This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Thomas Walkom adds another piece to the picture showing the Cons’ efforts to shift both jobs and wealth offshore, pointing out that lax visa rules have only encouraged RBC-style outsourcing schemes. Craig McInnes recognizes that a cheap, low-rights worker strategy is a problem whether labour is imported to Canada or exploited abroad. Haroon Siddiqui, David Doorey, Heather Mallick and Barbara Yaffe express their own outrage about the deliberate elimination of Canadian jobs. And the Alberta Federation of Labour calls attention to the scope of the temporary foreign worker program.

- Mike de Souza offers a detailed look at how the Cons encouraged the oil industry to completely rewrite (and gut) Canada’s environmental laws through omnibus legislation.

- And in case anybody was under the illusion that nobody has noticed the Cons’ ethical abuses beyond the editorial pages, a new poll should put that to rest:

Fifty-eight per cent of Canadians disapprove of the Conservative government under Harper’s leadership, compared to 42 per cent who approve.

Canadians are especially troubled by the government’s actions in one area — secrecy and ethics.

The poll found that 69 per cent of people believe “the Harper Conservatives are too secretive and have not kept their promise to govern according to high ethical standards.” Thirty-one per cent believe the Tories have kept their promise.

Similarly, the poll found that 63 disagreed with the statement the “Harper Conservatives are living up to the promise they made when first elected in 2006 to provide an ethical, open and transparent government.”

- David Climenhaga exposes the Fraser Institute’s main method of ensuring that their corporatist propaganda never faces any direct rebuttal.

- And finally, Peter Graefe rightly comments that with two parties with a combined legislative majority jockeying for position on the left in Ontario, now would be an ideal time for some significant action to combat poverty in the province.

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Thomas Walkom adds another piece to the picture showing the Cons’ efforts to shift both jobs and wealth offshore, pointing out that lax visa rules have only encouraged RBC-style outsourcing schemes. Craig McInnes recognizes that a cheap, low-rights worker strategy is a problem whether labour is imported to Canada or exploited abroad. Haroon Siddiqui, David Doorey, Heather Mallick and Barbara Yaffe express their own outrage about the deliberate elimination of Canadian jobs. And the Alberta Federation of Labour calls attention to the scope of the temporary foreign worker program.

- de Souza offers a detailed look at how the Cons encouraged the oil industry to completely rewrite (and gut) Canada’s environmental laws through omnibus legislation.

- And in case anybody was under the illusion that nobody has noticed the Cons’ ethical abuses beyond the editorial pages, a new poll should put that . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links

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Assorted content to end your week.

- While there’s room to question whether we should accept spending as self-definition in the first place, Zoe Williams is right to make the point that arbitrary restrictions on benefits serve to put yet more barriers to full social participation in front of the people who can least afford them:

Replacing cash with vouchers has a number of damaging effects. First, it’s infantilising. Crisis loans delivered this way take on the shape of pocket money or charity. Second, it’s stigmatising, as asylum seekers on the Azure card often point out – people don’t want strangers to be able to make judgments about what they’re buying, and whether they should be buying it. People want privacy in their financial transactions. Call them crazy. Third, it erodes the idea that the public purse is something we all created together and, in a crisis, are entitled to draw on it. Yes, I’m talking about a culture of entitlement – culture is a culture of entitlement. Modern civilisation is built upon pooling resources and being entitled to a share in them.

Fourth, and to my mind most important – though all of these effects are vitally important – something very significant happens when you expel people from the sphere of money. In the moment of exchange, everyone is equal; you don’t have to prove that you’re worthy of that purchase, your status is bestowed by the fact that you can pay for it, and you are worth as much in that moment as anybody else who can pay for it. There’s a fillip of power in the process; it’s why people who like shopping like shopping, and it is especially important when – for some reason that is probably financial – you spend a lot of the time feeling powerless. Give people a voucher instead, and they are not equal. Asda may be getting the same amount of money for the same amount of food, but charity and condescension have crept into the transaction – or maybe pity. But nobody wants their groceries served with pity.
…
I see those pragmatic arguments now as a Maginot line, and food stamps marched in over the undefended territory of human dignity. When you relegate people to a world outside money, you create a true underclass: a group of people whose privacy and autonomy are worth less than everyone else’s, who are stateless in a world made of shops.

- But then, the corporate sector seems to have decided that self-worth gets in the way of its profit motive. And so the future of the labour movement – discussed by Richard Littlemore – figures to be an important factor in determining whether human dignity has any place in public policy discussions.

- Meanwhile, Paul Wells writes that Stephen Harper has led Canada to a world outside meaningful budgets, as heavily-advertised (but ill-defined) “plans” have replaced any semblance of accountability for public spending.

- Finally, Tim Harper expands on the Cons’ decision to be the lone pariah state which can’t be bothered to cooperate in documenting and combating desertification:

At a time when a parade of federal ministers (including Baird) and provincial premiers, including Alberta Premier Alison Redford, have been invading Washington to tout this country’s supposed “green credentials” in a bid to win presidential approval for the final phase of the Keystone XL pipeline, a decision like this simply blows up all that work.

