Beatty’s list: business priorities and political realities

By John Geddes - Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 4:52 PM - 0 Comments

The anxious tone the Prime Minister recently injected into the debate on Canada’s economic competitiveness was picked up today and amplified by one of the country’s top business lobbyists—Perrin Beatty, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

Beatty happens also to be a former Conservative cabinet minister from the long-ago days of Brian Mulroney’s government. So long ago, in fact, that he’s apparently forgotten how certain matters are not to be raised in polite political company. Like ending the way Employment Insurance rules favour perennially high-employment regions, notably parts of the Atlantic provinces and Quebec.

On a sensible list of 10 “barriers to competitiveness” laid out by Beatty in a news conference just off Parliament Hill, the Chamber’s plea for EI reforms to “improve fairness and increase incentives for the unemployed to return to work or relocate to find work” stood out. The very words send chills down spines around Ottawa.

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Then, now and later on OAS

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 12:22 PM - 0 Comments

The Parliamentary Budget Officer suggests Old Age Security is sustainable in the long term (full report here). Meanwhile, the NDP busts the Conservatives for being against raising the retirement age before they were considering being for it.

In the thick of the 2004 election campaign, Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party sent out a “REALITY CHECK” titled: Paul Martin’s hidden seniors agenda. Conservatives claimed that Liberals were hiding a plan to raise the retirement age to 67 for Old Age Security (OAS). They ridiculed the idea of raising the eligibility age for OAS because “Canadians would have to work two years longer only to receive less from their public pension.” … 

In 2004, Conservative were ready to stand up for seniors. On Friday, Stephen Harper was asked about the possibility of raising the eligibility age by two years and replied “Absolutely, it’s being considered.” This government was elected on the promise that they would change Ottawa. They’ve become everything they used to oppose.

Harper in China: rules of the game

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 8:54 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Paul Wells

It’s an odd visit. Today the middle of Stephen Harper’s day was taken up with what our itineraries described as a “round-table meeting.” The Prime Minister’s Office sent us a list of the Canadians who attended: Pierre Beaudoin from Bombardier, Roy Cook from the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, Duncan Dee from Air Canada, Lowell Jackson from CAPP, Amit Chakma from UWO, Lorraine Mitchelmore from Shell, Patrick Lamarre from Lavalin.

It actually took a while for me to ask the pool reporter (many of the events on these trips are covered only by a single reporter and camera, who share with everyone else) whether anybody Chinese was on hand. Nope. Just the Canadians. Chattin’ about the federal budget in Beijing. More of a semi-circle meeting, really.

The news came later: Continue…

Mr. Harper goes to Beijing

By Richard Warnica - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:34 PM - 0 Comments

China is home to the world’s second-largest economy. It grew by 9.2 per cent in 2001, even as its chief rivals, the United States and the European Union, continued to struggle. As a country that sells things—oil, natural gas, uranium—Canada needs access to Chinese money and markets if it wants to thrive going forward.

That is fact one.

China is run by an undemocratic regime. It spends billions of dollars controlling its own people, often violently, every year and it uses its influence to prop up some of the world’s most violent and unstable dictatorships.

That is fact two. Continue…

Q&A: Nathan Cullen

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 12:40 PM - 0 Comments

As part of our coverage of the NDP leadership race, we’ll be running interviews with the contenders. First up, Nathan Cullen. We chatted last week.

Q. So I wanted to start with something you said after the debate on Sunday. You made some comment about “doubling down” on your joint nomination proposal … What did you mean by that?

A. Especially early on in this race, there were a number of New Democrats that said, ‘Boy, I like you a lot, but this joint nomination thing is hard for me to get around, you know, I might be interested, but it’s just hard to comprehend.’ Can you nuance it, essentially. Can you soften it? And so over Christmas, we had a couple days and I thought about it. And I can’t. I believe in the policy, I think it’s a good one, it’s certainly worth consideration. And, increasingly, those same folks that expressed hesitation are saying, ‘You know what, the more bad things Harper does, the more it confirms the need to put everything on the table.’ So this is one of those things on the table. So I’m noticing a shift just within the body politic and I also don’t want to be a weathervane politician, trying to bend and guess where the voters are going to be and guess what the people want to hear. Continue…

Keystone rhetoric and reality

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Charles Pierce traces those “environmental extremists” to Nebraska.

