Foiled U.S. Capitol plot is further proof that wannabe terrorists are dim

By Erica Alini - Friday, February 17, 2012 at 6:16 PM - 0 Comments

FBI agents posing as al-Qaeda operatives just busted a man who was going to blow himself up on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., according to the Washington Post:

Amine el-Khalifi, 29, was picked up while carrying an inoperable MAC-10 automatic weapon and a fake suicide vest provided to him by undercover FBI agents.

The young Moroccan man reportedly entered the U.S. when he was 16, and overstayed his tourist visa by thirteen years, living as an illegal immigrant in northern Virginia. His arrest today was “the culmination of a lengthy and extensive operation,” says a statement released by Capitol Police.

The Wall Street Journal, however, reports that the FBI’s Washington field office said the suspect “never posed a danger to the public.” Perhaps that’s because, as far as terrorists go, el-Khalifi was not the sharpest tool in the shed. He fell for the exact same trick the FBI used two years ago on Farooque Ahmed, who happily went along with a mock plot to bomb the D.C. metro. Ahmed seemed enthusiastic about the idea, in fact, providing the undercover agents with video of northern Virginia subway stations, suggesting the use of rolling suitcases rather than backpacks to make sure the explosion would kill as many people as possible, and offering to donate money for al-Qaeda’s overseas operations.

Here’s hoping the bad guys never figure it out.

Drummond report crushes Ontarians’ morale–and the table

By Erica Alini - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 5:16 PM - 0 Comments

You might as well call him Dr. No–as in, no full-day kindergarten, no more small class sizes, no pay increases for doctors, and so on.

Don Drummond, a former TD economist and chair of Ontario’s commission on public-service reform, has unveiled his much-anticipated report on how to restore the fiscal health of Canada’s largest province. Drummond’s two-volume, 532-page tome crushed Ontarians’ morale on Wednesday–as well as the table onto which Ontario Provincial Police officers unloaded copies of the report during the media lock-up this morning, according to the Toronto Star.

Drummond has predicted that Ontario’s deficit will balloon to $30.2 billion in the next seven years, unless the province manages to contain total yearly spending increases to 0.8 per cent. Nearly a third of his suggested cuts concern healthcare–unsurprising, given that public spending there has been growing at an eye-popping average annual rate of 6.3 per cent over the past five years.

But it’s not just doctors who are up in arms against the Drummond report. There’s enough in there to make just about anybody mad: The document, in fact, recommends raising the retirement age for teachers; scrapping a new 30 per cent Ontario tuition grant for undergraduate students (unless the budget for post-secondary education can be otherwise contained to 1.5 per cent annual growth); axing a 10 per cent rebate on electrical bills; closing one of the two head offices of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, as well as shutting two casinos in Niagara Falls.

“Ontario faces more severe economic and fiscal challenges than Ontarians realize,” Drummond said. And that, in all likelihood, was the main point of his report: to deliver a shocking wake-up call, as Adam Radwanski noted in The Globe and Mail last weekend.

“Our message will strike many as profoundly gloomy,” Drummond said Wednesday. “It is one that Ontarians have not heard, certainly not in the recent election campaign, but one this commission believes it must deliver.”

It’s target practice in the Commons over the Conservatives’ ‘snoop and spy’ legislation

By Gustavo Vieira - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 11:55 AM - 0 Comments

Opposition MPs and critics of the online-surveillance bill tabled by the government of Stephen Harper lashed out at the Conservatives on Tuesday, after Public Safety Minister Vic Toews caused outrage on Monday by referring to opponents of the bill as siding with child pornographers. During Question Period on Tuesday, NDP MP Charlie Angus said the government was setting out to “snoop and spy” on average Canadians, while Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae asked the Prime Minister whether the alleged friends of pedophiles included the provincial privacy commissioners who wrote an open letter to Toews last year criticizing the bill. In addition to concerns about police being able to obtain information on Internet users without a warrant, the Ontario Privacy Commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, also raised the issue of the bill requiring Internet service providers (including Rogers, which owns Maclean’s) and websites to collect and store users’ data, which, she said, could create a “Fort Knox of information” for hackers and criminals to prey on. It’s an issue Maclean’s blogger and TVO host Jesse Brown also pointed to on Tuesday. An online petition against the bill has already collected close to 90,000 signatures. Steve Anderson, the executive director of OpenMedia.ca, which organized the Stop Online Spying petition in May, compared the effects of the bill to the Orwellian online surveillance practiced by the governments of Syria and China.

