October
26
2011
Please note that the wonderful CBC IDEAS programme on Mel, “Citizen Mel” will be rebroadcast this Thursday and Friday at 9p.m. on CBC radio.
Jillian
October
17
2011
Senate reform? I say dump it and add seats by proportional representation to the House of Commons. Harper’s present plans will result in U.S.-style dysfunctional government with an undemocratic Senate blocking House of Commons legislation, Severe, lengthy periods of legislative deadlock. Who needs it? Mind you, the present 10 Senators each for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick is ridiculous when 4 Western provinces with much larger populations have only 6 each. I say dump the place and get on with proper democratization of the House, including more representation by population and guaranteed Committee democracy.
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The NDP leadership race? I was leaning to Mulcair, but Duncan Cameron’s recent Rabble column supporting Peggy Nash made me take another look. You should read it.
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Well, just as we expected. After 4 more years of Harper the country will be difficult to recognize. Gone will be the Long Gun legislation, gone will be the Wheat Board, gone will be a Commons Committee system that does important work, gone will be a meaningful Senate, gone will be many senior and respected Civil Servants who don’t bow low enough to the P.M. and the P.M.O. Now we find Harper is cancelling the 34 year-old partnership with the important and valuable Canadian Environmental Network of over 600 environmental groups across Canada. The intention is clear: let’s not let those pinko environmental groups block Steve’s “let them eat dirt” attitude.
October
12
2011
The Hurtig Lecture at the University of Alberta was a great success. It will be broadcast by CBC’s IDEAS programme soon. I’ll let you know the details. In the meantime, here is an article that you should find interesting.
http://media.news.ualberta.ca/NewsArticles/2011/10/HurtingLectureresonates.aspx
October
5
2011
Now available in Vintage paperback Chris Hedge’s excellent book Death of the Liberal Class. “An important book” by a Pulitzer Prize winner. Do try to read it.
Hedge’s new book is The World As It Is. Good stuff!!
Did you read the Vancouver Sun article about the disgraceful level of child poverty in her school (Seymour elementary) Want to reach her? Lani Morden is the vice-principal and the author. Her e-mail address is lmorden@vsb.ba.ca. Worth encouraging!
Here’s Stephen Harper recently in Edmonton, “..fundamentally Conservative values are Canadian values. We are beginning a new era of pre-eminence for those values.” Sure, that why 60% of Canadian voters have voted against you, Steve, in the last 3 federal elections. The man never was very good with numbers.
Finally there is increasing protest about the lack of transparency in corporate political donations in the U.S. Mind you, it’s still very modest., but it does annoy many American shareholders. About time. The system is corrupt. And Harper is moving us closer to U.S. standards again.
And now Harper is beginning to focus on the CBC. What an evil man! You are going to need to stand up to defy him in defence of the corporation.
By the way Ideas will broadcast Lawrence Martin’s Hurtig Lecture at the University of Alberta. Go to CBC.Ca/ Ideas for more details. Martin’s talk will be about the decline of democracy in Canada, same topic as one of the most important chapters in my next book (2012).
About 30 years ago I gave a strong talk inVancouver about the stupidity of exporting raw logs. Ethan Baron tells us that more than 40% of trees logged on the B.C. coast were exported as raw logs – so much for the premier’s job strategy. Jobs where? In the U.S.? In Japan? How truely dumb! Oh well, we can always buy the logs back in the form of doors, particle board, furniture etc.
September
21
2011
The following is from the new OECD publication , Society at a Glance 2011, which is the OECD annual publication of leading social indicators.
This is a reminder that there are now 34 countries in the OECD.
Looking at median income in OECD countries, Canada is now in 7th place.
Bear in mind that many of the figures that follow are from 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. But they are the most recent equivalent numbers because some of countries don’t come out with their figures that frequently.
Looking at household incomes, the incomes for Canadians put us way down in the last quarter of all the countries placing us well below many others. However, if we look at annual median disposable household income, Canada, in 2008 was in 7th place, behind countries such as Luxembourg, the United States, Norway, Australia and Switzerland.
On a totally different topic, looking at fertility rates in OECD countries, Canada is now in 17th place slightly below the OECD average.
Again, on a totally different topic, if we want to see what percentage of Canada’s population is foreign born, we are in 6th place at roughly 16.7% – well above the OECD average of 11.7%.
Is Canada’s population aging as we so often hear? The latest figures are for 2008 and show that in relation to the OECD average, we are aging at a pretty quick rate but so are many other OECD countries including the United States, Israel, etc. etc. In fact, we are in 13th place in terms of aging whereas there are 19 other OECD countries that are not aging as rapidly as Canada.
Looking at the employment rate for 2009, Canada is in 10th position. Employment was just under 71% whereas the OECD average was just over 66%.
However looking at the unemployment rate in 2009 – the most recent year available – Canada was way down in 21st place in terms of our unemployment rate, and this is well behind many other countries and well above the OECD average.
In terms of our per capita education spending on compulsory school public and private, Canada was down in 15th place but nevertheless above the OECD average.
Returning to the subject to income inequality where we had been so bad for so many years – Canada is down in 22nd place in terms of income inequality and we’re worse than most other major developed countries although the US is much worse than we are.
Looking at poverty, Canada is 21st in the percentage of people living in poverty – 21st in 34 OECD nations. This is disgraceful!