What gets lost in all of this is that the most stalwart opposition to the crazy notion of running a pipeline of the world’s dirtiest carbon-based fuel through what is literally the bloodstream of the nation’s farm economy is coming from landowners in Nebraska. Trans Canada, the company that wants to build the pipeline, already has folded and offered an alternate route that it says would keep the pipeline out of the Sandhills. (The danger to the aquifer remains.) But the ranchers whose property abuts this new route are not yet satisfied … ”We’ve been called radical environmentalists,” Frisch said, “but we’re just looking out for our livelihood.”

Separately, the New York Times’ Joe Nocera says “all of Harper’s ministers have been instructed to stop making comments that might be construed as interfering in the American presidential election.” It’s unclear (at least to me) if that much has been reported previously in Canadian media.

Canada’s Commonwealth edge

By John Geddes - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 10:28 AM - 0 Comments

I’m not much of a monarchist, so I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere for coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee. On the other hand, I am struck lately by new legal and economic research that strongly suggests paying close heed to old Commonwealth ties would be a shrewd foreign-affairs strategy, not a nostalgic distraction, for Canada.

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Iraq v. Iran

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

In his chat with Postmedia last week, the Prime Minister was directly asked about how the justifications for war in Iraq compare to the justifications for war with Iran.

Postmedia: In 2003, you supported the invasion of Iraq based on stopping them getting weapons of mass destruction. Does the same logic apply with Iran?

Harper: In fairness, the two cases are not exactly similar — I think there was more to the case in Iraq than simply the threat of weapons of mass destruction. But that said, obviously the intelligence was flawed in that case and there was considerable debate around that at the time. I don’t think there’s much debate today among informed people about Iran’s intentions and Iran’s systematic progress toward attaining nuclear weapons.

For the sake of comparison, here is how Mr. Harper justified the invasion of Iraq in his famously plagiarized speech to the House in 2003. Continue…

The Commons: When photo ops go wrong

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 6, 2012 at 7:40 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. “Louder!” called a voice, possibly from the Conservative side of the House.

Peter Julian, already speaking at a certain volume, attempted to oblige, punctuating his question with exclamation points.

“When(!) is the government going to show leadership? When is it going to work on a jobs plan so that Canadians(!) can get back to work?

The subject here was the recent closure of Electro-Motive Diesel in London, Ontario—a closure notable not only for the 450 individuals it put out of work, but because the plant was once selected as an ideal scene to demonstrate the Prime Minister’s economic stewardship. And so a silly picture of Mr. Harper pretending to conduct a train is now a symbol of some kind. And so Mr. Julian was yelling this afternoon in the general direction of the Finance Minister. Continue…

Alice Wong’s China delegation

By Paul Wells - Monday, February 6, 2012 at 2:45 PM - 0 Comments

So who follows the Prime Minister to China anyway? There’s a selection of backbenchers, a handful of cabinet ministers, and about 40 business and community leaders whose names were given to us by the Prime Minister’s Office. Let’s have a look. Continue…

Harper finally takes some risks

By John Geddes - Monday, February 6, 2012 at 10:50 AM - 0 Comments

Chris Wattie/Reuters

Among Stephen Harper’s defining political traits, his standout skill has long been a knack for presenting himself as a pragmatist who would never overreach. In opposition, Harper succeeded in softening the image of his restored Conservative party to squelch fears he might be cooking up a sweeping right-wing overhaul of the federal government. He won the 2006 election with a platform of narrowly defined policies, like trimming the GST and paying parents a monthly $100-per-kid bonus. As a minority Prime Minister, he had to draft policies unthreatening enough to attract sufficient opposition votes to pass. But now, as he begins his first full calendar year with a House majority, Harper’s customary caution has evaporated. “In the months to come,” he declared in Davos, Switzerland, last week, “our government will undertake major transformations to position Canada for growth over the next generation.”