How the government wants to trick us into saving more

By Erica Alini - Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 2:48 PM - 0 Comments

eyewash/flickr

According to how economists have long imagined us, the way we plan for retirement works somewhat like this:

• Phase one: straight out of school, we calculate how much money we’re going to need after our working days are over, and lay down a carefully thought-out savings plan;
• Phase two: as we climb the corporate ladder, we’re happily shaving larger and larger slices off our paycheques, pouring the cash into carefully selected and closely monitored investments;
• Phase three: we bid good-bye to our fellow co-workers of a lifetime and joyfully retire to freedom sixty-…. whatever.

Continue…

In a cooling housing market should you wait to buy and hurry up to sell?

By Erica Alini - Friday, February 3, 2012 at 9:18 PM - 0 Comments

Danny Johnston/AP Photo

Last week, Econowatch looked at the latest dire warnings about Canada’s real estate market. Everyone from the big banks, through Bank of Canada’s Mark Carney to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is sounding alarm bells about inflated property, especially in hot markets like Toronto and Vancouver. With Canada’s economy slowing down and households overburdened by debt, many predict house prices will start heading south in 2012. On the other hand, the current record-low interest rates don’t have much place to go but up.  What does this mean for homebuyers and sellers? We asked realtors and mortgage brokers to weigh in.

John Pasalis is a Toronto realtor and the owner of Realosophy Realty Inc. in Toronto, a residential real estate brokerage that focuses on researching the city’s neighbourhoods. Larry Yatkowsky is a Vancouver realtor at Yatter Matters. Realtor Manny Riebeling focuses on Vancouver West and downtown areas and specializes in luxury properties and condos. David Larock is a Toronto-based, independent full-time mortgage planner. Kerri-Lynn McAllister is the editor at RateHub.ca, a website that compares mortgage rates in Canada.

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Meet Mario Monti, Italy’s ‘Mr. Serious’

By Erica Alini - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

If one were to pick a movie title to describe Mario Monti, it would surely be A Serious Man. Italy’s current prime minister couldn’t cut a more starkly different figure from his bigmouth, scandal-prone predecessor. An economics professor and the head of one of Italy’s most prestigious universities before he was tapped to lead the country in November of last year, Monti earned the nickname “Super Mario” for taking on Germany’s powerful regional banks and then Microsoft during his tenure as European Union commissioner for competition in the early 2000s. His time in Brussels proved he was everything that Silvio Berlusconi was not: a man of measured words and bold action.

And he did not disappoint. Less than a month since taking over at Palazzo Chigi, the government headquarters in Rome, Monti had rushed through parliament a draconian, $40-billion austerity plan aimed at eliminating Italy’s public deficit by 2013. He pleased Germany, calmed the markets, and still had well over 50 per cent popular support. Italians saw the pain coming, but simply gritted their teeth.

In Brussels, he received a warm welcome from both Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy—European newspapers were quickly abuzz with rumours that the Franco-German power duo had become a trio. And in some business circles, where France’s president is privately called “Merkel’s fool” for his seeming lack of backbone vis-a-vis the chancellor, people saw in Monti a man who would speak the truth to Europe’s most powerful country. In a September op-ed piece, the professor had pointedly reminded Berlin that it was “none less than Germany and France” that broke the EU’s deficit rules in 2003, “thus sending a ‘don’t worry about fiscal discipline’ [message] to Greece and all the others.”

Continue…

As the economy slows down, should austerity pick up speed?

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 2:01 PM - 0 Comments

Statistics Canada

Canada’s GDP numbers for November came out this morning, and it was a rude awakening. The economy slowed down unexpectedly in November, with output dipping 0.1 per cent, as opposed to the consensus forecast of 0.2 per cent growth. “While it initially appeared that the Canadian economy smoothly decelerated late last year, it now looks like Canada stumbled as it approached the 2011 finish line,” CIBC quipped in a note.

Dragging down overall output was a 2.5 per cent drop in oil and gas extraction activity, possibly due to low oil and gas prices and softening demand for exports. Notably, construction in both the residential and non-residential sector was down 0.3 per cent.

