster. How else can you read Prentice’s desire to make the country “a clean energy superpower”? The problem is this attitude is not one that the Conservatives actually hold. In fact, it’s the opposite of Harper’s opinion: “…the ‘battle of Kyoto’ — our campaign to block the job-killing, economy-destroying Kyoto accord…”. To date, the Conservatives’ inaction, stalling, and failure when it comes to environmental concerns testify to the fact that they don’t truly hold the position Prentice suggested.

Prentice mixes two ideas in the same statement, on the one hand he simply says greener in reference to the tar sands (which doesn’t mean much considering the weak GHG emissions targets). On the other he’s talking about clean energy, which the tar sands are not.

The Star article also quotes Prentice repeating the standard Conservative don’t-lead & do-nothing, defeatist approach saying

“It’s absolutely counterproductive and utterly pointless for Canada and Canadian businesses to strike out on their own, to set and to pursue targets that will ultimately create barriers to trade and put us at a competitive disadvantage…”

But he doesn’t justify why it’s counterproductive or pointless. While implying it, he doesn’t justify why rational targets like Kyoto would create barriers. He didn’t justify why Canadian policy should follow the United States. Even if we assume all of his statements are true, he still needs to justify why some barriers on trade are more important than environmental conservation and the future well-being of our species.

Prentice seems to mock his own government when he says

“Absent this kind of Canadian leadership, we will be cast as a global poster child for environmentally unsound resource development. Canadians expect and deserve more than that…”

Because of the Conservatives’ inaction and lack of leadership on the environment, we’ve already been cast as the global poster child for environmentally unsound resource development.

Let’s return to the Vancouver Sun article for one more quote; Prentice said of the latest Conservative plan:

“The unfulfilled promise of Kyoto we leave behind us. This is an approach that will work. It will only work if everyone who emits carbon puts forward their reduction obligations and does so in the way Canada has today…”

Kyoto is unfulfilled because the Conservatives trashed it. Let’s hope the rest of the world doesn’t approach its obligations the way the Conservatives’ version of Canada has.

Update 01 Feb 2010 8pm: The Globe and Mail⁵ is reporting that Jim Prentice attacked Québec’s progressive, modern environmental policy. Québec is a leader, forging ahead with moderately aggressive new environmental conservation action, which also happens to be in-line with policies many US states are considering, Prentice calls it “absolutely counter-productive and utterly pointless” continuing by describing the move as “folly.” Strange position for an environment minister to take.

Charlie Angus is performing a valuable job, pressing for answers on behalf of the Canadian public. I’d like to paraphrase a few of the points he raises, but first, he introduces the broad problem as follows

“On December 12th in the House of Commons, I pressed Industry Minister Tony Clement for an explanation as to why the government was engaged in public consultation on copyright reform when, simultaneously, the government was negotiating a treaty that would undermine a Canadian solution to digital copyright issues.

At that time, the Minister informed the House that the ACTA agreement would be subservient to Canadian copyright reform legislation. But what he failed to explain is that if Canada agrees to ACTA before new legislation is introduced, the government will have given away to the United States Trade Representative (USTR), the right of the House to shape the substance of any copyright reform legislation.”

The public consultation he’s referring to in the first paragraph was the Canadian Consultation on Copyright in 2009. This consultation, through town hall meetings, online fora, and a large-scale open call for responses to pertinent issues facing modern copyright (my submission), brought Canadians (roughly 8000 of us) from all areas and interests together to debate and voice a (hopefully) positive future for Canadian copyright policy.

Angus points out that the treaty has strayed into commercial waters. That’s opposed to simply addressing counterfeiting issues likes its name falsely suggests. In fact, it’s so deep in the waters of private commercial interests that the CBC² (26 January 2010), reporting on a number of consumer rights and civil liberties groups, described their stance thus:

“ACTA, which they say threatens the fundamental freedoms of the people living in member countries. The treaty is being motivated by U.S. entertainment lobbies, and would allow internet providers to spy on customers and criminalize the everyday behaviour of millions of people, they said.”

Radio-Canada³ (26 January 2010) quoted Anthony Hémond, avocat à l’Union des consommateurs

“Ils ne peuvent pas négocier comme ça, en secret, un accord d’une telle importance et qui a des répercussions si grandes sur nos libertés fondamentales.”

Angus wastes no time asking about the role Van Loan’s dept plays in this. It’s poignant especially since during this period of prorogue, when the Conservatives have prevented the wider representation of Canadian interests from being acted upon through parliament. Yet Van Loan’s department of International Trade continues to engage in negotiations on ACTA.

The letter continues to ask why the secrecy, requesting it be remedied. It asks for sections of the draft agreement to be produced. Angus raises a number of concerns about the lengths Canadian officials have been instructed to go in their negotiations and how this impacts Canadian privacy and legal concerns. The letter also points out that both India and China have not been party to this agreement. Their growing economies coupled with their treatment of copyright and “intellectual property” regulations make them a competitive force that should not be disregarded when legislating our own policy.

Angus’s letter lists specifics too. He asks about the degree to which ACTA provisions could allow corporate interests to bar individuals’ access to the Internet. One method that has seen problematic results in a few countries already, is the three strikes model. That model coupled with US-style “notice-and-take-down” (as opposed to Canada’s notice-and-notice) enforcement means many would likely lose their access to the Internet or worse; without necessarily being proven guilty of anything.

In a Toronto Star article⁴ (25 January 2010), Michael Geist points out a cost issue as well:

“Much of the three-strikes debate has focused on its impact on Internet users, yet the price of establishing such systems has scarcely been discussed.. . . Initial government estimates peg the expense to Internet providers alone at as much as £500 million ($850 million Canadian) over 10 years.. . . the U.K. estimates are consistent with a 2006 Industry Canada commissioned study on the costs of Internet provider notification schemes. The study concluded that the cost of a single notification was $11.73 for larger Internet providers (more than 100,000 subscribers) and $32.73 for smaller Internet providers. Considering the sheer number of notifications – last summer Bell Canada acknowledged receiving 15,000 notifications each month – the costs quickly run into the millions of dollars.”

Those costs would certainly be a burden on Canadian providers and likely get pushed onto consumers.

When Angus talks about the US-established tradition in the courts with respect to people that are not directly responsible for infringement, secondary liability, he calls it a “litigator’s dream” and “nightmare for the general public”. Thinking about technology, copyright, and ISPs, he says

“What instructions have you given your negotiators regarding the USTR’s push to initiate a secondary liability regime? In leaked official ACTA documents from the EU, it is clear provisions would use treaty obligations as a means of superceding Canadian case law and imposing the U.S. Supreme Court’s Grokster opinion upon Canadians.”

The Conservatives already failed to push through two bills changing copyright law. These bills were shown to have been heavily influenced by ailing industries seeking to maintain their outmoded business models. They showed little regard to the well-being of the Canadian public, nor long-term savvy for garnering a competitive Canadian economic edge on the world stage. Yet what we’ve all learned so far of ACTA and CETA imply that these treaties will force laws here at home, in exactly the direction we don’t want.

The former bills were loudly shot down through public outcry. However, it appears that now the Conservatives are taking advantage of public distraction with other issues to push ahead in spite of the public’s desires. Peter Van Loan ought to show that his party can mean what it says when it claims to be accountable. The Conservatives need to be transparent and answer to the public’s concerns, especially when it’s already asked what those concerns are in a broad public consultation.

(Note: Michael Geist has published a detailed timeline of the ACTA events and three part backgrounder on the topic).

The NDP, Liberals, Bloc Québécois, and Greens all had representatives speaking among a number of performers, which received applause and support from everyone. As the organizers pointed out, the issue of legitimate democracy is non-partisan.

