Quotulatiousness

February 18, 2012

Even hardcore pro-Tory cheerleaders hate the new Internet bill

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:27

The Sun chain of newspapers is without a doubt the most pro-Conservative media voice in Canada. When even they are calling Bill C-30 “seriously flawed”, you’ve got to hope that the government will give up:

The legislation, Bill C-30, tabled this week as the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, had virtually no safeguards to protect law-abiding Canadians, including the media, from being spied upon by police, bureaucrats, CSIS — even the competition bureau.

Until Prime Minister Stephen Harper punted the bill straight to committee for a badly-needed overhaul, his government appeared unconcerned about its own inconsistency.

Earlier this week, for example, the long-gun registry was finally put down, killed by the Harper majority for one reason and one reason alone.

It was rightly deemed to be an intrusion into the privacy of law-abiding Canadians.

This leaves Bill C-30 indefensible in its present form.

Requiring telecommunications providers to hand over personal information — without a warrant — to law-enforcement agencies opens the door to incredible abuses, and not just by Big Brother.

“This is going to be like the Fort Knox of information that the hackers and the real bad guys will want to go after,” said Ann Cavoukian, Ontario’s privacy commissioner.

The bill also includes a lovely little gag order provision that prevents your ISP from telling you when your information has been turned over to “inspectors” under the bill (and that doesn’t limit itself to the police: anyone could be appointed as an inspector by the ministry).

February 16, 2012

Are you for Orwellian surveillance by government thugs or are you with the child pornographers?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:23

Margaret Wente in the Globe & Mail:

Where do you stand on the new online surveillance bill? Are you with the government? Or are you with the child pornographers? According to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, you have to choose.

In case you fail to get the point, the new legislation is being subtly marketed as the Protecting Children From Internet Predators Act. Of course, maybe you don’t really care about protecting children from Internet predators. Maybe you don’t care that without this law, filthy perverts will continue to roam free. Really, it’s your choice.

I am scarcely the first person to point out that Stephen Harper’s government likes to demonize its opponents, or that it has a nasty authoritarian streak. But in this case, the dissent is unusually widespread. Those with doubts about the bill include opposition politicians, civil libertarians, privacy commissioners and Internet experts — plus more than a few small-c conservatives who wonder why our government insists on whipping up unnecessary moral panic when it doesn’t have to.

[. . .]

So why do I stand with the child pornographers here? Because I’m not convinced the police need new powers to root out online child molesters. Judging by the recent highly publicized busts of child-porn rings, their existing powers seem to be working fine. Nor am I convinced that the police will never abuse their power. History shows they usually do. That’s why they need civilian oversight. That’s not liberal, in my view. That’s prudent.

February 15, 2012

More speculation that Canada might be reconsidering the F-35 fighter purchase

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:53

In the National Post, John Ivison reports on a new tender for UAVs and wonders if it may herald a reconsideration of the government’s announced F-35 purchase.

Sources said the Department of National Defence is preparing to tender a contract for around six remotely piloted vehicles such as the MQ-9 Reaper, which the U.S. Defence Department estimates cost around $30-million each. A spokesman for DND dismissed the suggestion that armed drones could replace the F-35s, or augment a reduced number of aircraft, as speculation.

The Canadian military has previously leased drones from Israel and the CU-170 Herons flew reconnaissance missions in Afghanistan. But the Herons were never armed and a move to fit munitions on to any unmanned aircraft would inevitably draw criticism from opposition parties. When the idea was raised two years ago, then New Democrat defence critic Jack Harris dismissed it as “morally repugnant” and “robot warfare.”

In 2009, it was mentioned that Canada had been using Heron UAVs for about a year (long enough that Australian troops were in Canada to train on the equipment at that time). Of course, you can’t (currently or in the near future) completely replace manned fighters with UAVs, but UAV capabilities have grown substantially and they can now accomplish many missions that used to require manned aircraft. (See the comments on this article for some useful discussion on that topic.)

The F-35 should be (once all the development and manufacturing issues have been worked out) a very impressive combat aircraft. Here’s a graphic showing the kind of armament the F-35 will be able to use. The problem for Canada and other countries intending to purchase the F-35 is that costs are rising uncomfortably fast:

However, delays and cost overruns to Lockheed Martin’s F-35 strike fighter jet are causing headaches in many NATO capitals. Peter MacKay, the Defence Minister, admitted Tuesday that “the program has not been without problems in timelines and cost estimates.”