Major transformations? Plural? And this from a Prime Minister who, only days earlier, had sounded much his old self, pleading for a “practical, incremental” approach, rather than bold measures, for First Nations. It was a different Harper at the World Economic Forum, touting decisive fixes on daunting issues. He zeroed in on at least four big files, though offering frustratingly few details. On pensions, he vowed to make underfunded parts of the system sustainable “for the next generation.” On immigration, he promised “significant reform” to match newcomers to labour force needs. On exports, he pledged both to finalize new trade deals and to end regulatory delays on oil and mining ventures. On industry, he committed his government to finally tackling the perennial problem of lagging Canadian business innovation.

This ambitious agenda was scarcely hinted at in the Prime Minister’s re-election platform just last spring. Looking over his Davos list, it’s not hard to see why Conservative strategists might have deemed some of these ideas too risky for the campaign trail. Sure enough, soon after Harper’s speech, the formidable Canadian Association of Retired Persons served notice of its intention to fight any future curtailing of the Old Age Security or Guaranteed Income Supplement programs, even though the Tories stressed the coming cuts won’t affect seniors already collecting benefits. Harper’s plan to streamline environmental assessments for pipelines and other resource megaprojects is also bound to meet with angry opposition, and shifting the emphasis on immigration to workers with more in-demand skills also risks raising concerns among some of the Tories’ hard-won ethnic community supporters.

Continue…

Are we ready to go to war with Iran?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 6, 2012 at 9:55 AM - 0 Comments

Roland Paris considers the Harper government’s rhetoric on Iran.

Yet it is also a position that most experts on Iran would judge as dubious at best. This may be the reason why no NATO country other than Canada, to my knowledge, has made such a bold and questionable assertion. Indeed, it is especially jarring at a moment when our closest ally, the United States, is counseling restraint.

I know the prime minister does not care that Canada is out of step with its allies – that he takes pride in taking stands on principle, and in the fact that his government will not “go along to get along.” In this case, however, his “principle” is really just idiosyncratic speculation—and dangerously provocative speculation at that.

On Friday, the Prime Minister said that, “for the first time in history, we are facing a regime that not only wants to attain nuclear weapons but a regime that has, compared to virtually all other holders of nuclear weapons in the past, far less fear of using them.” On Sunday, John Baird invoked Hitler.

Prepare for a recession

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 1:41 PM - 0 Comments

Stephen Harper, Sept. 15, 2008. “My own belief is if we were going to have some sort of big crash or recession, we probably would have had it by now.”

Stephen Harper, Sept. 26, 2008. “The only way there is going to be a recession is if they’re elected, and that’s why they’re not going to be elected.”

Stephen Harper, yesterday.“I don’t see a lot of evidence that we’ll have a recession or a crisis this year, but on the other hand I don’t want to be too complacent about that.”

Harper meets with Turmel

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 3, 2012 at 6:36 PM - 0 Comments

A statement from the interim NDP leader on a meeting with the Prime Minister.

I have just concluded a face to face meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.  The meeting was cordial and focussed on the upcoming budget. I urged Mr. Harper to ensure that the upcoming budget does not harm families or cut the services they rely on in these tough times.  I also urged him, in the face of rising unemployment numbers and yet another plant closing today, to ensure his budget focusses on real job creation above all else. I shared with him what I have heard from Canadians in the past month. Too many families are worried about their jobs and their future. Too many of them are waiting months for the unemployment insurance they’ve paid for their entire lives.  These Canadians know that with further budget cuts coming, it will be even harder for them to make ends meet.

The Prime Minister and I also discussed the relationship between the federal government and the provinces, which I believe requires immediate improvement.   Canadians want the federal government to work with the provinces to improve front-line health services for Canadians.   I asked him to listen to those like the Quebec Premier who don’t want to see the federal government act unilaterally in cutting Old Age Security for future generations.

It was a good discussion and I believe the Prime Minister understood my concerns.  I hope that he will act on them in the upcoming budget. In these tough times, the government simply can’t leave families out in the cold.  It’s time to focus on job creation, and on helping families make ends meet.

And a report from the Prime Minister’s Office. Continue…

‘It’s being considered’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 3, 2012 at 6:28 PM - 0 Comments

The Prime Minister talks to Postmedia about OAS, China and Iran.

Postmedia: There are Canadians who are wondering, ‘What does it mean to me?’ So that’s why I asked the question. Are you in a position to tell us whether or not the OAS eligibility is being considered as an option?