I took the photos below (posted on a Picasa Web album) to try and capture a the variety of signs. Not all are entirely legible but I thought it was interesting to see that people protested issues like Harper’s poor environmental record, other than just the abuses of democracy. For example, the signs with oily maple leaves with the red bar through them have a message protesting the oil sands.

News reports from The Gazette¹, La Presse², La Presse³ (23 January 2010)

start at Parc Émilie-Gamelin

start at Parc Émilie-Gamelin

start at Parc Émilie-Gamelin

start at Parc Émilie-Gamelin

marching

marching

le Carré Philips

marching

le Carré Philips, Thomas Mulcair (NDP)

le Carré Philips, Thomas Mulcair (NDP), Gilles Duceppe (Bloc Québécois)

le Carré Philips, Justin Trudeau (Liberal)

le Carré Philips, les nanas déchaîné

le Carré Philips, Marc Garneau (Liberal)

le Carré Philips, Jacques Rivard (Green)

le Carré Philips, Thomas Mulcair (NDP), I was pleasantly surprised
to hear him receive the loudest applause

le Carré Philips, Thomas Mulcair (NDP)

le Carré Philips, Gilles Duceppe (Bloc Québécois)

le Carré Philips, the raging grannies

le Carré Philips

]]> http://www.conmem.ca/2010/01/23/la-manifestation-contre-la-prorogation-montreal-photos/feed/ 5 http://www.conmem.ca/2010/01/21/harper-1997-speech-to-todays-action/ http://www.conmem.ca/2010/01/21/harper-1997-speech-to-todays-action/#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 04:28:40 +0000 Joshua Chalifour http://www.conmem.ca/?p=381 The point of this post is to see how Stephen Harper may have changed since his 1997 speech to the right wing US think tank, Council for National Policy.

Since the remarks get pulled back into the public sphere regularly to haunt him, it’s reasonable to consider his old commentary in relation to what he’s done as Prime Minister and figure out if his thinking has grown or changed much.

A lot of people are probably familiar with the speech I’m referencing (full text available on the CTV Web site¹). In the speech, Harper made a bunch of disparaging remarks about his country and fellow citizens, and presented a perspective that was grossly simplistic. While some of what he said was probably intended for humour value, the observations, jokes, and overall perspective represent his manner of thinking.

I’ll quote Mr. Harper and then match the quote to something relevant in his tenure as PM.

1) “…it’s legendary that if you’re like all Americans, you know almost nothing except for your own country. Which makes you probably knowledgeable about one more country than most Canadians.”

• Change? Yes: This jest makes one think that Harper wasn’t very impressed with Canadians’ knowledge of history, current events, government, etc. Considering his joke presented the problem, he must have been concerned about this lack of knowledge. Usually a lack of knowledge is solved through learning, or education. While Harper used to be concerned with Canadian education, now he prefers to cut programs designed to improve it.

2) “Canadians make no connection between the fact that they are a Northern European welfare state and the fact that we have very low economic growth, a standard of living substantially lower than yours, a massive brain drain of young professionals to your country, and double the unemployment rate of the United States.”

• Change? Not really: It’s possible Harper’s comment was relatively neutral, suggesting simply that there’s a connection between welfare and low economic growth, indeed you’d imagine that if there isn’t much economic growth there might be more unemployed people needing assistance. However taken in context of the rest of his cynical speech it reads more like he’s disparaging the normally high standard of living we have and Canadian attitudes toward helping those who are less fortunate. He begrudgingly succumbed to improving the employment insurance program. In late 2009, the Conservative minority needed a way to survive a non-confidence vote. They traded their normally feeble stance toward EI for the NDP’s timely demands and temporary support. Background from the CBC² (12 September 2009). The Calgary Sun³ (21 December 2009) reported on the surprising $1B in EI this resulted in–badly needed within the context of an economy hurting from the global economic crisis. Harper was dragged into this one so I can’t give him a “yes” for change in this respect. Also I cannot seem to find any articles confirming whether or not he learned that Canada is not on the European continent.

3) “In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don’t feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don’t feel bad about it themselves, as long as they’re receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.”

• Change? No: Canadian news agencies like the CBC⁴ reported in October 2008, when the economy was heading downhill, job losses were mounting, and people were worrying about how bad it might get that Harper suggested buying stocks. One would have to imagine that he believes the unemployed receive extremely “generous social assistance” for that kind of commentary to resonate.

4) “…our executive is the Queen, who doesn’t live here. Her representative is the Governor General, who is an appointed buddy of the Prime Minister.”

• Change? No: Although he didn’t appoint this particular Governor General, Harper phones her up for a little friendly prorogue whenever he’s having a bad day.

5) “…the Senate, our upper house, is appointed, also by the Prime Minister, where he puts buddies, fundraisers and the like. So the Senate also is not very important in our political system.”

• Change? No: He still doesn’t seem to believe that the Senate is important in our political system. The proof is in his actions. He said it wasn’t important because it was an appointed body of buddies. Yet Harper has appointed many senators, in spite of committing to making it an elected body.

6) Referring to the executive, two legislative houses, and supreme court: “. . . if you sort of remove three of the four elements, what you see is a system of checks and balances which quickly becomes a system that’s described as unpaid checks and political imbalances.”

• Change? No: Harper reaffirmed how imbalanced our system is when he twice prorogued parliament (see the little friendly prorogue link above) and went ahead carrying out his Conservative program, unchecked and chock full of deficit. Of course, if he’d just let our system’s watchdogs do their jobs, we might have a little more checking going on.

7) “. . . the NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men.”

• Change? Yes and No: Although it sounds like Stephen Harper doesn’t like the NDP much (he saw them as interference) he’s grown to see them, like the Liberals and Bloc, as a source for occasional support deals–when it serves his ulterior political motives. I mentioned one example above: the EI versus non-confidence issue. Harper also once upon a time, approached the NDP to help him form a coalition to topple the former Liberal government. If you’re Harper, that’s making a deal with the devil. Of course, they’re too far apart ideologically for that to have worked and when it truly didn’t work he chose to brush his little rejection under the carpet. Later, running from his own imminent loss to a non-confidence vote and Liberal/NDP coalition, he dishonestly framed coalitions as undemocratic⁵. Seems even lost opportunities with the devil can come back to bite. The CBC⁶ article from 1 December 2008 says
  

  “All three opposition leaders accused Harper of reversing his position, pointing to a 2004 letter to the governor general by then Opposition leader Harper that suggested he be allowed to form a coalition government if Paul Martin’s Liberal minority government were to fall. Layton said Harper should remember the meetings in which he proposed the coalition. “I walked out,” the NDP leader said, adding that he wrote about it in his book.”

People change. At least I believe people are capable of changing. Cynics might like to argue that point with me (if you convince me to change my mind–I’ll have proven my point). Often times, in the public sphere, a politician will take a particular stand at one point in time and years later, if he or she changes position, the media will call out the past position as though the politician is being dishonest.

While it may be the case that the politician is indeed being dishonest, sometimes it’s also possible that the person’s experience and thinking simply evolved over time. If politicians would just, publicly state when they’ve changed their minds and what led them to change their minds, I think it would go a long way toward dispelling the aura of dishonesty.

I’d rather vote for people that show me they’re capable of learning and addressing situations the best way possible, rather than sticking to some preconceived notion in spite of contrary evidence or public opinion. I don’t see Stephen Harper doing that but I also don’t see him changing much.

Stockwell Day is getting “glory” as a no-man. In other words he’s being praised for his ability to cut spending. Apparently Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper can’t do all the cutting themselves. The article states

“The Conservatives must to find $19-billion a year in savings if they want to balance the books by 2014 without raising taxes, according to the latest analysis from Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page.”