He said the government remains committed to giving the air force “the best opportunity for mission success” but refused to confirm that the government still intends to buy 65 F-35s.

In Question Period, the Prime Minister said that there is a budget for the F35s and “the government will operate within that budget.”

The problem for the Tories is that the cost of the planes is likely to rise considerably from the estimated $75-million per plane. Buying 65 jets would burst the $9-billion budget allocated for the F-35 purchase.

The U.S. Defence Department estimates the cost of each F-35 at $195-million this year. The Pentagon said Monday it intends to reduce spending on the F-35s next year and delay future spending because of the soaring costs and technological problems.

Some countries are opting to buy some F/A-18F Super Hornets as a stopgap until the F-35 is mature (Australia, for example, ordered 24 aircraft at a reported cost of A$6.6 billion).

No story about military equipment purchases is complete without considering the fact that the government thinks of it as an economic development program nearly as much as a military purchase. In spite of the remarkably poor economic justification, it has political benefits that easily dazzle parliamentarians and local newspaper editors (in the regions that benefit from the spending, anyway).

The Harper government has argued consistently one reason to stay in the F-35 program is the industrial benefits that have accrued to some Canadian companies. However, one industry insider said more work would likely flow from an order for a less expensive jet from Boeing or Saab. The government is set to unveil a comprehensive review of the Canadian aerospace industry, led by former Industry Minister David Emerson. If his review were to encompass the F-35 purchase, it could provide the Tories with the perfect cover to cancel a program that is turning into a political millstone.

Also in the National Post, Matt Gurney points out that it’s not just the NATO allies getting concerned about the F-35 program:

Ottawa is said to be considering equipping the Air Force with armed drones as part of an effort to replace the aging CF-18 fighter jets. The original plan was to replace them with 65 F-35s, but that problem has been beset by cost overruns and production delays. While the Harper government has remained resolutely behind the F-35 purchase, news has emerged out of Washington that the United States is beginning to cancel or delay orders for the advanced stealth fighter jets. This is a game-changer — it’s one thing for Italy or Israel to get cold feet, but if America pulls the plug on the program, the entire calculus of the F-35′s economics could change rapidly. And not in Canada’s favour.

He also points out that it’s no longer safe to assume that your UAV will perform as expected once your opponent reaches a certain level of technical sophistication:

Last December, Iran announced that it had shot down a U.S. RQ-170 drone over its territory. There was nothing new about that, and nor was it particularly alarming — an advantage of using drones for reconnaissance is that if the enemy does blow one up, you don’t necessarily need to respond with a retaliatory strike, as would be far more likely if a pilot (with a family and an elected representative and a Facebook page) was killed or captured. It also helps avoid a repetition of the awkward Gary Francis Powers incident of the Cold War, where an American spyplane pilot was shot down over the Soviet Union. When America denied the flight had ever occurred, the Soviets displayed a very much alive Powers to the media, humiliating the United States. Having a drone blown out of the sky isn’t nearly as complex. You just build another drone.

After several days, however, it became clear that there was more to the story than we had first been led to believe. Iran hadn’t shot down the drone at all. It had done something much worse — it had hacked the drone, and seized control of it. Iranian ground controllers, having assumed command of the drone, were able to successfully land it in their territory as a prize. Now, one of the most advanced pieces of spy technology in the United States’ military inventory, loaded with all sorts of high-tech monitoring and communications gear, is being reverse-engineered by a hostile regime. Worse: You can be certain that Iran will have no qualms about sharing access with whatever it learns, or perhaps even the drone itself, with Chinese and Russian engineers. Just a small way of saying thanks for all the missiles and UN vetoes Iran’s friends have provided over the years. (Early consideration of sending in U.S. commandos to blow up the drone, or destroying it from afar with an airstrike, were rejected for fear of triggering an all-out war and because U.S. officials hoped that Iran wouldn’t know what to do with the technology — but the Russians and Chinese will likely have no such problems.)

Update: Kelly McParland on the luck of Stephen Harper:

Stephen Harper is one lucky politician.