Walking away from a convention that is dealing with a problem that has been at least accelerated by climate change reinforces the world’s view, including a widely-held view in Washington, that the Harper government is all about resource development and exports, barely paying lip service to climate change.

…

The Canadian move comes on the eve of an April 9 UN meeting bringing scientists, governments and civil society organizations together in Bonn. It is billed as the first ever cost-benefit analysis of desertification, land degradation and drought.

We’re not coming.

Three days ago, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced an additional $51 million in humanitarian assistance to the people of the Sahel, citing a “complex crisis of drought, flooding, failed harvests, and disrupted livelihoods.’’

Baird pulled us out of the UN program trying to prevent it.

Wonder how green we look to Kerry now?

Assorted content to end your week.

- While there’s room to question whether we should accept spending as self-definition in the first place, Zoe Williams is right to make the point that arbitrary restrictions on benefits serve to put yet more barriers to full social participation in front of the people who can least afford them: Replacing cash with vouchers has a number of damaging effects. First, it’s infantilising. Crisis loans delivered this way take on the shape of pocket money or charity. Second, it’s stigmatising, as asylum seekers on the Azure card often point out – people don’t want to be able to make judgments about what they’re buying, and whether they should be buying it. People want privacy in their financial transactions. Call them crazy. Third, it erodes the idea that the public purse is something we all created together and, in a crisis, are entitled to draw . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links

The Role of The State in Gentrification, the Housing Crisis, and its Ability to Relieve or Maintain the Current Situation by Rachel Goodine Pidgin, a new fine-dining restaurant located on Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, moved in to the neighbourhood on February 1 of this year, prompting plenty of controversy. It’s located right off of East [...]

Kermit Gosnell’s trial for murder has begun and the fetus fetishists are fapping themselves into a frenzy. As we pointed out here, he will be The Poster Boy for Evul Abortionists forever, or until another one comes along.

Also in that post, we pointed…

Just because spring is around the corner does little to protect the Torontonians who are without permanent housing.
Toronto’s Mayor, Rob Ford, and his right-wing allies brush off any news of an underlying crisis within the shelter system — even…

The new Pope Francis comes from Latin America and has an understanding of the true depths of poverty that is uncommon in the United States and Western Europe. Outside the very Western urban part of downtown Buenos Aires lie the barrios and the shanties of the Argentinian poor. Life is more transient in neighborhoods where there is a lack of water, food, and opportunity, and where sanitation is a sometime thing. Government programs do not extend far enough or help many at the bottom of the ladder, and government statistics seem to hide much of the problem.

This holds true in many parts of the world. I was struck at the time of my first visit to China in 1987 by the contrast between the opulence of the walled community in which the “Western” hotels were located in Shanghai and the desperate poverty of the communities just the other side of that wall. Move forward some fifteen years and the cities of China are much different across much of the landscape. It is a transition that has been effected through large-scale industrialization and the vast quantities of power is expended in the growth and continuation of that industry. Such a transition is the vision for many countries in the world but the role of power in that change and the increasing costs that it imposes must be recognized. Just having a nominal power available is not, in itself, enough. Consider the case that India, a potential challenger to the Chinese in the marketplace, now finds itself in. As with China, the country has desperate poverty but it also has a developing industrial base that is driving change. But the rate of that change has been limited for some time by the amount of power available.

Power cuts in India are so commonplace that the Times of India recently ran an article detailing some things to do during these “incessant” cuts. And while it is only the major blackouts, such as the power failures at the end of last July that garner global headlines because of the scale, some 600 million people being without power in that event, it is the daily, smaller scale events that are making it increasingly difficult to run a business. In Coimbatore, for example, a city of some 3.5 million people, power outages can last up to 14 hours a day and “load-shedding”, where power outages are rotated around the neighborhoods is an accepted part of daily life in the country. The ubiquity of these cuts mean that many folk have purchased stand-by generators, which in turn drives up the demand for fuel. But it is difficult to run a business – whether it be a factory or a restaurant, if you don’t have a reliable source of power. And if cuts are frequent enough and the alternative power costs are too high, then business either closes or moves somewhere else. It is such a decision that is apparently facing small business owners in places such as Coimbatore, but it has the potential to spread to the larger and now more dependant communities such as Bangalore, the third largest city in the nation, and the Silicon Valley of India.

The city consumes some 2,300 MW a day which it draws from the state grid. About 1,000 MW is generated in the state from nuclear power stations, with the majority of the rest coming from coal, gas and diesel power plants. Because of the prestige of the community it is likely that the city won’t see the worst of the anticipated power shortages this summer, which already have the state trying to buy an additional 1,500 MW. Current supply shortage is around 180 MW but is expected to grow as the weather warms into summer. And since overall Indian supply is challenged by a greater demand, the state can only hope to acquire 1,000 MW to meet the expected demand. They hope that this will be enough to keep the lights and power on in their “Valley.”