Statistics Canada

The November slowdown is expected to bring down quarterly growth from a projected two per cent annualized expansion. Recession–defined by economists as two consecutive quarters of negative growth–isn’t necessarily upon us. But with Europe teetering on the brink of fiscal disaster, global demand cooling, and the Canadian housing market possibly due for a downturn–which could shave as much as one per cent off of GDP, according to some estimates–is it really time for the Harper government to pull the breaks on public spending?

Another concern is that, with rates already at record lows, there’s little the Bank of Canada can do to soften the impact of deficit cuts with expansionary monetary policy. As Stephen Gordon noted yesterday, there are steep costs associated with introducing austerity at the wrong point of the business cycle.

A Toronto homebuyer takes his frustrations to the blogosphere

By Erica Alini - Monday, January 30, 2012 at 12:26 PM - 0 Comments

Last week, we wrote about whether Canada’s real estate market is on the cusp of a painful though not disastrous pop or an all-out meltdown like the ones that hit the U.S. and Ireland. Econowatch would like to kick off this week by drawing your attention to FML Listings, an anonymous blog launched by a self-described frustrated Toronto homebuyer. It’s based on a simple, brilliant idea: Pick a modest house or condo with an outrageous price tag, and rail against it in 50-100 words. Here’s today’s gem about a one-bedroom, one-bathroom going for $548,000: Continue…

Ottawa apparently sees the NEB as a friend of the oil industry

By Erica Alini - Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 5:11 PM - 0 Comments

Canada’s nominally independent energy regulator, the National Energy Board (which is currently evaluating Enbridge’s plan to build the Northern Gateway pipeline) is an ally of the federal government, according to an embarrassing official policy paper that was made public on Thursday. First Nations, on the other hand, are an adversary.

Greenpeace just published pages of documents obtained by the Climate Action Network through a freedom of information request. They show the NEB listed among entities Ottawa considers to be allies in its struggle to promote oil sands abroad. In an adjacent column on the same piece of paper, First Nations appear under “adversaries.”  The documents were drafted by Canada’s international trade ministry, and they lay out an advocacy strategy to combat criticism of Canada’s oil sands in the European Union. Continue…

What happens when Canada’s housing bubble pops?

By Erica Alini - Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 1:56 PM - 0 Comments

A few days ago, Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney released another alarming, albeit muted, warning shot about the state of the Canadian real estate market. Some properties in Canada are “probably overvalued,” the central banker said during an interview with CTV. Last week Finance Minister Jim Flaherty hinted he is also worried about housing: “We watch the housing market carefully and we are prepared to intervene if necessary,” he said.

So, are we literally living in a bubble? And when it bursts, will it get as ugly as it did south of the border? Here’s where the most recent speculation is pointing: Continue…

The most influential brand in Canada? Microsoft.

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 4:36 PM - 0 Comments

Polling firm Ipsos Reid recently picked Canadians’ brains on who they think are the most influential brands in the country. The pollster compiled a list of 100 brands, which included the brands that spend the most on advertising in Canada every year–plus a few well-known names that don’t spend much at all, like Twitter, but that Ipsos researchers thought were influential nonetheless. Brand names could be those of corporations, like Microsoft, products, like the BlackBerry, and sometimes both (like Google and Youtube). Then Ipsos asked every one of 1,000 adult responders to rank ten out of the 100 selected brands, so that, in the end, every brand had been rated 100 times, Ipsos president of market research Steve Levy told Maclean’s.

The results? Stunning.

The most influential brand in Canada turned out to be none other than Microsoft, which beat out traditionally cooler competitors Google (which came in second) and Apple (fourth). Could it be that Canadian consumers are already well aware that Microsoft is finally coming back–or, as Businessweek put it, Steve Ballmer is no longer Mr. Monkey Boy?

And the BlackBerry? Nowhere to be found in the top 10.

For more on the Ipsos Influence Index Study, click here.

Why did SOPA get so far? Geeks don’t lobby.

By Erica Alini - Friday, January 20, 2012 at 5:16 PM - 0 Comments

Congress received over $14 million from interest groups linked to the entertainment industry, which support the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, and Protect IP Act in the Senate.

That was 7.2 times more than what Internet interest groups who (vehemently) oppose those bills put in the pockets of Capitol Hill lawmakers: a mere $2 million.

Still surprised two pieces of legislation as patently flawed as SOPA and PIPA made it this far in Congress?

For details on this dirty little open secret, check out this post by MapLight, a research company that tracks down campaign finance and breaks it down by hot-button bills, those who write them, and those who pay the big bucks.