Here he is, stuck with a bad decision to buy a bunch of fighter planes the country can’t afford and might not need, a decision he has defended so many times there is now no way out save through an admission of error and embarrassing public climbdown. Which, knowing our Prime Minister, we can safely predict would happen just about the time the last polar ice cap melts away.

Then along comes a solution with his name on it, all wrapped up in pretty ribbon and accompanied by a “get out of embarrassment free” pass. Once again you can picture Bob Rae lying awake in bed at night, cursing softly and muttering “How does the *!@*%$-ing son-of-a-#%&% do it?”

Mr. Harper’s gift, which arrived, appropriately enough, on St. Valentines Day, comes in the form of further evidence that other would-be buyers of the F-35 fighter jet are heading for the exits. Italy chopped its order by 30% this week, Britain says it won’t make up its mind until 2015, Turkey has reduced its order by 50% and Australia is having doubts. On Monday the Pentagon said it’s delaying its own purchase of 179 of the planes by five years to save $15 billion and allow yet more time for testing. Let’s repeat that: The U.S., which is building the plane and marketing it like crazy to any ally that will listen, says the plane isn’t ready yet and it can’t afford the thing itself.

Justin Trudeau: soft separatist

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:22

Josée Legault is busily trying to walk back her scoop, as she claims now that the information being presented in English is distorted and a false characterization of what Justin Trudeau actually said. Colby Cosh isn’t convinced:

Legault goes on to gripe about the “honesty” of this characterization. In fact, it is perfectly honest and in perfect concord with what Trudeau said, and Legault was correct to recognize it as news in the first place, even if she does not now like the result (perhaps because she has lost ownership of the scoop).

Justin Trudeau did say he was willing to contemplate separation under real-world circumstances. “One day, who knows?” is more or less exactly what he told the interviewer. This is a legitimate surprise. And while I believe that a forty-year-old man is entitled to his own opinions — not that any Quebecois baby boomer can stand to think of Justin as a person entering the era of back pain and prostate problems — the contrast with his father’s extreme anti-sovereigntist position really is worth remarking upon, if only because Justin’s surname is the source of much of his influence.

[. . .]

And yet, as sane and worthy of imitation as he seems in these respects, does anybody recognize the “Canada of Stephen Harper” Trudeau ranted against so excitingly today in front of a scrum in Centre Block? Harper’s party has not only accepted the legal fact of same-sex marriage, but has promised to shore it up against the disrepair in which the prior Liberal regime left it. The pro-life agitators in the Conservative caucus are a few barely-detectable grains of pepper amidst a kilogram of salt; on the whole, they are little more numerous and noisy than the pro-lifers in the pre-2011 Liberal caucus (who were, in one of history’s petty ironies, disproportionately victims of Conservative gains in non-metro Ontario).

February 14, 2012

“The Harper crime policy is less than the sum of its parts”

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:39

It’s odd to find myself on the same side of a debate as Roy McMurtry, but he and his co-authors Edward Greenspan and Anthony Doob are much more right than the government in this:

The Harper crime policy is less than the sum of its parts because it does not add up to a crime policy that addresses, or even acknowledges, these basic facts. It squanders resources that could be used to reduce crime. Making it more difficult for people to get out from under the shadow of their much earlier offences (through a pardon or “record suspension”) makes it harder for millions of Canadians with criminal records to reintegrate into society. Adding mandatory minimum penalties will do nothing to deter offenders, who, the data demonstrate, do not expect to get caught.

But the Harper crime policy is more than the sum of its parts because it tells us that the government is committed to ignoring evidence about crime, and does not care about whether our criminal-justice system is just and humane.

The student who grows six marijuana plants in her rented apartment to share with friends will soon face a mandatory minimum sentence of nine months in prison. Meanwhile, assaults have no mandatory minimum sentences. The law says that trial judges are required to impose sentences proportional to their seriousness and the offender’s responsibility for the offence. Is someone who grows six marijuana plants much more dangerous than someone who grows five (for which there is no minimum sentence)? Or who commits an assault? The Harper Tories seemingly think so.