Then again, cuts aren’t the only approach the Conservatives favour, they also seem to like firesales of crown assets. The Canadian Press² (28 May 2009)

“The Harper government plans to put Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s nuclear reactor business up for sale. It’s part of a major restructuring that will also mean private-sector management for AECL’s Chalk River research facility, which makes the medical isotopes used in diagnostic scans.”

Maybe they can sell Day’s “Prayer Force One” bus too.

(Update: 21 January 2010: Scott Ross blogged in detail about the costs of incurred during the prorogue, which seems to rise above $130 million. The CBC has a brief video overview on the cost subject and job/pension losses of many government employees through the unexpected prorogue. The Conservatives’ prorogue isn’t doing anyone any good, especially not our poor, battered, budget.)

CBC News reported¹ (13 January 2010) on the PBO report. The CBC article describes a structural deficit as “…a portion of a country’s budget deficit that exists even when the economy is running at full capacity during a period of expansion.” Which is important to keep in mind when listening to Conservative Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, explain that future economic growth will be an important contributor to ridding ourselves of this deficit.

Page’s just-released report² Estimating Potential GDP and the Government’s Structural Budget Balance (13 January 2010) states a number of interesting points. Right upfront it points out the worry in accepting the Flaherty-growth-justification.

“It’s unlikely that future economic growth will be able to alleviate the deficit.PBO’s estimates suggest that the Canadian economy was operating significantly below its potential in 2009. More importantly, PBO’s estimates also suggest that the downward trend in potential GDP growth observed since 2000 will continue over the projection horizon, averaging 1.9 per cent over the 2009 to 2014 period. The projected decline in potential GDP growth is a function of the projected decline in the growth of trend labour input, which reflects slower growth of the working age population and a decline in the trend employment rate associated with the shifting age composition of the workforce.”

Lest anyone is tempted to argue the PBO and Conservative government form their estimates through different accounting frameworks, the PBO report makes an interesting statement on its method. It notes that the frameworks are different but shows that its method nevetheless almost always produces results that since 1976 are strongly correlated with Finance Canada’s. It only recently began to diverge, as in, when the Conservatives took over and tried to paint a more rosy picture of their budgeting. Here’s a snapshot of that portion of the report.

“Despite the differences in accounting frameworks, calendar/fiscal years, and methodologies, Finance Canada and PBO’s estimates of the Government’s structural balance track each other closely over history (the correlation coefficient is 0.96). However, since 2006-07 (calendar year 2006) when the structural balance was estimated at $8.8 billion by both Finance Canada and PBO, the structural balance estimates appear to have diverged. Indeed, in 2008-09 (calendar year 2008) Finance Canada estimates a structural surplus of $13.8 billion while PBO estimates a $3.2 billion structural deficit.”

An article on the subject in The Globe and Mail³ (13 January 2010) said

“…even if the government successfully shuts off the taps on all stimulus spending by 2011 and keeps government growth below four per cent, it still will not have enough money coming in to erase the deficit. As a result, Mr. Page said there will be a structural deficit of $18.9-billion in 2013-14, which is the period when Ottawa expects to be narrowing in on a balanced budget.”

Since the report essentially rules out the possibility that economic growth could cover the deficit or even return us to non-deficit status, the other most obvious options are to either increase taxes or cut services. I don’t think it takes much effort to imagine the direction the Conservatives will go with that choice. They’ve already proven their propensity toward cutting taxes even when there isn’t good reason to do so, and repeatedly said they want to cull the government programs and services that help define the wellbeing of our society. Indeed in the same Globe and Mail article, it says

“Mr. Flaherty has said that if economic growth comes in lower than expected, savings can be found by not renewing government programs that have a set end date.”

Flaherty and Harper have been talking this way quite a bit. They’ve been chomping at the bit to cut government programs since they came to power. I’ve argued in the past that the Conservatives engineered much of the deficit specifically to create a rationale for cutting programs. Unfortunately many of those programs are important to our present well-being and our future growth, for example the recently cut CCL.

A larger portion of the population is heading toward retirement (particularly over the next few years). Additionally the global economic downturn means more people in Canada need assistance through programs such as unemployment insurance. Taken together that means the government receives less money in taxes but simultaneously has a greater responsibility to provide to social programs.

Finally, the rather more severe Toronto Star⁴ (13 January 2010) quoted Page

“We are going to have to take drastic measures, either spending reduction or tax increase, to get us back to balances… The question is, do they (the Conservative government) want to make short-sighted decisions or long-sighted decisions?”

The article continues to relate Harper’s lack of worry about a structural deficit and a debt-interest payment trap. It notes that during the 1970s/80s (the last time there were large deficits) Canada had to spend $.35/dollar on public debt interest charges.

(Update: I found an article from Reuters⁵ 13 March 2009, in which Harper talks about seeing a surge in the jobless rate. However, he comments that “It doesn’t change our assessment that when the global economy does recover, all the demographic indications are that we will have labor shortages.” He’s thus recognized for a long time, the demographic trend toward having a smaller total workforce–inline with the problem of a smaller tax intake.)

First, there’s the Business News Network² (BNN) interview he did the previous day. When BNN asked him about the risk of the prorogue to our reputation in the world as a “reliable” and “stable” country he responded that there was

“…zero risk… The games begin when parliament returns. The government can take its time now to do the important work to prepare the economic agenda ahead.”

That little statement implies a lot. Harper gives the impression that important work doesn’t take place while parliament is in session, but rather games do. That’s something of a slap to our democratic institutions. The idea that the “important work” is done by just a small group of individuals, not even representing the majority of Canadian votes and outside of the government institutions created to democratically represent our will, is pretty presumptuous for a prime minister. The prime minister was once considered “first among equals”³ it’s too bad that Harper has so powerfully furthered the trend away from that stance.

In addition, it’s not too hard to recall that the Conservatives are the ones directly responsible for any games that may be taking place in parliament. Let’s review.

• 2007 there was the 200 page book the Conservatives made for their members on how to obstruct parliament.
• 2008 there was Harper’s prorogue precedent, which he pulled off largely in reaction to the crisis he provoked through his own parliamentary budgeting games.
• 2009 there was the underhanded procedural trick the Conservatives came up with to kill bills and invalidate parliament’s work.
• 2009 there was the Conservative boycott of a special committee looking into the Afghan detainee abuse issue

The Tories are guilty of causing parliament to operate in a dysfunctional way and then running from that dysfunction under a number a of guises, the most recent being Harper’s need to do “important work.”

But can we really believe this latest excuse for running from Parliament? In the same Globe and Mail article we find out that Tom Flanagan, who was the former chief of staff to Stephen Harper was interviewed on CBC. Flanagan seems to have made the point that Harper requested the prorogue in order to put an end to the inquiry on the Conservatives’ Afghan torture scandal.

(Update 13 January 2010 – MP Charlie Angus (NDP) wrote up a good piece on Harper’s “coup of pinstripes” notion that parliamentary democracy creates instability)

The CCL describes itself as “a catalyst for lifelong learning, promoting and supporting evidence-based decisions about learning throughout all stages of life, from early childhood through to the senior years.” That seems like a worthy thing to promote in Canada. It’s important after all, to ensure that people’s knowledge and skills are up-to-date with those required to keep Canada competitive and successful in the world economy. Additionally, I’d argue that lifelong learning has intrinsic value to individuals and our society as a whole–but that’s for another post.

Remember, the Conservative minority squandered our budget surplus with its poor planning over the last several years; cuts that Harper and Flaherty have been warning about have already begun. Here’s some evidence that they’re extending beyond silencing the watchdogs that keep government accountable. The Globe and Mail¹ reported (8 January 2010) that the Conservatives (through Conservative MP Diane Finley) stopped funding to the CCL and provided us with the following doublespeak:

“Ryan Sparrow, Ms. Finley’s communications director, said the government is working with the provinces and other stakeholders to create a better system that is more responsive to Canadians’ needs.