As the Financial Times (where I read about MapLight in the first place–tip o’ the hat) rightly notes, it’s high time for Silicon Valley to recognize that what goes on in Washington doesn’t stay in Washington.

Keystone XL wars: Much ado about nothing, basically

By Erica Alini - Friday, January 20, 2012 at 4:38 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Levi, a  senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, has written a must-read list of myths about the (temporarily) defunct Keystone XL. Levi takes aim at climate change scaremongering with the same delight with which he debunks job creation and energy independence fairytales. Here’s a synopsis:

1. The pipeline would have been catastrophic for global climate change. Verdict: false.

2. The pipeline would have reduced U.S. reliance on oil from the Middle East. Verdict: pipe dream.

3. The pipeline would have created hundreds of thousands of American jobs. Verdict: gross exaggeration.

4. The pipeline would have set back the green economy. Verdict: umm… not true.

5. If we don’t build the pipeline and buy their oil, Canada will sell it to China. Verdict: so what?*

*hem, this, of course, from an American point of view.

Read the rest here.

What do financial markets have in store for 2012?

By Erica Alini - Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

Richard Drew/AP

When one of the world’s most experienced money managers talks of “paranormal” activity in today’s markets, you know these are treacherous times for average investors. “It’s as if the Earth now has two moons instead of one,” mused Bill Gross in his first investment letter of 2012. Gross, the head of a $244-billion bond fund at Pimco, one of the world’s biggest fund managers, lost $5 billion in redemptions last year, as clients pulled money out of his fund after a string of bad (but at the time seemingly rational) bets against U.S. Treasuries.

If not paranormal, 2011 was the year when volatility went viral. Bad luck played a part, with large swaths of the Japanese economy swept away by the tsunami. Mostly, though, the uncertainty that rattled investors was man-made, as bickering policy-makers in Brussels and Washington seemed to gamble with the fate of the global economic recovery. Stocks on the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index swung twice as much as they did, on average, in the last 50 years, only to close roughly where they had opened 12 months earlier, according to Bloomberg. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up by just six per cent, and the NASDAQ went down two per cent. Even more disappointing was the TSX, which closed the year down by 11 per cent.

Gross wasn’t the only pro who faltered in a year when, in addition to wild volatility, market activity slowed. U.S. broker-dealer MF Global Holdings Ltd. went belly up in November after betting $6.3 billion on European sovereign bonds. Last October, Goldman Sachs posted its first quarterly loss since 2008. Eager to protect profits and reputations, some financial firms are resorting to desperate measures—Dutch Bank ABN AMRO even introduced a tool called the Rationalizer, which measures emotional arousal levels through skin sensors and advises traders to take a break or wind down their transactions if they get too elated or frustrated. All this raises a troubling question: what chance does the average investor stand? Even those who played it safe by turning to things like guaranteed investment certificates and principal-guaranteeing investment vehicles were left languishing. With interest rates at near-zero levels, baby boomers are approaching retirement with unexpectedly undersized nest eggs. Mounting resentment against financial advisers, meanwhile, had Canadians choosing to try to go it alone. The number of accounts registered with online brokerages has increased by 36 per cent since 2008, according to Investor Economics, a Canadian financial services research company.

Continue…

Expected Keystone rejection slams TransCanada stock

By Erica Alini - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 3:06 PM - 0 Comments

Google finance

News that the U.S. State Department is set to reject TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline sent the company’s stock reeling this morning. TransCanada shares fell by over US$2 around midday, to a low of US$39.74 in New York, though they regained ground later in the day. The U.S. State Department is holding briefing on Keystone at 3 p.m. ET.

Does Islamic finance have a place in Canada?

By Erica Alini - Monday, January 16, 2012 at 5:32 PM - 0 Comments

(Hasan Jamali/AP Photo)

Around $900 billion in assets across the globe are managed by Islamic banks that operate according to sharia, an interpretation of Islamic law. In recent years, so-called Islamic finance has been growing at a rate of 15-20 per cent a year, and proved remarkably resilient to the financial crisis. Proponents of the relatively new sector point to its back-to-basics financial structures, which have made it popular with a number of non-Mulsim clients who have little appetite for risk. Critics, though, say the restrictions it comes with–prohibitions, for example, on paying interest and investing in anything that involves porn, pork or booze–are archaic and unworkable.