Update: Of course, Stephen Harper rhetorically cast the libertarians out of the Conservative party years ago. The current attempts to provide the police with powers even they have said they don’t need merely provide extra proof. Chris Selley summarizes a National Post editorial on the subject:

The National Post‘s editorialists do not understand how a government that considers the long-gun registry (and, we’d add, the mandatory long-form census) an unconscionable invasion of Canadians’ privacy and a waste of their money can possibly get behind legislation that would “give the government unprecedented access to Canadians’ online activities, by allowing police to collect the personal information of Internet users … without having to go through the cumbersome process of obtaining a warrant beforehand.” We share this frustration. But Public Safety Minister Vic Toews made it quite clear what he thinks of such complaints yesterday, when he said Canadians “can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.” In other words: “Attention, libertarian wing of the Conservative Party of Canada. We think you are immoral, and no longer desire your votes.”

February 9, 2012

Paul Wells: Harper’s trip to China is going well

Filed under: Cancon, China, Economics, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:22

In his Maclean’s column, Paul “Inkless” Wells talks about the state of play in prime minister Stephen Harper’s visit to China:

The old-timers in the press gallery know how to defuse an announcement like this. We dust a toolkit from the early Chrétien days off. A Canadian prime minister shows up in a fancy Beijing ballroom with a bunch of business executives wielding Montblanc pens. A big number is being tossed around — say, “$3 billion.” But if we subtract the deals that would have happened anyway, and then subtract the deals that aren’t really deals — then we can wear that number down to some innocuous nub.

But while individual elements of Stephen Harper’s signing ceremony Thursday night in a fancy Beijing ballroom may not pan out, at some point the weight of evidence starts to suggest something real is going on. The evidence at hand comes, not just from Canadian sources, but from Chinese.

The first source of the morning was the semi-official English-language China Daily, which reserves real excitement for vice-premier Xi Jingping’s upcoming trip to the United States but which has been respectful, and a little more than that, toward Stephen Harper all week.

Later in the day came Harper’s bilateral meeting with Hu Jintao. Here, no trace of scolding for time spent posturing in the early years of Harper’s term as prime minister. Now, Hu said, “Mr. Prime Minister, you put a lot of value on Canada’s relationship with China and are strongly committed to promoting the practical cooperation between our two countries. I appreciate your efforts.” Translation: You’re out of the doghouse. Come here, ya big lug.

Update: David Akin contrasts the glowing reviews Harper is getting in the Chinese press this time with his 2009 visit:

I’ve travelled to a lot of spots around the world covering Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s international travels and I cannot recall him ever generating the kind of positive press he’s getting in this morning’s China Daily, the English-language state-run daily newspaper here.

A picture of Harper chatting with Chinese chess players during a visit Wednesday to the Temple of Heaven is the front-page top-of-the-fold main art here with a generally positive article about the two countries improving trade relationship. Inside, there’s two other pieces involving Canada and Harper.

[. . .]

Read between the lines here and China’s government is approvingly showing Canada’s prime minister to be a decent, pious individual deserving of China’s friendship and support.

That’s a sharp contrast to the China Daily‘s coverage of Harper’s 2009 visit. There was front-page coverage then too — of how Premier Wen dressed down Harper for letting the China-Canada relationship languish. The narrative in 2009 was that the Canadian prime minister was a wayward supplicant coming to China to seek forgiveness for his sins. Not this time: He is being profiled in the press as the leader “of a strong delegation of five ministers and 40 business leaders” who, along with Wen, witnessd “the signing of nine deals.” The reader of the China Daily on this Harper visit is meant to be impressed.

February 3, 2012

Paul Wells: Harper and the Tories acted like “trust fund kids”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:06

An interesting column at Maclean’s this week, where Paul Wells recasts Stephen Harper’s recent speech at Davos as autobiographical confession:

This passage should be read as thinly veiled autobiography and confession. This week a former senior public servant told me that when the Conservatives came to power in 2006, they inherited structural surpluses, booming oil prices and shrinking public debt, and they acted the way trust-fund kids do. “These were like kids in a candy store who had all this allowance. ‘Wow, we can do all this stuff?’ ”

But don’t take my nameless source’s name for it. Take Jim Flaherty’s. His first budget speech, in 2006, carried the title “Focusing on Priorities.” And what did he describe as priorities? In order: “Providing immediate and substantial tax relief,” he said. “Encouraging the skilled trades.” “Families and communities.” “Investing in infrastructure.” “Security.” “Accountability.” “Expenditure management.” “Restoring fiscal balance for our Canadian federation.” And right down there at the bottom, “prosperity.” So you can’t say it wasn’t the No. 1 priority. It’s right there in ninth place.

