Quotulatiousness

March 30, 2012

Looking ahead to the next federal budget

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:29

In the Globe and Mail Economy Lab, Stephen Gordon thinks he can accurately predict the overall shape and content of the next budget:

The main features of the expenditure side of next year’s 2013-14 federal budget should be fairly easy to predict:

  • Transfers to persons will be about 4 per cent of GDP, and future projections will be consistent with this share.
  • Transfers to other levels of government will be about 3.2 per cent of GDP, and future projections will also be consistent with this share.
  • Direct program spending will be at or just above 6 per cent of GDP, and this share will be projected to decline throughout the forecast horizon.

The reason we can make these predictions with a certain amount of confidence is that these paths were set out by the Conservative government several years ago, and they have shown little sign of wanting to deviate from them.

Even if they wanted to — and it can be fairly imagined that they do — cutting transfer programs would generate a certain amount of political blowback from the people and provinces that are on the receiving end. The Conservatives have doubtlessly concluded that limiting the rate of growth of transfer payments to that of the economy — which is the same as keeping them at a constant share of GDP — is probably the most restraint they can impose without incurring lasting political damage.

March 29, 2012

Federal budget highlights (and lowlights)

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:26

My local MP also happens to be the federal Minister of Finance, who got his moment in the spotlight today as he unveiled the government’s 2012 budget. The media folks who were in the budget lock-up are just starting to publish their reports on the “wins” and “losses” as they see them in the new budget.

Initial Tweets concentrated on these headline-friendly moves:

  • Old age pension eligibility will rise to 67
  • Civil service will shrink by 19,000 positions
  • Coinage change: we’re abandoning the penny (they cost 50% more to make than they’re worth, and we didn’t make it up in volume)
  • Return the budget to balance by 2015-2016 and begin running a surplus after that
  • Pravda The CBC, our government-owned TV/radio network, will see a 10% cut in funding

I’ll update this post as new information gets published.

Update: John Ivison at the National Post calls it “A grand vision of still-big government”:

For a government that has forsworn the vision thing to this point, Budget 2012 is Obama-esque in the audacity of its hope for the future.

“We see Canada for what it is and what it can be… Today we step forward boldly, to realize it fully — hope for our children and grandchildren; opportunity for all Canadians; a prosperous future for our beloved country,” said Jim Flaherty in his speech to the House of Commons, boldly going where no Conservative Finance Minister has gone before — save perhaps Sir George Foster, who served Sir John A. Macdonald.

Mr Flaherty summoned up Sir George in his speech, quoting the need “for long vision, the fine courage of statesmanship and the warm fires of national imagination….Let us climb the heights and take a look forward.”

If the rest of the contents fail to live up to that level of rhetoric, they do at least amount to a serious attempt to move beyond the naked bribery of budgets past.

Paul “Inkless” Wells calls it “Harper’s very political budget”:

Revolution, ladies and gents! Light the torches! In his December year-end interviews, Stephen Harper used the term “major transformations” a half-dozen times. He made fun of earlier majority prime ministers. They let the bureaucrats put them to sleep! For years! No chance of that happening to Harper. Major transformations, coming right up.

Fast forward to this afternoon. “We will eliminate the penny,” Jim Flaherty told the Commons. It was literally the first new policy measure he announced. “Pennies take up too much space on our dressers at home.”

Now you know why Trudeau and Mulroney and Chrétien were such snoozers. It was the pennies. Weighing them down all day. Cluttering their dressers at night. Pennies wear a guy down. Harper, the Interac Prime Minister, will be fleet of foot, full of vim, and ready for —

— major transformations? No. I don’t have a searchable electronic text of Flaherty’s speech, but I do not see the word “transformation” anywhere in it. The rhetoric is altogether more reassuring. “The reforms we present today are substantial, responsible, and necessary,” he said, and “We will stay on course,” and “We will maintain our consistent, pragmatic, and responsible approach to the economy,” and “We will implement moderate restraint in government spending.”

From the Budget overview itself, a welcome change to Canadians who shop in the United States:

Every year, Canadians take some 30 million overnight trips outside of Canada, often returning with goods purchased abroad. Modernization of the rules applied to these purchases is long overdue. Economic Action Plan 2012 proposes the most significant increase in the duty- and tax-free travellers’ exemptions in decades. The travellers’ exemption allows Canadians to bring back goods up to a specified dollar limit without having to pay duties or taxes, including customs duty, Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax, federal excise levies and provincial sales and product taxes.