Canada, with its 1.3 million Muslims, has lagged behind countries like the U.K. and the U.S. in embracing sharia-compliant financial products. None of the country’s big banks currently offer sharia-compliant services, though some smaller players do. Toronto-based UM Financial Inc., which issued home mortgages conforming to Islamic law, filed for bankruptcy last year, leaving 170 Muslim borrowers in limbo, and opening a legal can of worms. Is the firm’s failure evidence that Canada should steer clear of Islamic finance; or proof that the country needs more of it–i.e. that the banks and policymakers need to bring the practice into the mainstream, with tighter rules and better oversight? We asked the experts to chime in. 

Tarek Fatah is the founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, a liberal-minded grassroots organization. He is also the author of Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic lllusion of an Islamic State, among other works. Walid Hejazi is associate professor of international business at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, where he is currently teaching an MBA course on Islamic finance.

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Islamic finance: paying for piety?

By Erica Alini - Friday, January 6, 2012 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments

For Canada’s 1.3 million Muslims, UM Financial arrived on the financial scene with a valuable service: mortgages that, in compliance with sharia principles, don’t charge interest. But its failure last year has sparked a fierce debate about whether Islamic banking should be banned, or whether it’s still a potentially lucrative industry in need of better regulation.

Mortgages with UM Financial were set up so that lender and borrower purchased the house together. The homebuyer pays rent to the mortgage issuer (rather than interest), while gradually buying off the outstanding share of the property. Ownership is transferred to the borrower only when the principal is paid in full. But when UM Financial failed, receivers were left with a legal can of worms. Who ultimately owns the houses—the bank or the borrower? And will 170 Muslim borrowers be forced to start paying interest in order to keep possession of their homes? Long-time critics of Islamic finance say these problems are inherent in the system and that it should be outlawed. Tarek Fatah, founder of the liberal-minded Muslim Canadian Congress, argues sharia-based banking amounts to calling interest by another name, and charging gullible, if devout, borrowers a premium for their piety.

Proponents of sharia-based finance maintain that the failure of UM Financial proves that Canada needs more, not less, Islamic finance. Had the country’s big banks opened up to the practice, borrowers would not have turned to a small, poorly regulated player such as UM Financial, says Walid Hejazi, a business professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. In retail banking, sharia-sanctioned models are examples of low-risk, back-to-basics finance, notes Hejazi. On the commercial side, a well-developed Canadian regulatory system for Islamic finance would make it easier for wealthy Gulf countries to invest in capital-intensive projects that need funding, such as the development of Alberta’s oil sands.

UM’s troubles were a rocky start for Islamic finance. But they likely won’t be the last word on a system that will remain in demand with a growing part of the population.

Can a bond offering help cure poverty on Native reserves?

By Erica Alini - Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 12:05 PM - 0 Comments

www.fnfa.ca

Money, goes conventional wisdom, comes with strings attached. Especially other people’s money. Especially when it comes as lump-sum transfer. And, as the ongoing Attawapiskat saga shows, the strings tie both ends of the money chain, with receivers accusing Ottawa of stinginess and neglect, and lenders always keen to point to suspicious accounting practices–or at least maladministration.

Yet, there’s a smart way around all this: borrowing from the markets. Though few seem to have noticed, First Nations are working on it. They plan to issue their first bonds in the fall of next year, in a collective offering worth at least $100 million. The money raised will serve for things like housing and to build badly needed infrastructure, which will create jobs and the conditions for banks and private business to set up shop on Native reserves, says Steve Berna, chief operating officer of the First Nations Financial Authority, the voluntary not-for-profit organization tasked with issuing the bonds.

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Crank yankers

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 12:06 PM - 0 Comments

The Kitchener-Waterloo Record traces mischievous calls made during the election to the Conservative party.

The complaint filed by Joe Nowak, president of the Kitchener-Conestoga federal Liberal association, was obtained by The Record and includes the phone number Siopiolosz traced. When called, the number goes to a voice mail for the “Conservative Party.” The message asks callers to leave their name, number and a detailed message and says the party will get back to them within three business days. [Fred] DeLorey, director of communications and deputy director of political operations for the Conservative Party of Canada, confirmed in an email “that the number was ours.”

Numerous complaints about crank calls were made during the spring campaign.