“Employers, workers, and economists in Canada have told the government that there is a need for better learning information that is more aligned with labour market demand and takes into account international competitive challenges. This need has become even more apparent due to the recent global economic downturn and the government’s focus on Canada’s economic recovery… In other words, there is a need for a more comprehensive learning information system than the CCL can provide.”"

Really? The public isn’t stupid. It doesn’t make sense to shut down an organization that was already successfully doing what the Conservatives claim they want. According to the President and CEO of the CCL² (January 2010):

“In 2004, Canada saw that it had some catching up to do. Canadians were falling behind the rest of the world in some crucial areas. Innovation. Creativity. Skills development. Learning.

There was no debate about what we had to do to stop the decline, and begin to improve. We had to figure out what works in education and learning, from early childhood to post-secondary schooling, from job training through adult literacy improvement, and we had to monitor our progress so that we were certain we were always on the right path.

That is why the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) was created.

By any measure, CCL has a proud record of accomplishment.

Our Composite Learning Index, the first of its kind anywhere in the world, measures learning conditions, not only in the country as a whole, but in almost 5,000 individual communities. It shows that when you make learning conditions better, you inevitably make economic and social standards better. Europeans have told us they have been “inspired” by the Index, and are now working to produce a version for themselves. …”

The letter continues with more bullet points and information about the CCL’s successful program. As you can see, the CCL was doing what the Conservatives claim they want to do. The Conservatives haven’t announced any other program to accomplish their goal. So how does it make sense to cut off the funding to the program that was designed and already functioning in service of the very goal they claimed to want to reach? It doesn’t. C’mon Conservatives, that’s blatant doublespeak.

Finally as a side note, it’s interesting to contrast Harper’s Conservative approach to the perspective, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff presented in a speech, as reported by the CBC³ (2 May 2009).

“A key strategy for Canada to emerge from the economic downturn is lifelong learning because it fosters innovation that will help to create future jobs in a knowledge-based economy, he said.

“A strategy for recovery must be a strategy for learning. We must create a society where learning is a way of life and learning is lifelong… If you ask what I want for Canada, it is this: That we surprise ourselves, astonish ourselves, that we astonish the world.”"

Truly it surprises that the Conservatives, billing themselves as good stewards of the economy, prefer to cut our economic prospects by halting and reversing Canadian know-how, competitiveness, and leadership in a knowledge-based economy.

(Update 12 January 2010: The Toronto Star has an opinion piece on this issue, further examining the politics and faulty reasoning behind this cut.)

Backtracking, I’ll start with the recent news reporting that Harper will ask the Governor-General to prorogue parliament today, until the end of March 2010 (after the Winter Olympics). Without the prorogue, parliament would otherwise resume on 25 January 2010.

Why would Harper want this extended prorogue? Several reasons seem to benefit the Conservatives: one is that a bunch of bills will die¹, another is that it buys them time to dilute their scandals or otherwise cause the scandals to fade from the public memory (e.g. afghan torture, imbalanced stimulus money, environmental inaction, etc.), finally it gives Harper a chance to take over the Senate with Conservatives. According to CTV’s² (30 December 2009) chief political correspondent, Craig Oliver:

“”(Prorogation) has the great convenience of course of getting this government out of any kind of political trouble, because Parliament will not be sitting until after the Olympics. . . The plan is for the government to come back with a very brief throne speech just talking about what’s to come in the economy, and then a budget probably in days.”

Prorogation will also serve another purpose, Oliver said. Harper will likely appoint another group of new Senators, which will mean the Conservatives will finally hold a majority in the Red Chamber, and by extension, on Senate committees, Oliver said.”

Shouldn’t we be surprised that Harper wants to appoint unelected Senators? No, it’s perfectly consistent with his lies about reforming the Senate. He’s striving for Conservative control with a total disregard toward improving the democratic process. He already acted contrary to his own words on the subject and has proven he has no accountability in this regard.

The London Free Press³ (30 December 2009) pointed out how the prorogue would shut down further inquiry to the Conservative Afghan torture scandal.

“Preventing the return of Parliament until after the Olympics would effectively shut down all government committees, which would stop MPs from pursuing the Afghan detainee controversy until Parliament returned.

“If the government attempts this manoeuvre, it’s a shocking insult to democracy,” said Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale. “The government is in a very sticky place with respect to Afghan detainees and they’re running from accountability here — this is a cut and run government.”"

It’s worth noting as well, that preventing Parliament from functioning until after the Olympics, stands a good chance of replacing the negative opinions on the Conservative minority government from fomenting in the public eye and instead replacing them with the optimism and goodwill likely produced through the spectacle of the Olympics. The world’s eyes will be on Canada and all the press will be covering the events. Not only would Parliament resume at a time when the public is in a generally positive mood toward Canada but also much of what had happened prior to 2010, will have effectively been wiped clean from the public memory. The Tories are masters of spin.

So what was going on this time last year: the Conservative minority government found itself in very hot water. It had just come out of an election in which Canadians were once again unwilling to vote-in a Conservative majority government. As parliament met, the Conservatives washed aside real consideration for the economic crisis, instead presenting an inadequate budget that did more to play partisan games than to suit Canadian needs or to develop an effective parliament (minority government are supposed to get the other parties of parliament to cooperate with them on a mutual agenda, the Tories prefer to obstruct parliament).

The opposition parties met and decided two things. First, that they’d lost confidence in the minority Conservative government (Stephen Harper as PM lost the confidence of the house), and second that they could form a stable coalition to serve as an alternate government. According to a Globe and Mail⁴ (3 December 2008) article, which included this point from University of Saskatchewan constitutional scholar David Smith

“As for the opposition parties and their coalition plan, the expert consensus is that they’re following to the letter the precedent established in Canada for the sovereign’s representative to approve a change of government without an election.

The test that has to be met is, first, has the government lost the confidence of Parliament?; second, has an election just occurred?; and, third, is there a viable alternative to the government?”

Nevertheless Stephen Harper ran and asked the Governor General to either dissolve (require a new election–an unlikely option after just coming out of one) or prorogue parliament rather than face the vote of non-confidence by the opposition.

He used this delay tactic to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt on the proper plan of the opposition and our democratic process. The Conservatives presented the public with false rhetoric about the options (going to the polls again or accepting a coalition representing the majority of the votes).

In the same Globe and Mail article cited above, it identifies some of the difficulties involved in the situation.

“Using prorogation to duck a confidence vote that would terminate the Conservative government is unprecedented, and, although the Governor-General has the power to refuse Mr. Harper’s request, she likely would find herself in stormy constitutional waters if she did.

However, she’d be on firm ground if she granted him a qualified prorogation, severely limiting his ability to govern until he faces the opposition parties in the House of Commons, one of Canada’s leading experts on parliamentary procedure said yesterday.

Queen’s University political scientist C.E.S. Franks said an unprecedented use of prorogation could validly be met with an unprecedented use of the reserve power of the Queen’s representative – the power that can be exercised by the head of state in a parliamentary system without the approval of another branch of the government.

In effect, the Governor-General, by agreeing only to a qualified prorogation, would declare that the government exists in the same state as during an election campaign: unable to carry out anything but the most routine operations, barred from making appointments, executing new policies or authorizing major expenditures. The reason for this is that nobody knows which party ultimately will have the confidence of Parliament.”

Another Globe and Mail article⁵ (2 December 2008) discussed the Governor-General’s options (written by historian Bob Beal). It explains

“If the House decides it does not have confidence in the present government, the Governor-General will have to wonder if the House might have confidence in a different government drawn from the same House. . . .

Constitutional experts say in that situation the most minimal use of the Royal Prerogative would be to let the House get on with its work and let a new prime minister test the confidence of the House.