In Flaherty’s 2007 budget speech, the word “growth” appeared once.

But sometimes the world changes and the trust fund goes bust. For Harper, that happened in the first week of December 2008, when he had to fight like a street gang to keep the job he thought he’d just been re-elected to. So much changed after that. He won in 2011 by running on the economy after years of running away from it. And now here he was in Davos to tell everyone about “the good, growth-oriented policies. The right, often tough choices.”

Flaherty is my local MP, so I’m well acquainted with his habit of talking like a conservative, but running the finance ministry like one of Pierre Trudeau’s acolytes. It must really be galling him that he has to act like a grown-up for the coming budget. As I’ve said more than once, if you factor out the military and foreign affairs aspects, there were few things that Harper did that wouldn’t have been done just as readily by Paul Martin. And I mean Martin as PM, not in his more successful guise as minister of finance.

January 31, 2012

Andrew Coyne on the sudden appearance of Stephen Harper’s “hidden agenda”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

We’ve been waiting for it to appear since the 1990′s, so it’s about time that it finally put in a cameo:

At last, the hidden agenda, and not a moment too soon. Vague, indirect and overseas as it was, Stephen Harper’s Davos speech was perilously close to a vision statement, of a kind the prime minister has seldom made until now, and will henceforth have to make often.

It would be nice if he had shared with us his concerns about the ageing of the population, and the threat it poses to our long-run social and economic health, sometime before the last election, rather than joining in the all-party consensus that there was nothing wrong with Canada that could not be fixed with more and richer promises to the elderly.

[. . .]

How serious is the cost side of this conundrum? The president of the C. D. Howe Institute, Bill Robson, has projected the “net unfunded liability” implied by this unprecedented demographic shift — that is, promises to pay benefits out of public funds for which we have made no provision in taxes, “net” of any savings from having fewer children about — at about $2.8-trillion. With a T, ladies and gentlemen: about 160% of GDP. (That’s in addition to the $800-billion unfunded liability in the Canada Pension Plan and its Quebec counterpart — yes, they are pulling in enough each year to meet their current obligations, but that does not mean they are “fully funded,” the prime minister’s claims to the contrary — to say nothing of the $600-billion national debt.)

January 26, 2012

The fate of London’s diesel locomotive plant

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:38

In the Toronto Star, Martin Regg Cohn (who claims he “is not an anti-globalization crusader”) does his level best to put forward a case for massive government intervention in a labour dispute between Caterpillar and the Canadian Auto Workers:

At the old locomotive plant now owned by U.S.-based multinational Caterpillar Inc., the Canadian Auto Workers union is not even on strike. The CAW has been locked out since New Year’s Day because it refused to sign its own death warrant by agreeing to slash wages in half for most workers from $34 an hour to $16.50.

When a powerful multinational negotiates in bad faith, it becomes a story that governments in Queen’s Park and Ottawa can no longer wash their hands of. To put it in language that resonates with Premier Dalton McGuinty: When a bully tries to humiliate people, you can’t just watch in silence.

When high-paying skilled local jobs can be shredded at the whim of a combative multinational giant, it dramatically undermines all the upbeat rhetoric we hear from McGuinty and Prime Minister Stephen Harper about Canada’s global appeal. It sends a signal that Ontario is not so much open for business as it is closed for unions.

We jump directly from Caterpillar’s demand for wage reductions to an assertion that the company is negotiating in bad faith (I guess, from the union’s point of view, anything other than a wage increase is proof). No indication whether the company’s demand is economically justifed — if sales of the plant’s railway locomotives are as bad as the wage offer implies, then the next step will be closing the plant — just straight over to bad-mouthing the company.

And, of course, it’s merely objective reporting to use pejorative descriptors when discussing the eeeeevil multinational firm. Not content merely to malign the company, he then calls on the Premier to support the union to the hilt:

So what can our anti-bullying premier do?

If I were McGuinty, I would ask myself a simple question: What would Bill Davis do?

The former Tory premier of Ontario wasn’t perfect, but he was always plugged in. He took labour seriously, listened closely to business and wooed foreign investors (remember Renault?). He knew how to leverage the power of the premier’s office to stand up for Ontario’s greater interests.