This is one of the drivers, expanded to a national scale, that is facing India as it decides what to do over sanctions on Iranian oil. Earlier in that debate India switched out of paying for the oil with US dollars to paying in gold. Given the volumes involved, India imported around 285 kbd from Iran in January, this does nice things (if you are a gold miner) for the price of gold, in dollars. But that can only go so far, and there are suggestions that the payments are becoming more about barter. As a result India has become Iran’s top customer and it is a difficult relationship to change, since some of the Indian refineries are designed only to take Iranian crude. However, as sanctions are growing to include insurance companies, Indian refineries that process the Iranian crude are threatened with the loss of coverage. Whether this will force a change in source of supply, or whether the Indian Government will find a way around the dilemma is an ongoing debate, complicated by the “good deal” that India is getting as a price.

The other fuel on which India is critically dependent is coal. And although the country has large reserves of coal, it is not developing them fast enough to meet demand, and thus must increasingly import both thermal and metallurgical coal.

Figure 1. Indian Coal Statistics (Energy Export Databrowser)

By 2017 imports are anticipated to rise to some 266 million tons of coal, in total. And while much of the press has focused on the Chinese development of new coal-fired power plants, India is planning some 455 new plants, while China has only 363 on the books. This comprises the majority of the 1200 plants currently being planned around the world.

Apart from challenging the opinions of those who suggest that coal demand has or will soon peak, this speaks to the burgeoning need for fuel sources as nations struggle to bring their poor into a better standard of living. It may well be a debate that now acquires a religious overtone.

Friday, March 15, 2013

The World Figure Skating Championships are ongoing in London, Ontario until March 17. Outside the arena, however, some in London are …

By Frank Moraes Maybe I’m just a cynical old guy. But Rachel Maddow spent the entire A section of her show talking about gun control. I’m cool with gun control. As I’ve argued before: by the time we notice that the government is coming for us, …

A new high-end restaurant opened in Vancouver’s poorest neighbourhood at the beginning of February. Since it opened its doors, the sidewalk outside the restaurant has been filled with picketers. They say the Pidgin restaurant opened on a fault-line in the battle against gentrification in the downtown eastside and they want it to close.  Two of the picketers, Wendy Pedersen and Tami Starlight, discuss the protest with Redeye host Lorraine Chisholm.

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The true believers in unfettered capitalism will not like this video: H/t Alex Himelfarb Recommend this Post

Ken Lyotier founded United We Can, a recycling depot for binners and dumpster divers in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. The depot currently accepts containers from 700 binners each day. Ken Lyotier was asked to give the first annual Jim Green Memorial Lecture.  Jim Green was an organizer with the Downtown Eastside Residents Association in the 1980s and a champion of low-cost housing in the Downtown Eastside. We bring you excerpts from Ken Lyotier’s talk.

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A recent study by Stephen Hwang of St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto found that potential patients of high socioeconomic status have a significantly better chance of getting an appointment. Researchers followed a script that suggested their status was either high or low — by posing as a banker transferred to the city, for example, or as a recipient of social assistance. He speaks with Redeye host Jane Williams.

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By: Green Party of Canada (Press Release) | Feb. 27, 2013: OTTAWA – Green Leader and Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands Elizabeth May will vote in favour of Bill C-400 this evening and urges her fellow MPs to do the same. Bill C-400, the Act to ensure secure, adequate, accessible and affordable housing for Canadians, is presented by READ MORE

President Obama put the idea of raising the minimum wage on the radar in the U.S. It deserves to be on the radar in Canada too. That’s because low-wage work is on the rise.
Obama says raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 an hou…

A version of this article appeared today in the Globe and Mail’s Economy Lab.

(This version includes references to the debate plus charts and graphs from data specially tabulated from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey. The data don’t include the self-employed.)

President Obama put the idea of raising the minimum wage on the radar in the U.S. It deserves to be on the radar in Canada too. That’s because low-wage work is on the rise.

Obama says raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 an hour is good for families dependent on low-wage jobs, and for businesses dependent on more consumer power to fuel their growth. A growing economy helps balance the books too.

Nowhere is this more important to consider than in Ontario, where minimum wage workers now account for almost one in 10 employees, more than double the share of a decade ago.

[Double click . . . → Read More: The Progressive Economics Forum: Boost the Minimum Wage, Boost the Economy

In her report on B.C.’s 2013 budget CCPA-BC economist Iglika Ivanova concluded that the province’s financial statement focused on balancing the budget at the expense of British Columbians’ present and future wellbeing. The following are a few ex…

Housing advocates demand action as shelter occupancy remains near capacity.

Toronto City Council has rejected a proposal for an emergency debate on homelessness. This morning as their meeting was getting underway Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) asked his colleagues to consider adding the issue to the meeting’s agenda. After a series of impassioned speeches in which many councillors across the political spectrum expressed concern about [...]