Accepting the prime minister’s advice for dissolution and an election in the present situation is also a possible, and proper, use of the prerogative. But that would establish a precedent, so far unknown, of the Crown interfering in the work of a newly elected House when it seems possible a new prime minister might be able to command the confidence of the House.

The current Prime Minister could ask the Governor-General to prorogue this session of Parliament, to delay the work of the House until the New Year, an exercise of the Crown’s reserve powers. That request would raise questions that have never been raised before. It seems a murkier situation than a request for dissolution would be.

The Governor-General could refuse a prorogation request on the same grounds as refusing a dissolution request, that the refusal would represent the most minimal use of the Crown’s powers and the least Crown interference with the work of the House. This session has hardly begun, and a confidence vote is scheduled within days.”

As we now know of course, the Governor-General did accept the prorogation request but oddly, not as a qualified prorogation. This stance did not seem to fall in-line with the regular process that would be expected to occur. The process I would have expected, would be that the non-confidence vote would have been allowed, and then the alternate government would be given its chance. But it also allowed the Conservatives to continue governing, making appointments, policies, etc. In fact, as the CBC⁶ reported (22 December 2008), Harper went ahead and appointed eighteen people to the Senate during the prorogue–trying to increase its total number of Conservatives.

“The deluge of appointments sets a record for the most Senate seats filled in a single day and is part of Harper’s efforts to ensure a Tory toehold in the upper chamber. Until now, the prime minister refrained from filling most of the vacancies — with the exception of two — because of his long-held position that those sitting in the Red Chamber should be elected.”

Even though the majority of Canadians did not vote for the Conservatives, even though all opposition parties (which did, collectively enjoy the majority of Canadian votes) were set to vote non-confidence in Harper and his Conservatives, the Governor-General allowed parliament to be put on hold, while Harper had free reign to continue acting against the majority of the Canadian will. Why?

In a Globe and Mail roundtable discussion⁷ (2 December 2008), John Manley (former liberal MP), referring to the Governor-General said

“I think the advice that she would probably receive would be that if the purpose of the prorogation is simply for the government to avoid facing a vote of confidence in the House of Commons, then that’s not an appropriate use of the prorogation of power. I’d be surprised if she agreed to that.

I also think that refusing the advice of the Prime Minister to grant prorogation would be entirely unprecedented. We’re going to see something for the very first time with this. . .”

She didn’t refuse the PM. I would guess that the argument in favour of the Governor-General’s position at that time was that she should act in the way that involves only the most minimal use of the Crown’s powers so as to interfere as little as possible with with the work of elected representatives.

Thus her decision could have been based on an idea that granting whatever the prime minister wanted would be the least interfering action. In other words not asserting her will, which could be contrary to the PM’s. Unfortunately, in that situation, her action actually interfered far more with the functioning of our democratically elected representatives than if she had either allowed the non-confidence vote (and then the alternate coalition to govern), or even granted a qualified prorogation.

It also set a precedent that the Governor-General essentially rubber stamps the PM’s advice when it comes to proroguing parliament. Stephen Harper, having caused that precedent to be set is unashamed to repeatedly use it to his advantage.

December 2009 and we’ve learned that when the Conservative minority government is most likely to fall, is faced with Canada’s greatest hardships, holds no confidence, or is being battered by its own scandals, it runs away. It tries to buy itself time to diffuse its problems or whitewash them in the public eye.

Stephen Harper has a free pass to buy himself time with another extended prorogue because of the precedent he established with the Governor-General in December 2008. While parliament is stuck doing nothing, he gets to continue his Conservative agenda by stuffing the Senate with his cherry-picked, unelected officials–remember his pattern, it’s what he did last year.

To leave this subject, I’d like to ask, aside from political opportunism (the Senate issue), why else might Harper go so far as to request the extended prorogue?

He has more information about the goings-on of the Conservative minority government, he has the information on the Conservative Afghan torture scandal, which won’t be released. While that’s a hot issue, it isn’t threatening his government to the extreme that 2008′s non-confidence vote/coalition did. Perhaps Harper knows that what is yet to come from the Conservative scandals will reach a point that boils past the level we saw in 2008.

(Follow up from the Toronto Star after the Governor-General granted Harper’s request)

“Robert Marleau, the information commissioner of Canada, says that contrary to Mr. Harper’s election pledge to make transparency a hallmark of his administration, a “fog over information” has crept across the government’s activities. Marleau said complaints to the commissioner’s office about lack of access to government information have doubled in the past year.

. . . public servants, ambassadors, as well as cabinet ministers and Conservative MPs are muzzled or kept on a short leash. Canwest News Service revealed last week that Environment Canada’s scientists, once among the most media-accessible specialists, have been slapped with orders to refer all journalists’ queries to the government where communications officers will help them respond with “approved lines.”"

It’s not a good sign when the information comissioner complains that the government is putting a fog over information.

Getting information out to the public is one issue, how it’s presented is another and Harper’s Conservatives have a machine for that too. The Toronto Star² reported (26 May 2008) about the Con machine (first part of a good series they wrote on the topic).

“Questions on the hot issues of the day all get funnelled through this office, the “communications and consultations” unit of the Privy Council Office. . . Public appearances by cabinet ministers – whether it’s a speech or an interview – are carefully staged, starting with a “message event proposal” vetted by the Privy Council Office, the bureaucratic wing of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

And in a marked change from previous governments, now even basic demands for information from reporters, once easily fielded by department spokespersons, are sent to this office for review – and often heavy editing – before they are okayed for public release, government insiders say.”

It shows how contolled the information we receive from the government is, everything is crafted for the spin the Conservatives desire.

It goes further than information and messaging though, government appointed watchdogs that were supposed to ensure more accountability also get silenced when their message isn’t helpful to the Conservative cause. There are a number of examples, I won’t try to point them all out but consider what the National Post³ (18 June 2009) said of budget watchdog, Kevin Page (PBO).

“the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (OPBO) provides authoritative, non-partisan financial and economic analysis to support Parliament and parliamentarians in exercising their oversight role over the government’s stewardship of public funds and in ensuring budget transparency.

Kevin Page was appointed as the first budget officer in March of 2008. It was a move intended to create more transparency in government by explaining to Canadians about fiscal planning and scrutiny of budget estimates. In government there is so much spending that goes unaccounted for, unexamined, and unexplained that I had high hopes for Mr.Page. Unfortunately, it appears his job has been hampered by a plague of budget cuts.

Mr. Page has said a lack of consistent reporting and transparency from the government has made estimating difficult, but he has still projected far larger deficits than the government. From reworking the estimates, to revising corporate revenue projections, he has angered the Conservative government by challenging its forecasts. For essentially doing his job. For holding to account Mr.Flaherty when he makes predictions like this. Part of being “accountable” is having an authority which is able to hold the government to their projections.”

The Globe and Mail⁴ (26 June 2009) corroborates this issue. Kevin Page was supposed to more or less say what the Conservatives liked and when he didn’t, they implied they wouldn’t fund his office anymore. That threat would essentially have shut him down, but instead they offered this.

“Mr. Page has been offered the $2.8-million budget he was promised more than a year ago. But the condition is that he no longer report on “the state of the nation’s finances and trends in the national economy” directly to the House of Commons and the public.”

So he gets to keep doing what he was supposed to do, just so long as it doesn’t get easily released to the public, without presumably going through the Conservative stamp of approval machine.

Finally, the Toronto Star⁵ (24 December 2009) reported on the muzzling phenomenon, as I mentioned, it extends well beyond Page.

“Three essential oversight agencies will begin 2010 without leadership and wearing government-issued blinkers. By hook and crook, Harper Conservatives have gutted the effectiveness of the Military Complaints Commission, the Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP and the Office of the Information Commissioner.