A phone call to Caterpillar’s corporate braintrust would show that Ontario’s premier is no pushover. If that didn’t work, a phone call to Harper — who is still trying to live down the tax breaks he gave the locomotive factory’s former owners a few years ago — might find a receptive ear.

And finally we get to a good point: the foolishness of governments in giving special tax breaks to certain industries or companies. If it’s in the company’s best interests to locate in your jurisdiction, they’ll probably do it. If you have to bribe them with tax breaks, low-interest or interest-free loans, or other special incentives, then once the incentive runs its course, the company has no further requirement to stay in your location.

Update: In the National Post, Kelly McParland has some suggestions for union leaders:

1. A lot of people (the membership figures suggest it’s the vast majority) think unions are concerned solely with their own members and couldn’t give a bird’s turd for anyone or anything else, including other working stiffs, members of other unions, the fortunes of the company they work for or the customers they deal with. When you display a total lack of interest in others, they generally adopt the same attitude towards you.

[. . .]

4. Union politics might consider moving out of the stone age. The world evolves over time, but unions persist in peddling the same trite bromides as if it’s still the dawn of the industrial revolution. The “us against them” mentality; the pretense that all employers exist to exploit workers and can never be trusted; the assumption that every contract must be succeeded by an even richer one no matter the health of the industry, the economy or the company; the fealty to leftwing political parties — all are symptoms of an exhausted, outdated perspective that has barely changed since “modern technology” meant the telephone.

If unions really want to save themselves, they might take a lesson from the market economy. If no one buys what you’re selling, it’s not because they buyers aren’t bright enough. It’s because people see no value in your product.

Update, 3 February: The plant is being closed. Here’s the official announcement:

Progress Rail Services has announced that it will close Electro-Motive Canada’s (EMC) locomotive production operations in London, Ontario.

Assembly of locomotives will be shifted from the London facility to the company’s other assembly plants in North and South America, which will ensure that delivery schedules are not impacted by the closing of the London facility.

All facilities within EMC, EMD and Progress Rail Services must achieve competitive costs, quality and operating flexibility to compete and win in the global marketplace, and expectations at the London plant were no different.

The collective agreement and cost structure of the London operation did not position EMC to be flexible and cost competitive in the global marketplace, placing the plant at a competitive disadvantage. While the company’s final offer addressed those competitive disadvantages, the gulf between the company and the union was too wide to resolve and as such, market conditions dictate that the company take this step.

January 20, 2012

Paul Wells on the shady characters behind “Ethical Oil”

Filed under: Cancon, China, Economics, Environment, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:09

He pretty much blows the lid off this conspiracy to sell Canadian oil to unaware, easily duped foreigners who don’t realize how evil the conspirators are:

In hindsight, Stephen Harper’s new fight against the world’s oil sands detractors was a long time coming. Last November in Vancouver, the Prime Minister gave a local television interview in which he warned that “significant American interests” would be “trying to line up against the Northern Gateway project,” Enbridge’s proposed $3.5-billion double pipeline from near Edmonton to a new port at Kitimat, B.C.

“They’ll funnel money through environmental groups and others in order to try to slow it down,” Harper told his hosts. “But, as I say, we’ll make sure that the best interests of Canada are protected.”

In early November, U.S. President Barack Obama announced he was putting off final approval of TransCanada’s $7-billion Keystone XL pipeline until after this November’s presidential election. Harper has long viewed Obama as an unsteady ally. Now he’d had enough. “I’m sorry, the damage has been done,” he told CTV before Christmas. “And we’re going to make sure we diversify our energy exports.”

January 18, 2012

Stephen Harper “[C]ertain people in the United States would like to see Canada be one giant national park”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

Investigative blogger Vivian Krause discusses American environmental groups’ interference in Canadian affairs in the Financial Post:

For five years, on my own nickel, I have been following the money and the science behind environmental campaigns and I’ve been doing what the Canada Revenue Agency hasn’t been doing: I’ve gathered information about the origin and the stated purpose of grants from U.S. foundations to green groups in Canada. My research is based on U.S. tax returns because the U.S. Internal Revenue Service requires greater disclosure from non-profits than does the CRA.