The Conservative party has now released a statement explaining its side of the story. Continue…

What Jim Flaherty said

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

After the Liberals and Conservatives exchanged campaign promises in April, Jim Flaherty was interviewed by Kathleen Petty on CBC radio’s The House. Here is my transcript of the portion of that conversation that dealt with health care transfers and the six percent increase.

Petty. Now let’s talk about health care because Stephen Harper, this week, along with the Liberals and we know the NDP as well, have all agreed to maintain health care transfers to the provinces to six percent as the escalator year-over-year after 2014, which is when the accord expires. But it’s not found in the platform, it’s not found in the budget, except as an assumption in 2015-16 that says that it’s subject to discussion or review, so I’m not quite sure how this is all being costed out.

Flaherty. Well, it is, I can assure you that the six percent increase is built into the fiscal track. That is, we go forward when we budget and make certain assumptions. We have assumed six percent on an ongoing basis for the Canada Health Transfer and we’re committed to that.

Petty. For how many years?

Flaherty. Well, until 2014 and then thereafter. Now, we have to negotiate…

Petty. But what’s thereafter? That’s the part I’m asking.

Flaherty. Thereafter’s at least two years…

Pause. So there’s the caveat to the six percent promise, right? Well, there might’ve been the caveat, except for the fact that the interview wasn’t over and Mr. Flaherty wasn’t done explaining himself. Continue…

Keystone pipeline prospects dim after U.S. Senate vote

By Erica Alini - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:34 AM - 0 Comments

A bill that may force U.S. President Barack Obama to make a decision on the Canada-Texas oil pipeline within 60 days passed the Senate on Saturday. Republican senators celebrated a small victory for a political manoeuvre that may compel the president to take an unpopular stance on a hot-button issue in the run-up to the 2012 election. The U.S. State Department said it would “almost certainly” turn down the project, even if the White House approves it. The State Department has postponed its decision until after next years’ election because it says it needs to study alternative routes for the pipeline. As currently proposed, TransCanada Corp’s 700,000 barrel-a-day oil pipeline would cross one of the country’s largest aquifers in Nebraska. The bill now moves to the Republican-led House of Representatives.

Reuters

Small world

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 1:53 PM - 0 Comments

The polling firm implicated in the campaign against Irwin Cotler did work for at least 39 Conservative candidates in the last election, including Andrew Scheer.

A Citizen analysis of Elections Canada records shows that Campaign Research was involved in at least 39 candidate campaigns during the spring election, and was paid nearly $400,000 for the work.  Not all Conservative candidate returns have been filed so the figure could be slightly higher still.

As @kady notes, one of the campaigns that used Campaign Research was that of the same Andrew Scheer who found no breach of privilege. His campaign paid more than $8,000 for their services in aid of his run for the roses in Regina – Qu’Appelle, before he was elected Speaker. Scheer does not appear to have mentioned this in his ruling or, uh, anywhere else.

What did the Conservatives promise on health transfers?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 11:27 AM - 0 Comments

The Harper government is apparently eager to cap increases to health transfers after 2016 and is apparently willing to argue that their election promise to increase transfers at 6% per year was limited to two years. The Ontario government seems to think that’s not quite what the Conservatives promised.

… Ontario government officials pointed to an interview Mr. Flaherty gave to the CBC during the campaign. “We will keep it at 6 per cent for whatever the duration of the agreement is,” Mr. Flaherty said last April, adding that the length of the new accord will be negotiated with the provinces. “It could be two years, five years, whatever.”

During the election—on Friday, April 8, to be specific—Michael Ignatieff promised to maintain the 6% increase and challenged Stephen Harper’s willingness to do likewise. The Conservatives duly responded. Continue…

Economists: diversity drives down charitable donations in Canada

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 3:24 PM - 0 Comments

Kathryn Harper/Flickr

With Santa soon to climb down (the believers’) chimneys, a new study found rather un-Christmassy evidence that ethnic and religious diversity tends to drive down charitable giving in Canada.

McMaster University’s Abigail Payne and David Karp, Wilfrid Laurier University’s Justin D. Smith, along with James Andreoni from the University of California, San Diego, found that a 10 percentage point increase in a neighbourhood’s ethnic diversity leads the average household to give $27 less per year to charity, out of an average donation of about $200. That’s a 14 per cent drop. Increases in a neighborhood’s religious diversity also tend to make households stingier—albeit to a lesser degree. A 10 percentage point increase reduces donations by $20, or 10 per cent. Continue…