All three top posts are now empty. Not one was vacated quietly.

Peter Tinsley is howling that pushing him out of the job will effectively kneecap the already crippled inquiry into claims that Afghans tortured prisoners. Paul Kennedy is furious not to be staying to bring fully independent investigations and civilian oversight to the RCMP. Robert Marleau retired as information commissioner in June, a few months after issuing a set of failing-grade report cards that blamed those “at the very top” for systematically denying Canadians information about what the government is doing in their name.”

For a party that spoke a lot about accountability and claimed not to have secret agendas, the actions they’ve taken while in office give every impression that they’re anything but accountable or open.

For more information about Canadian access to information take a look at Stanley Tromp’s site⁶, where he’s published an extensive report on the issue. It’s a very long report, several hundred pages, but you can focus in on the issue of the Conservative minority government’s secrecy with the brief and informative postcript⁷ (PDF).

Informative read from the University of Alberta’s Centre for Constitutional studies, regarding Freedom of the Press and Harper’s Media Policy.

I remember reflecting at the time of the initial GST cuts what the real rationale might be–it couldn’t be what the Conservatives were saying publicly because that had too many holes to make sense. When the Tories kept announcing what seemed like short-sighted cuts to the taxes, which would have little to no economic affect on the majority of Canadians, why did they consistently tout these as putting money back into the hands of consumers (a sham).

What is the real rationale for the Conservatives’ GST cuts? The GST cuts affect the government’s ability to support various services and programs that impact the well-being of our society. Ah, but that’s right, the Conservatives aren’t generally in favour of such services and programs, they want to shrink government, preferring to leave everyone to fare for themselves. But they can’t come out and tell everyone they want to cut federal programs and services, because then they’d risk losing the minority popular support that they have. So what to do? How about engineering some great big deficits? A deficit situation enables the Conservatives to justify cutting federal programs and services, to justify selling off our crown assets to private interests, all under the guise of being fiscally responsible.

Let’s see how this adds up.

Reuter’s¹ reported (25 July 2008) that the Conservative-led government wasn’t off to a good start to the fiscal year.

“. . . posting a deficit of C$517 million ($507 million) for April and May as corporate and sales tax collection fell sharply. The deficit compares with a surplus of C$2.78 billion in the same two months of 2007. The weak results were due to a 17 percent decline in corporate income tax revenue as well as a 21 percent drop in intake from the goods and services sales tax, the Department of Finance said in a report on Friday.” [emphasis mine]

The article continues to note that the Conservative government estimated it would have a surplus of $2 to $3 billion for the year. It contrasts sharply with the prior year’s surplus of about $10 B. Striking however, that the Conservatives were still publicly estimating a surplus, not a deficit. It suggests that either they weren’t very good at taking stock of the economic situation or else they were simply trying to keep things quiet and control public perception over eventually slipping into a deficit.

Continuing with Reuter’s reports² (18 November 2008), we can see how much the Conservatives tried to veil the situation. This is about the time that budget officer, Kevin Page, prepared to release his first forecast.

“The idea of running a budget deficit in Canada has been political anathema since the 1990s when the previous Liberal government painfully eliminated it over a period of several years. Ottawa has subsequently posted annual surpluses, the only major industrialized country to do so.

The newly re-elected Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper insisted throughout this year’s election campaign that it would continue to balance the books. However, it has since allowed that a temporary deficit is likely. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has said he expects to post a small surplus in the 2008-09 fiscal year but the budget might slide into deficit after that as the result of possible stimulus measures that have yet to be defined. In February, when the government laid out its spending plans for 2008-09, Flaherty saw . . . the surplus slimming down to C$1.3 billion in 2009-10.

Economists, including the influential chief economist of Toronto-Dominion Bank, Don Drummond, have estimated Canada could face a budget shortfall of up to C$10 billion next year.”

At about the same time, the Montreal Gazette reported³ (14 November 2008) Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty’s intentions to sell crown assets.

“Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said yesterday the Harper government is considering selling real estate and other crown assets to help keep the budget balanced as the economy worsens. . . . “We are going to review the corporate assets, the capital assets, of the government of Canada, to see whether they still perform a useful function for the Canadian people. If that review shows that there should be some assets that should be sold, then we’ll go ahead with them.”"

Clearly (because Flaherty says so) the Conservatives knew at this point that they would have at least a difficult time balancing the budget. But he puts the blame on a worsening economy, totally neglecting his own government’s reckless GST cuts. Or were they reckless? Maybe they served the Conservative strategy of reducing federal programs and services. Flaherty’s talking about selling off crown assets–those belong to us don’t they, not private parties. But this talking strategy will prove consistent with future Conservative announcements and with current Conservative ideology.

Jumping ahead, the Conservatives started predicting they’d run a $34 billion deficit for 2009/10, and a $30 B deficit the year after. Harper said the budget they’d introduce would have “permanent tax cuts”–interesting way to deal with a shortfall: lose more money.

The CBC reporting⁴ (22 June 2009) on the massive federal deficit expectation points out that we’re likely to see what had been estimated as a $1.3 billion surplus changed into a $50 billion deficit. Roughly $10 billion of that can be attributed to the GST cut. That’s $10 billion in federal social programs down the drain. The article quotes Canadian autoworks economist Jim Stanford on the link between cutting the GST and the purchasing decisions “The links are not as strong as you might think…” which corroborates others’s positions at the time of the announced cuts (I called attention to these just above).

To be fair, the article also notes that $10 B is only a portion of the ~$50 B deficit. But much of what led to the deficit was not as predictable or controllable as the $10 B portion. Part of the deficit comes from measures, like the economic stimulus taken (and to varying degrees pushed by the other parties) to deal with the severe recession.

Nevertheless $10 B of the deficit was within the purvue of the Conservatives’ decisions. That’s $10 B that could have been used toward stimulus and social programs. That’s $10 B that could have been considered a safety net for a worsening economy (which as we know now, it did). The Conservatives had a safety net coming into office, which gave them some  room to manage our country even while the world was heading into a deep recession. Rather than recognize their good fortune in having that wiggle room they put policies in place, which even at the time signalled an end to such a safety net. That’s an intentional act.

So I ask, can it be reckless planning? Lack of forsight? Or is it part of the Conservative strategy to reduce the government–recognizing that if anything dire did happen, they’d get their opportunity to cut federal programs to support only the most essential of federal duties? I think it’s the latter. While I may disagree with their goals, calling them short-sighted, I don’t actually think the Conservatives are stupidly bumbling around with these measures, rather they’re carrying through with their policies for a reason.

The United Press reported⁵ (11 September 2009)

“Canada’s budget deficit was adjusted upward to $55.9 billion this year . . . Flaherty said much of the effort to get the deficit down to $5.2 billion by 2015 will “require decisions of government that won’t always be popular or pain free,” and “it will require a lot of saying ‘no’ to pet projects and special interests.”"

In order to reduce the deficit (not even talking about hitting a surplus again) by 2015, Flaherty starts trying to get the public used to the idea that cuts will come, and that they’ll be painful. Wondering what he characterizes as “pet projects and special interests”?

My guess is that’s just about anything outside current Conservative doctrine. How long before the Conservatives proceed with deeper cuts to cultural programs, social services, and more? Could cuts required to get us out of this deficit eventually be a rationale for the Conservatives to open the door to privatized health care? So much of the Conservative agenda, reigning in the social infrastructure, which characterizes (in part) the well-being of Canadian life, comes down to cutting the programs and services that are now Canadian institutions.