Harper: Absolutely, it’s being considered. But what we have to be clear on is that we are not looking at changes that are going to affect people that are currently in retirement or approaching retirement. We’ve been very clear on that.

Postmedia: Should anybody over the age of 50 be concerned?

Harper: I’ve just said we’re examining these things. The government hasn’t taken final decisions, so I don’t want to speculate on particulars. But I think we have been very clear in our electoral mandate that we’re not going to make any changes to seniors or to pensions in any way that deals with the current deficit.

‘The utter failure of right wing, trickle-down economics’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 3, 2012 at 2:10 PM - 0 Comments

A statement from Brian Topp on today’s Electro-Motive announcement.

Caterpillar’s decision to close its plant in London Ontario, throwing over 400 workers out of work is a powerful indictment of the Harper government’s economic agenda.  

A hugely profitable company, Caterpillar benefited from millions of dollars in Harper government tax giveaways. But instead of investing in its Canadian operations, Caterpillar chose to provoke a conflict with its Canadian workforce demanding outrageous salary cuts that it knew would be rejected. In the end, Caterpillar took the tax breaks and then shipped out the jobs, all with the able assistance of the Harper Tories.  

What is happening in London, Ontario today stands as a powerful testament to the utter failure of right wing, trickle-down economics. For over 20 years, Liberals and Conservatives have argued that tax giveaways to profitable companies like Caterpillar would result in increased investment and good jobs. How wrong they were. What we got instead are growing levels of income inequality, big deficits and governments starved of revenue for vital public investments, like education and training.

Continuing down this path will only lead to more lost jobs, economic insecurity, and growing inequality. That’s why I have made tax fairness a fundamental platform in my leadership campaign. Profitable corporations and the top one per cent must start paying their fair share. And New Democrats must take this argument head on and win it. If we don’t, then the Harper Conservatives and companies like Caterpillar will control Canada’s economic destiny. It’s the job of the New Democratic Party not to let that happen.

Paul Dewar says the Prime Minister must demand that “Caterpillar reverse its decision or return the millions of dollars it took from Canadian tax payers.” Peggy Nash says this is a “a perfect example of just how poorly the Harper Conservative are treating our communities and mismanaging our economy” and she calls on potential supporters to join her in the “fight against precisely this kind of greed.”

Q & A: critical experts wade in on the OAS debate

By John Geddes - Friday, February 3, 2012 at 12:30 PM - 0 Comments

A tough, detailed appraisal of the government’s plan to somehow curb Old Age Security spending is available today both on 3D Policy’s webite and over at iPolitics as a featured opinion.

It’s by two former senior finance department mandarins, Scott Clark and Peter DeVries, and brings badly needed clarity to the debate sparked by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s surprise remark about his intention to reform pensions in his “major transformations” speech last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Clark and DeVries argue that since the government has already clamped down on spending growth in big-ticket areas like defence and health, the projected rise in OAS costs isn’t by itself large enough to pose any real threat to federal finances.

Their commentary is well worth reading, but I also took the opportunity to interview Clark this morning for a less formal sense of how he sees this volatile debate unfolding. He brings the unique perspective of a former deputy minister of finance, and a key insider during the fight to eliminate the deficit back in the 1990s—when the Liberals decided against cutting seniors benefits as too politically risky.

Here’s part of our conversation, edited and condensed:

Continue…

After the photo op

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 3, 2012 at 11:13 AM - 0 Comments

March 2008. He also toured the Electro-Motive Diesel plant on Oxford Street where he met many of the firm’s 900 employees. Harper said his visit to the rail locomotive plant was intended to highlight tax measures from his government aimed at keeping manufacturers competitive.

Today. The company that owns the locked-out Electro-Motive plant in London, Ont. has decided to close the plant permanently. Progress Rail Services Corp., a subsidiary of U.S. construction conglomerate Caterpillar, announced “it is regrettable that it has become necessary to close production operations at the London facility,” in a release on Friday. The company locked out 450 workers from the facility on Jan. 1. Costs were the main factor in the dispute, with the company pushing employees to take a 50 per cent pay cut.

Never mind the major transformation?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

A week after the speech in Davos, CTV has the Prime Minister in “retreat.”