The Government proposes to increase the value of goods that may be imported duty- and tax-free by Canadian residents returning from abroad after a 24-hour and 48-hour absence to $200 and $800, harmonizing them with U.S. levels. This measure will facilitate cross-border travel by streamlining the processing of returning Canadian travellers who have made purchases while outside Canada. This change will be effective beginning on June 1, 2012. It is estimated that this measure will reduce federal revenues by $13 million in 2012–13 and by $17 million in 2013–14.

Campbell Clark at the Globe and Mail says the budget marks a strong change in the government’s formerly pro-military stance:

The Harper government is slashing spending on Canada’s international presence, with deep cuts to the military, aid and diplomacy.

It marks a reversal to the Conservatives long-ballyhooed policy of beefing up the military: It’s no longer just slowing the growth of Defence spending, but cutting it back, and delaying billions of dollars in capital spending on military hardware for seven years.

[. . .]

In fact, neither the budget nor the host of government officials attending a lockup to explain it provided a figure for the Defence budget for the coming year, and in the years affected by the cuts. Officials said that information was not being presented on budget day.

Still, it was clear that the impact will be deep. Since 2006, the Harper government has touted year-over-year increases for military spending, even when it announced two years ago the growth would be slowed. Now it’s cutting.

By 2014-15, more than $1.1-billion a year will be lopped off the regular Defence budget. But that’s not all. In addition, $3.5-billion in capital spending — the sums the military uses to buy equipment like planes, ships, trucks, tanks and weapons — will be put off until seven years from now, so that the government can save an average of $500-million a year.

Hmmmm. Slowdowns in major equipment purchases? I wonder if we’re about to get a Defence White Paper. We’re probably overdue for one of those…

March 14, 2012

Michael Geist rounds up the changes to Bill C-11

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:58

It’s not wonderful, but as he points out, it could have been much worse:

In the days leading up to the clause-by-clause review, many focused on three key issues: no SOPA-style amendments such as website blocking or warrantless disclosure of information, maintaining the fair dealing balance found in the bill, and amending the digital lock provisions. By that standard, the changes could have been a lot worse. The government expanded the enabler provision, though not as broadly as CIMA requested. Virtually all other copyright lobby demands – website blocking, notice-and-takedown, iPod tax, copyright term extension, disclosure of subscriber information – were rejected. Moreover, the provisions supported by consumer and education groups including user generated content protection, time shifting, format shifting, backup copies, Internet provider liability, and statutory damages reform were left untouched. This represents a major victory for the many Canadians and groups such as Open Media that spoke out on these issues.

The fair dealing provision was similarly left unchanged despite a full court press from publishers and copyright collectives who sought elimination of the education category within fair dealing (didn’t happen), inclusion of the Berne three step test in the law (didn’t happen) or a new fair dealing test that overrules the Supreme Court of Canada CCH test (didn’t happen). The expanded fair dealing provision will not cause the horrors claimed by those groups and it is heartening that the government dismissed the misinformation campaign.

The only loss was the least surprising — digital locks. Despite widespread support for compromise legislation and sensible amendments from both the NDP and Liberals, the government rejected any changes. Given the government’s consistent support for digital locks, the ongoing pressure from the U.S., and Prime Minister Harper’s direct intervention on the issue in 2010, amending the digital lock rules presented a major challenge. Government MPs yesterday emphasized the possibility of future new exceptions via regulation but that will be cold comfort in the short term to those with perceptual disabilities, researchers, documentary film makers, consumers, and the many others adversely affected by the restrictive approach. In fact, one NDP MP raised the possibility of constitutional challenges to the bill.

March 13, 2012

Still no reason to get excited about robopocalypse, says Kelly McParland

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:33

Oh, good. I’m not alone in finding the robocall armageddon to be a bit less than exciting:

I have a confession to make. I have not been following the robocalls “scandal” with all the fervency it calls for.

It’s possible my inability to get excited results from six years … oops, make it seven … of the Liberals leaping to their feet every 18 seconds to accuse the Conservatives of plotting to pervert Canadian values, undermine democracy and display their contempt for the laws of the country. There’s this old morality tale about a kid who cried “wolf” too many times, so when a real wolf showed up, no one believed it any more. Maybe that’s why I have a hard time believing this is the real wolf.

It could also be that I find the premise hard to accept. To wit: a top-level conspiracy of Conservative grandees to steal the election by disrupting the vote, sending voters to incorrect polls or discouraging them from turning up at all. This would indeed be a major scandal if it was true, but think about it: Would a nation-wide exercise in disruptive phone calls have any chance of going undetected? Does anyone really believe (outside the fetid confines of the Toronto Star) that the senior ranks of any sane government would take such an extreme risk going into an election it expected to win anyway?