The National Post⁸ (2 November 2009) discussed Kevin Page’s report (Parliamentary Budget Office) examining our future deficit in relation to the Conservatives’ plans. His office is of course, supposed to shed light on what goes on within their domain and has sometimes been at odds with the Conservatives’ numbers. Page says the federal government will be in a substanatial structural deficit for a number of years and that the government will have to raise taxes or else make cuts in its programs. He also brought up an interesting issue.

“According to Mr. Page, the government’s projections include $5.8-billion in unidentified savings over the next five years through reviews of program spending, including $2-billion this year. Mr. Page says his office has requested expenditure planning documents from the federal Treasury Board, but has thus far been rebuffed.”

And now that the holidays are upon us, the Conservatives are releasing plenty of bits warning that they’ll begin making cuts–are these the unidentified savings, Page mentioned? Perhaps the Conservatives think people will forget these warnings over the holidays, or that the warnings will sink into the background of our consciousness so we’re more receptive when they finally do occur. The Globe and Mail⁶ (21 December 2009) talks about Harper’s stimulus plan exit strategy involving years of “belt-tightening”. They quote Stephen Harper saying:

“The government’s approach will be clear. We won’t be raising taxes, but we will be constraining growth . . . And within four to five years, if we follow that path, we should be back to a balanced budget.”

Harper uses the euphemism “restraining growth” but as his government noted previously, they mean cuts to federal programs and services, along with selling off crown assets. Reading the language used by Harper and his Conservatives, and the way it gets reported frequently you can see that they use words like frugal and belt-tightening, which imply wisdom and resolve rather than the actual short-sightedness or cunning strategy. The article continues with insightful counterpoints from respected economists and ministers

“Mr. Harper’s view that his government will be able to chip away at deficits by squeezing the growth of public spending has been questioned by economists and by former officials with the Finance Department. Former deputy ministers Scott Clark and David Dodge [former Governor of the Bank of Canada] have already stepped forward to challenge the government’s plans for eliminating the deficit, which is projected to reach $56-billion this fiscal year. Mr. Clark has said that Ottawa will have to raise the GST, which Mr. Harper cut in 2006.

“I don’t think it’s very likely that they can balance the budget without some very severe spending restraint,” said Bank of Montreal deputy chief economist Douglas Porter.”"

It’s not just Flaherty and Harper talking cuts, but well-known economists saying the Conservatives cannot follow through on their promises without backtracking their initial decisions on the GST cut or else severely cutting spending. And last but not least, let’s follow this up with the most recent news coming from Jim Flaherty’s mouth and reported by The Globe and Mail⁷ (22 December 2009).

“”Over time, what we’re going to see in the federal government in any event is some attrition because of the demographics and aging public service and we’ll have to be mindful of that as we try to watch growth in spending and restrain growth in spending,”"

Which is an oblique way of saying the Conservative minority government would look toward cutting public services. How can I justify that comment? Consider that if you don’t rehire public workers, or worse, you eliminate their jobs, then you no longer can offer the public services they were responsible for delivering. The article says

“Aiming for a leaner civil service, and looking to the salary savings of a reduced federal work force, provides a new twist on what has long been viewed as the public service’s demographic challenge. . . . “I hope he realizes that when you cut public servants, you cut public service,” said Gary Corbett, the president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. Mr. Corbett said cutting public-service jobs means cutting back on important jobs like food safety inspectors and scientific research.”

The Star⁹ (23 December 2009) also has a piece on Flaherty’s recent announcements. It provides some other details such as marking a flippant sounding attitude toward the situation and this point of Flaherty history:

“In his 2001 Ontario budget, Flaherty handed $2.4 billion in tax cuts to the province’s corporations, promised personal tax breaks and paid down $3 billion in provincial debt – all while balancing the books by holding down badly needed expenditures for universities, hospitals and infrastructure projects.”

Furthermore, according to the Globe and Mal article, Flaherty believes government revenues will largely stem from economic growth. That’s sure a positive outlook. While that would be welcome and might even be likely, it’s far from certain. Things could even take a turn for the worse.

“The concern expressed by the deputy ministers and others is that the government’s revenues have fallen so steeply that Mr. Flaherty simply will not be able to find enough savings to wipe out the deficit. They argue that even when economic growth returns to normal, the Conservatives’ two point GST cut has left Ottawa with a continuing deficit.”

The Conservatives have thus set up the game board for a future election campaign. With the spectre of permanent deficits, they can pit their party’s harsh cuts to federal services against the other parties’ options, which will likely be to either mimic the Conservative choice or to reverse the tax cuts that the Conservatives propaganda’d their minority public support into applauding in the first place.

Remember how the Conservatives got their first two attempts at copyright change wrong? Later the government set up a consultation with the Canadian public. The consultation ought to be applauded for opening lines of communication so that everyone in our shared culture had a chance to speak out on what we’d like to see in terms of reform (if at all).

That consultation however, feels increasingly like little more than a publicity ruse to keep concerned citizens occupied while the Conservatives work their way through the secret negotiations with foreign interests.

The copyright consultation Web site¹ says:

“It is important that any new legislation that is tabled not only reflect the current technological reality, but is also forward-looking and can withstand the test of time. The government is taking this opportunity to listen to Canadians about what is important to them on copyright. …the government will take stock of the submissions that Canadians have made and the discussions that took place. With these in mind, the government will draft and table new legislation.”

Why does the Conservative minority government pay lip-service to caring about Canadians’ voices on the subject? Why is it proceeding on the international stage without respect to what Canadians want (sometimes even contrary to what many Canadians have expressed)? And why does it have the gall to keep its foreign talks secret and not release the information to the public?

Canada is involved in the ACTA treaty, which has been widely criticized for its potential to bring in regulations on Canadian content, “intellectual property”, and other copyright issues that interfere with the ideas and values Canadians expressed during our public copyright consultation. Consider this Wired News² (4 December 2009) article

“According to leaked documents, the European Union expressed alarm that the Obama administration is lobbying on behalf of the entertainment industry as part of the negotiations for the new international copyright accord.

The document, “European Union’s Comments to the U.S. Proposal,” notes that the “most important provision” of the U.S.-proposed copyright section includes language noting that the United States’ “overarching objective” is to “facilitate the continued development of industry.”"

The US has great interest in controlling “intellectual property”, implementing strategies to secure this domain of economic empire, so it’s not surprising that the sentiment expressed above would exist. But how does that fit with Canada’s participation? The Financial Times³ (26 May 2008) reported

“OTTAWA — The federal government is secretly negotiating an agreement to revamp international copyright laws … Called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the new plan would see Canada join other countries, including the United States and members of the European Union, to form an international coalition against copyright infringement. … Federal trade agreements do not require parliamentary approval.”

Interestingly, so long as it’s a trade agreement, the minority Conservative government essentially seems to have free rein. Our government gets to bow to outside interests (industry and foreign governments) discarding Canadian desires. Indeed, no governments have fully released the ACTA documents to the public, it’s only through occasional partial leaks that the public discovers what is happening without broad consent, behind closed doors.

Michael Geist has posted a nice timeline⁴ (31 March 2009) of ACTA events. But things got worse recently, as noted on Geist’s site⁵ (16 December 2009). Geist brought up that current Canada/EU talks on a trade agreement, separate from ACTA, have a segment addressing “intellectual property”. He says:

“the EU proposal for the IP chapter has just leaked online^[6] and the document is incredibly troubling.  When combined with ACTA, the two agreements would render Canadian copyright law virtually unrecognizable as Canada would be required to undertake a significant rewrite of its law.  The notion of a “made-in-Canada” approach – already under threat from ACTA – would be lost entirely, replaced by a made-in-Washington-and-Brussels law.”

So Conservatives, what are you really doing? You set up two rounds of failed copyright reforms, which were embarrasing in their short-sighted, industry-controlled direction, then set up a sham public consultation, and finally are engaged in not one, but two secret trade agreements involving “intellectual property” restrictions that are contrary to the best interests of the Canadian public.