By my analysis and calculations, since 2000, U.S. foundations have granted at least US$300-million to various environmental organizations and campaigns in Canada, especially in B.C. The San Francisco-based Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation alone has granted US$92-million. Gordon Moore is one of the co-founders of Intel Corp. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation have granted a combined total of US$90-million, mostly to B.C. groups. These foundations were created by the founders of Hewlett-Packard Co.

[. . .]

The Great Bear Rainforest is a 21-million-hectare zone that extends from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the southern tip of Alaska. Environmentalists now claim that oil tanker traffic must not be allowed in the Great Bear Rainforest in order to protect the kermode bear (aka the Great Spirit Bear). Whether this was the intention all along or not, the Great Bear Rainforest has become the Great Trade Barrier against oil exports to Asia.

Speaking on CBC last night, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, “But just because certain people in the United States would like to see Canada be one giant national park for the northern half of North America, I don’t think that’s part of what our review process [for the Northern Gateway] is all about.”

January 6, 2012

Paul Wells: Harper has big plans for 2012 … maybe

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:13

Yes, it’s the constantly threatening hidden agenda!

What does Stephen Harper want to do with his parliamentary majority? “I want to make sure that we use it,” he told CTV’s Lisa LaFlamme in a year-end interview. “You know, I’ve seen too many majority governments, the bureaucracy talks them into going to sleep for three years, and then they all of a sudden realize they’re close to an election.”

[. . .]

You don’t have to like this list. I’m not saying Harper’s predecessors were heroes. I am saying they were not sleeping. If the Prime Minister’s comments have any meaning, he must have something up his sleeve at least as big as those accomplishments. If he doesn’t, he won’t be the first politician to congratulate himself for his achievements before he fails to achieve them.

His interviews suggest Harper plans something big. Four times during his CTV interview, and once with the Chinese-language Fairchild network, he used the adjective “major” to describe his plans for 2012.

[. . .]

It’s striking how rarely Harper sounds bold when any discussion descends from slogans to details. Take foreign policy. On Syria, he pleads the lack of a Security Council resolution. On Egypt: “We’ll try and do what we can do to encourage stability and encourage the forces of democracy, but we don’t go into these things blind. There are some very real risks.”

A policy of bold action only where success is assured is a policy of offering help where none is needed. It is a bold decision to join others’ victory parades. There is nothing major about it.

Incidentally, the bureaucrats I talk to aren’t plotting to put Harper to sleep. On the contrary. Many wonder whether this government will wake up. One of Ottawa’s most experienced civil servants tells me the widespread belief is that Harper’s government is so obsessed with each morning’s headlines that it cannot plan. This official predicts a year of high-level early retirements from the civil service if Harper does not start using his majority.

December 13, 2011

Canada’s withdrawal from Kyoto was inevitable from the beginning

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:21

I was against the Kyoto agreement from the start, but the government of the day had to be seen to be more “green” than the Americans. John Ibbitson explains:

The Harper government’s decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol tarnishes Canada before the world. Liberal and Conservative incompetence and mendacity are to blame. You and I are to blame. And Lehman Brothers had something to do with it as well.

It isn’t easy for a country to descend, in the space of a single decade, from crusader to pariah, as Canada has done on the environment. But our political leaders were up to the task.

The first, worst mistake occurred at Kyoto itself in 1997, when then prime minister Jean Chrétien told Canadian negotiators to meet or beat the American commitment, whatever it took. The problem was that while the American commitment was ambitious, Bill Clinton never expected the Senate to ratify that commitment, and he was right.

The Liberals found themselves stuck with Draconian targets that, if met, would hobble oil sands production, hammer big industry in Ontario, and send home-heating bills through the roof. Their solution was to study the issue. And study. I remember sitting through an interminable briefing in 2003, in which officials patiently explained how Canada would meet its Kyoto targets. The only problem was that there was this enormous gap, which was to be closed through “future reductions.” It was like having a household budget in which Miscellaneous was bigger than Mortgage.

Given the hammering that British PM David Cameron has been taking in the British press, he should send a bouquet of flowers to Stephen Harper for giving the media a different villain to abuse.

Update: Stephen Gordon says the same thing: inevitable from the beginning.