I could see some local bozos getting it into their heads that robocalling the opposing candidate’s supporters might be a great idea, but your cynicism has to be a lot deeper than mine (which would take some doing) to believe anyone could get to be Prime Minister, or his national campaign chairman, and still be either dumb enough, irresponsible enough or reckless enough to sign on to such a plan

Update, 15 March: In the comments, Saskboy strongly disagrees with my lack of excitement over the robocall scandal, and he’s been covering the story on his blog (that’s one of several posts on the topic).

March 10, 2012

Canadian Conservatives: “You are not that party”

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

Andrew Coyne’s presentation to the Manning Centre conference in Ottawa:

What I believe in are a set of principles having to do with the freedom of the individual, the usefulness but not infallibility of markets, and the legitimate but limited role of the state. There are, in brief, a few things we need government to do, based on well-established criteria on which there is a high degree of expert consensus. The task is simply to get government to stick to those things, rather than waste scarce resources on things that could be done as well or better by other means: that is, government should only do what only government can do.

As I say, these ideas are not novel, or controversial. Indeed, you would find support for them, to a greater or lesser degree, across the political spectrum.

Nevertheless, there was a party, once, that believed in these things, to a somewhat greater extent than the other parties. That party called itself conservative, whether with a small or a large C, so I suppose you could call the things it believed conservatism. But you are no longer that party.

For example, that party favoured balanced budgets. But you are not that party. In fact, you boast of how your decision to add $150-billion to the national debt saved the economy.

That party favoured cutting or at least controlling spending, after the massive spree of the Liberals’ last years. But you are not that party. In fact, you boast of how you have increased spending by 7% per year — $37-billion in one year!

That party favoured a simpler, flatter tax system, that left people free to decide how to spend, save or invest their money for themselves. But you are not that party. In fact, you boast of the many gimmicks and gew-gaws with which you have festooned the tax code.

That party favoured abolishing corporate welfare. But you are not that party. In fact you boast of the handouts you make, often accompanied by ministers or indeed MPs bearing outsized novelty cheques. In some cases, you even put the Conservative logo on them.

The story of the last decade is how the rock-ribbed small-c conservatives of the old Reform Party were tamed, neutered, and blinkered into becoming a blue-painted Liberal Party. It worked, in the sense of getting their hands on the levers of power, but their souls were tainted, corrupted, and eventually disposed of in the process.

March 7, 2012

Veterans Affairs to face disproportionally big cuts in federal budget

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:32

That’s what Sean Bruyea thinks. Here’s his piece in the Globe & Mail:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper calls enlisting in the military the “highest form of public service.” Why then is Veterans Affairs, the department which cares for the Canadian Forces when its members are injured, facing the largest proportional cuts of any other public-service department?

The budget axe has been looming over all federal departments. The current “strategic and operational review” is a euphemism for reigning in a federal public service that is out of control. In the last 10 years, the core public service has grown by 34 per cent (versus 12 per cent at Veterans Affairs) and total government program expenses have swelled by 84 per cent (versus 67 per cent at Veterans Affairs).

Perhaps most galling for Canadians who have passed through two recessions in two decades and have seen no real growth in their earnings, public service salaries have increased by 22 per cent over and above inflation.

Few could credibly argue against the need for Ottawa to be managed better.

March 3, 2012

Rex Murphy: Conservatives going through rough period in parliament

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:00

Writing in the National Post, Rex Murphy considers much of the federal government’s current set of problems are either self-inflicted or made worse by their “browbeating style and defensive righteousness”:

I agree with the point Andrew Coyne made in these pages earlier, that the Conservatives (I’m paraphrasing) have situated themselves to fit these types of accusations. Their browbeating style and defensive righteousness to almost every challenge, or serious question, is a hallmark. That attitude offers them little shield when, as on occasion they must be, they are ill-done by. They play tough and hard and close to the boards, and when a story that fits that broad category, like robocalls, is pushed upon them, it seems to fit. In other words, their brittle style has a cost.

The headlines detailing opposition outrage over robocalls is just the latest instalment of the Conservatives losing all control of what might be called their agenda. They blundered Old Age Security. On Internet surveillance, they surely blundered the “with us or the child pornographers” messaging. And now they’ve been hauled off whatever road they might want to be on by a “scandal” from an election nine months ago. Since the House opened, it’s been one mess after another.

Naturally, the opposition parties are at some advantage in all of this, but not quite as much as they might figure. No one is going to look back on the last week, or the last month, and remember big speeches on the big questions — either energy policy, the country’s fiscal health, or foreign affairs. Instead, it’s been the usual rattle of stones in a tin can that passes for Question Period.

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: Australia, 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.)

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