“”When I become prime minister I will undertake an unprecedented overhaul of the federal government… That is my commitment to you.”

“Cleaning up government begins at the top,” he added, accusing Prime Minister Paul Martin of deflecting blame whenever the taint of scandal touches him.”

In principle of course, I don’t think many would argue that greater government accountability is not only important but necessary for the well-being of our democracy. Unfortunately, the Conservatives’ act was largely just an act. It did little of what the Conservatives led Canadian citizens to believe they’d do. Worse, the Conservatives have repeatedly acted against the spirit of not the letter of the act. Here’s some background and evidence.

Democracy Watch² (16 December 2009) reported on the Conservatives progress since 2006, noting that they’d increased or attempted to increase accountability in a few instances but also that they’d weakened it in eight ways, failed on 29 promises, and ignored 90 loopholes or flaws in the accountability system. Thus they gave the Conservatives a much lower grade than the Conservatives originally set out to earn. Democracy Watch also graded the main parties’ platforms^2b, with the NDP in the lead.

CBC reported³ (25 October 2006) about Justice John Gomery’s concerns his commissions studied recommendations on accountability had fallen into a black hole. John Gomery of course was responsible for the inquiry into the sponsorship scandal and so the 18 recommendations in his reports would have been incredibly relevant to for the Conservatives’ push on accountability. The article states

“Gomery said he thought the government would have taken action on the recommendations by now, or at the very least, started a debate on the issues covered by the inquiry. The inquiry covered a lot more ground than does the accountability act, he said. The act is designed to make the government more transparent and to crack down on unethical government actions. It also tightens political financing laws in Canada. It has not yet been proclaimed into law, although it has passed second reading in the Senate. Gomery said his request for a report on implementation did not mean that the government should do nothing for two years.”

Since Gomery’s report recommended solutions to the very lack of accountability that enabled both the sponsorship scandal to occur and the Conservatives to trumpet their accountability credo and thus eake their way into an minority government, why didn’t the Conservatives pay attention to it?

Gomery was back in the news with a Calgary Herald⁴ report (13 March 2008).

“Gomery told MPs on the government operations committee he was profoundly disappointed the Harper government ignored many of his recommendations because its signature Federal Accountability Act will not fix the imbalance of power between MPs, the prime minister and cabinet.”

According to the article the Harper government never responded to Gomery’s recommendations. Instead the Harper government has let the power of unelected political aides increase.

CBC reported⁵ (12 January 2007) that the Conservatives were already neglecting their own Accountability Act. It had become law in December of 2006. That same month Harper’s Conservatives made 118 appointments but were accused of violating the spirit of their act, which required that an independent body oversee such appointments. This trend would continue.

The Globe and Mail⁶ (5 January 2008) reported about a broken election promise the Conservatives had made requiring “ministers to record their contacts with lobbyists.” the article states

“In the 2006 election campaign, the Conservative Party platform pledged a new law to “require ministers and senior government officials to record their contacts with lobbyists.”

However, a federal spokesman said the new rules are not going in that direction. The new regulations are the details of how the Lobbying Act, which was passed in 2006 [emphasis mine], will work.

“The balanced approach that we determined as a Parliament was to put the positive obligation on the lobbyists,” said Mike Storeshaw, a spokesman for Treasury Board President Vic Toews.”

It doesn’t sound like the Conservatives followed through with a regulation that would make government more accountable, rather one that introduces easy ways out for officials communicating with lobbyists.

That year continued to show Harper breaking his promises for more accountability in government. After he talked up a storm about reforming the senate, pushing to turn it into an elected body, his actions went in the opposite direction. The Star⁷ (29 December 2008) pointed out that

“With his appointment of 18 Senators, most of whom are Conservative party cronies, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has added another broken promise to the 27 democratic reform and government accountability promises the Conservatives have already broken since they were elected in January 2006.”

Note that Stephen Harper⁸ addressed a senate committee (7 Septemeber 2006) regarding his plans for senate reform.

“As everyone in this room knows, it has become a right of passage for aspiring leaders and prime ministers to promise Senate reform – on their way to the top… But once they are elected, Senate reform quickly falls to the bottom of the Government’s agenda. Nothing ever gets done. And the status quo goes on. Honourable Senators, this has got to stop… As yet another step in fulfilling our commitment to make the Senate more effective and more democratic, the Government – hopefully this fall, – will introduce a bill in the House to create a process to choose elected Senators. This bill will further demonstrate how seriously the Government takes the issue of Senate reform.”

Look back at that same Star (29 Dec ’08) article, which recalls that the Conservatives

“promised to establish an independent Public Appointments Commission to ensure fair, merit-based and widely publicized searches for qualified candidates for the PM and his cabinet to appoint to government agencies, boards and commissions.”

As stated previously the Conservatives already had a problem with their 118 appointments made in 2007, when they also pledged to have that Public Appointments Commission set up in no time. It seems that almost two years later, instead of setting up the commission they continued appointing people, actually over 1000 appointments. So it’s perfectly consistent that they’d do nothing on senate reform after two years either. Stephen Harper succeeded with his own right of passage to get elected and do nothing about senate reform.

These few examples show that Harper’s Conservatives cannot be trusted to act on their own accountability act. There are other examples including questionable use of campaign money, mistreatment of the financial watchdog, and mistreatment of a whistleblower, I’ll get to those in other posts but Greg Weston summarizes nicely in his Toronto Sun article (13 December 2009)⁹.

Other perspectives on the Conservative accountability problem include

• Keith Martin, M.P. — Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca¹⁰ (12 May 2006)
• Doug Banwell’s Blog¹¹ (4 April 2009)

This is of course important in terms of respecting the Geneva convention, human rights in general, but also because of how it reveals the nasty and counterproductive character of a government run by a party that seems incapable of the most basic levels of respect.

According to the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act¹ (25 November 2005),

“…it is in the public interest to maintain and enhance public confidence in the integrity of public servants;
confidence in public institutions can be enhanced by establishing effective procedures for the disclosure of wrongdoings and for protecting public servants who disclose wrongdoings, and by establishing a code of conduct for the public sector;

public servants owe a duty of loyalty to their employer and enjoy the right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that this Act strives to achieve an appropriate balance between those two important principles;

the Government of Canada commits to establishing a Charter of Values of Public Service setting out the values that should guide public servants in their work and professional conduct;…”

And so the Act continues to detail responsibilities, procedures, etc. around whistleblowing activities. It clearly says that we need to have effective procedures for protecting public servants who disclose wrongdoings. Richard Colvin disclosed a public wrongdoing so why are the Tories lieing and lambasting him rather than protecting him and following the procedures to investigate?

In case the links above aren’t enough evidence of the Conservatives’ lies and stalling tactics, The Toronto Star² (16 December 2009) reported on the Tories preventing parliament from delving into Richard Colvin’s account, especially with respect to his rebuttal³ to Conservative counterclaims of the evidence.

“Seven Conservative MPs boycotted a special sitting of the committee probing allegations of detainee abuse, forcing its cancellation and leaving the opposition fuming at the government’s “dismissive” attitude to Parliament.”

In a Toronto Star opinion piece, James Travers noted

“Honesty would have ended the Afghan prisoner abuse controversy now testing the ruling party’s commitment to accountability and the Prime Minister’s campaign to neuter Parliament. Instead of candour, Harper hung the Conservative defence on the suspect argument that there is no proof Afghans tortured Canadian prisoners.”

Even if history proves Colvin’s accusations incorrect, his treatment in this situation is off-base. The Conservative minority government has not protected him and has not tried to maintain or enhance public confidence in the integrity of public servants (quite the opposite), thus the Conservatives are on the wrong side of values set in the Charter.