Sources have told CTV News that MPs told Harper during a Conservative caucus meeting Wednesday that reforming pensions “is not a vote winner” and complained they were taken by surprise by the plan.

The government has since toned down their language from the “transformative” changes that Harper spoke about in Davos. ”It’s a review . . . to make sure we have a sustainable, long-term fiscal plan for our country,” Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told CTV. He also said that the upcoming federal budget will have nothing to do with OAS.

Update 9:52am. A note from the Finance Minister’s office. Continue…

The Commons: The Russians are coming for our pensions

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 5:52 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. “Oui ou non?” Nycole Turmel demanded. “Oui ou non?”

Will the Prime Minister be cutting Old Age Security benefits, she asked, yes or no? Will the age of eligibility be raised to 67, she wondered, yes or no?

“We want an answer,” she concluded.

In response, the Prime Minister had two answers. “Mr. Speaker, I was very clear. This government will not cut benefits for our seniors. I am very clear,” he declared. “At the same time, we will protect the system for generations to come.”

After jetting off to Switzerland and standing proudly before the global elite and bragging of his stewardship and boasting of “major transformations” to come, the Prime Minister seems suddenly shy. It is as if,  having scaled the rhetorical heights, he was suddenly reminded why he generally avoids high places. And so now he is attempting to stall, perhaps even soothe, with a sleight of hand. Continue…

China’s oil imports from Iran take a great leap forward

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 3:35 PM - 0 Comments

From the Wall Street Journal:

BEIJING—China’s crude-oil imports from Iran last year were up 30% from 2010, to 27.76 million metric tons, China’s General Administration of Customs reported Saturday. That works out to about 557,000 barrels a day.

China’s overall crude imports were up just 6.1%.

That 557,000 barrels a day is about 10% more than Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline would send to the B.C. coast, although it’s unlikely Gateway would export only to China.

Angela Merkel, in China this week, will urge Beijing to cut oil imports from Iran. U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner delivered the same message on a trip two weeks ago.

Stephen Harper leaves for China next Monday.

Boisvenu on convicted murderers: give them a rope

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 1:14 PM - 0 Comments

Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu has some ideas on reducing prison expenses.

“Basically, every killer should (have) the right to his own rope in his cell. They can decide whether to live,” Sen. Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu told reporters Wednesday.

A victims’ rights advocate and now a senator, Boisvenu also says the death penalty should be considered in certain cases when there’s no hope of rehabilitation. He says limited use of capital punishment could save money. He cited the case of the Shafias — the Montrealers who were convicted this week of killing four female family members. Boisvenu estimates that it will cost Canadian taxpayers $10 million to keep them locked up.

In the case of the Shafias, Mr. Boisvenu apparently said “returning them to their country might be a tougher sentence than to keep them here, where our prisons are a lot more comfortable.”

Update 3:46pm. A statement (en francais) from Mr. Boisvenu. Continue…

Honest broker

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

In response to John Baird’s trip to the Middle East, Paul Dewar challenges the Harper government’s policy in the region.

“Mr. Harper wants us to believe that grandstanding is more important than being an honest broker,” said Dewar. “His unbalanced approach to the Middle East is harmful to the prospect of peace and security for both Israelis and Palestinians…

“The government’s approach is unbalanced when it’s equating a request from Palestinians through legitimate diplomatic channels with Israel’s settlement policy, which is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention,” said Dewar. “The government is now calling for negotiations, but in May it did everything it could to undermine consensus for President Obama’s peace initiative.”

The first rule of party discipline

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

The Star-Phoenix seems to be having some trouble finding anyone in the Harper government or Conservative party to respond to Brad Trost’s comments.

Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar MP Kelly Block, who serves as Saskatchewan caucus chair, would “not have any comments,” one of her staff said Tuesday. Block’s staff member referred questions to the government whip, Conservative MP Gordon O’Connor. “It’s jam-packed. I’ll see if there’s anything we can do,” an official in O’Connor’s office said Tuesday morning, but did not call back.

A spokesperson in Harper’s office took a message Tuesday, but no one returned the call. Messages to the media line at the Conservative Party of Canada’s office in Ottawa went unreturned Monday afternoon and Tuesday.

Mr. Trost expands on his concerns in an interview with the Star. The Star-Phoenix editorial board cheers him on.