Notwithstanding economically illiterate attempts to pretend otherwise, higher consumer prices for GHG-emitting goods and services are an essential component of any serious attempt to reduce emissions. Counting on people to reduce GGE emissions out of the goodness of their hearts was the strategy of the Chrétien-Martin Liberal governments, and adopting this policy made Canada’s Kyoto failure inevitable long before Stephen Harper’s Conservatives came to power.

Political parties rarely win when they campaign on a platform that promises to increase the price of fossil fuels — the Progressive Conservative government of Joe Clark lost power in large part because of its proposal to increase the gasoline excise tax by 18 cents a gallon (4 cents a litre).

Update, the second: Oh, it’s okay, apparently we’re not allowed to abandon the “voluntary” agreement:

Remember how this was phrased? “sign it, it’s just voluntary!”

Recall Rio 1992 “Earth Summit” where the meme was “hey, it’s voluntary! … with a negotiating schedule attached”. Apparently, like a Roach Motel, “countries check in but they can’t check out”. This email is from UNFCCC’s list server and note my bolded section below. The arrogance, it burns.

[. . .]

    “I regret that Canada has announced it will withdraw and am surprised over its timing. Whether or not Canada is a Party to the Kyoto Protocol, it has a legal obligation under the Convention to reduce its emissions, and a moral obligation to itself and future generations to lead in the global effort. Industrialized countries whose emissions have risen significantly since 1990, as is the case for Canada, remain in a weaker position to call on developing countries to limit their emissions.”

November 13, 2011

Stephen Harper’s government is not small-c conservative

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:44

The National Post editorial board surveys the federal government’s economic record and discovers it’s really the old Liberal party in disguise:

There is no question the Harper government has been profligate and could easily cut federal spending dramatically without doing further damage to the economy. Since 2006, the Tories have increased nominal federal spending from about $175-billion to just over $250-billion. That’s a shocking rise of almost 43%. Even after accounting for inflation and population growth, plus factoring out the money the Conservatives have spent on anti-recession stimulus (over $75-billion), the real growth in federal spending since 2006 has been nearly 10%.

The size of the federal civil service has increased rapidly, too, as has its composition. The Tories have added 13% to the rolls of the bureaucracy in just five years. Some of this is the result of their expansion of the military, police and border service, but much of it has nothing whatever to do with national security. Health Canada, for instance, has seen a nearly 50% increase in its staff under the Tories, the largest percentage increase of any department.

Mr. Flaherty would not have to be motivated by ideology to pare some of that spending and hiring back. If the Tories simply reversed federal spending to the levels they were at when the worldwide financial crisis hit in the fall of 2008, Ottawa’s budget would be balanced this year. Even if the Tories wanted to hold off on any cuts in transfers to individuals — such as pensions and GST credits — and preserve provincial transfers, they could still find enough cuts to non-essential spending to return to balance in two years.

October 28, 2011

“The ultimate measure of this institution’s value [is] the elevation of human dignity and liberty for all their citizens”

Filed under: Asia, Cancon, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:32

Stephen Harper made a speech yesterday that expressed a lovely sentiment. It’s not clear if the other heads of government attending the meeting will be quite as taken with it:

­ If the Commonwealth continues to ignore member countries that violate human rights and ignore the rule of law and democratic principles, the 60-year-old organization will fade into irrelevance, Commonwealth leaders meeting here are being told.

It¹s a message Canada and Prime Minister Stephen Harper strongly endorses but one which is expected to produce divisions at the biennial summit of Commonwealth Heads of Government. The summit got underway Friday morning in a ceremony presided over by Queen Elizabeth II.

“The ultimate measure of this institution’s value going forward will remain the commitment asked of member governments to the elevation of human dignity and liberty for all their citizens,” Harper said in a speech here Thursday after arriving from Ottawa. “In the next few days, it is my strong hope, that the Commonwealth shall reaffirm, and reinvigorate, this great purpose.”

Member countries are typically loathe to point fingers at the laggards in the 54-country Commonwealth when it comes to human rights and democracy but not Harper.

He has already singled out Sri Lanka’s government for sharp criticism over Sri Lanka¹s failure to investigate what a United Nations panel called “credible allegations” that the Sri Lankan army committed war crimes as that country’s 25-year-old civil war was drawing to a close in 2009.

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