I
n terms of people finding it very difficult to live on the current level of income (2010), Canada is down in 16th place – in other words there are 15 other OECD countries that are better off than we are.
Now returning to the topic of social spending, something I’ve emphasized in the past, incredibly, we are down in 23rd place of OECD countries, well below the OECD average, another embarrassment. This is totally contrary to the kind of nonsense we hear from some of our business people in Canada and some of our media. 23rd of 34 OECD countries in terms of social spending!
Canada is now down in 10th place in life expectancy (the US is in 27th!)
September
19
2011
The voter turnout in the recent Danish elections was 87.7%. Aren’t you ashamed of our terrible Canadian record by comparison? I am. Next time you hear someone complaining about Ottawa, ask them if they voted in the last election. If they didn’t, you know what to tell them.
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There has been lots in the media about the near-record levels of poverty in the U.S., now up to 46.2 million people. But please bear in mind, as I have explained elsewhere quite often, that the U.S. poverty line is ridiculously too low. For example, for a family of 4, if your total income is $1,845 a month, you are not counted as living in poverty. Now there are record numbers of Americans living in “deep poverty”.
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Is it any wonder that public opinion polls now show historically low approval ratings for Congress with both Republicans and Democrats receiving record or near record low approvals?. Only one in three say their representative in Congress deserves to be reelected.
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Don Gardner of Postmedia News picks up on some of the major themes of The Truth About Canada, mainly the nonsense Harper claims about how well our economy has performed compared to other developed nations.
Don provides an updated list of other OECD countries which have been doing better than we have, some far better. He says it very well, “Even a quick look would have revealed that the Conservatives were telling a whopper. But too many journalists didn’t bother to look at the numbers. They were too busy applauding.”
September
13
2011
Next time you hear Stephen Harper boast about what a great job he and his friends have done managing the Canadian economy, consider this: Canada’s government debt (84.2%) as a percentage of GDP in 2010 was far higher than the OECD average of 74.2%, and our gross national savings as a percentage of GDP put us down in 80th place! 80th!
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As to those right-wing never-ending promoters of lower business taxes, note that yet once again as Harper at al. have chopped business taxes, Canada’s business competitiveness has continued to fall, this time from 10th place last year down to 12th place. So much for the Jack Mintzes and National Post columnists and editorial writers.
Sam Pizzigate, quoting Credit Suisse, points out that median wealth of a typical Canadian family
was $94,700 in 2010, about double the $47,771 U.S. median net worth.
Meanwhile, half the people on earth who are 20 and older own less than 2 percent of global wealth while the world’s richest one percent of adults own 43% of the world’s wealth!!!
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Paul Krugman, who is no longer an Obama fan, says that “At the start of Obama’s administration he had a far too weak economic plan and since then has compounded the original sin by pretending everything was on track while “adopting the rhetoric of his enemies.” What a sad failure. What a terrible disappointment. It’s as if the man simply doesn’t understand he’s very much in danger of being a failed one-term president.
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In the last mid-term U.S. elections, increased spending, mostly by Republicans, amounted to a huge $4 billion. Thanks to the totally stupid recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, there is zero accountability re the sources of all the money. Some democracy!!!
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The CCPA, in a recent paper, calculates that with a universal public Pharmacare plan we could SAVE a huge$10.7 billion a year. The current system is “inequitable, inefficient and very costly.”
September
5
2011
The August 20th Economist tells us that the U.S. mission in Iraq has so far cost over one trillion $ and just under 4,500 American lives. It costs about $1 million as year for every U.S. soldier in Iraq.
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About one third of Canadians want us to ditch the monarchy, about one third want us to keep it, and the rest, for the most part, don’t really care.
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George W. wanted to extend U.S. tax cuts for the rich permanently. The cost would be about $700 billion a year in lost tax revenue and continued severe deficits with more and more money going each year to service debt costs. Overall, George W.’s tax cuts would cost about $4 trillion over the next 10 years. U.S Democrats have all kinds of good ideas for raising tax revenue without badly hurting middle-class Americans.
But the ridiculous “tea party” won’t allow it. Imagine, then, if we had the same types from The University of Calgary in power in Ottawa. (Yes, we do, but so far not completely in power. So far.)
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The International Energy Agency says that Group of 20 countries supply petroleum subsidies of about $312 billion U.S. annually. The main result is artificially high energy demand. Canada’s contribution to the poor big foreign petroleum companies is just under $3 billion a year. Hard to imagine!!!
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I’ve asked Jillian to attach a copy of Eric Reguly’s excellent column from last November. I hope you can find the time to read it.
August
23
2011
There have been so many truly wonderful tributes to Jack Layton - editorials, columns, letters etc.- that it’s difficult to add more without covering much of what has already been said.
One thing we can all see is just how much the man has been loved by so very many of his fellow Canadians. He had his fingers on the pulse of Canadians. He not only understood the struggles and concerns of Canadians, he felt them, and he tirelessly fought for the changes that would make us a kinder and gentler nation.
Jack was a model of integrity and dignity. No matter how much he disagreed with his political opponents, he always took the high road and demonstrated that a different type of political discourse was possible in our country. He understood that true leadership uplifts, inspires and motivates with a vision of what is possible, not by efforts to diminish others.
I knew Jack for more than 30 years. We were good friends. He was very special. He was good, he was talented, he was honest and he was dedicated to making Canada a better country.
I will miss him enormously.
Mel
