There. I've saved you the bother of reading the Lynch report .
More »That has not stopped Liberal trade critic Navdeep Bains from issuing a press release demanding that Brodie be fired before he can quit, or indeed before Lynch's report has been released. (Though Bains demands the report be released "immediately," he wants Brodie fired "today.") The whole shocking story:...
Prime Minister Must Release Report on NAFTAgate LeaksFor the record, we don't actually know who leaked the information. We don't even know if it was anyone in the government, let alone "from the highest levels." The only thing we know about Brodie's role at this point is that he offered his thoughts, assuming they were off the record, to some reporters in the budget lockup -- about Clinton's views, not Obama's. And the only reason we know this is because one of the reporters was indiscreet enough to pass on his remarks in a speech to a journalism class -- in effect, leaking them.MISSISSAUGA – Given reports of his Chief of Staff Ian Brodie’s imminent resignation, Prime Minister Stephen Harper must release the Privy Council report on the NAFTAgate leaks immediately, Liberal International Trade Critic Navdeep Bains said today.
“The government committed to releasing the report in the House of Commons, yet we now hear that the report is finished and sitting on Prime Minister’s desk,” said Mr. Bains. “This report deals with leaks from the highest levels of the Conservative government and it is grossly inappropriate for the Prime Minister to delay its release.”
Mr. Bains’ made his comments in reaction to news that Mr. Brodie is resigning effective July 1st. Mr. Brodie was the alleged source of the first leak which created controversy on both sides of the border and affected Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign. Media reports have also suggested that Michael Wilson, Canada's ambassador to the United States, may have also played a role in confirming information about the leak to media.
Prime Minister Harper committed to investigate this incident because, as he stated, “this kind of leaking of information is completely unacceptable and in fact may well be illegal.”
“If the report indicates that Mr. Brodie was the source of the leak, and the recent actions of the PMO and media reports seem to indicate that is the case, the Prime Minister must fire him today,” said Mr. Bains.
“This kind of blatant interference in the democratic process of another country, particularly a country like the United States, with whom we share such a vital relationship, cannot be swept under the rug. It is time Prime Minister Stephen Harper stops talking about accountability and starts showing some.”
Never mind. Sentence first! Verdict after! Investigation last of all!
PS: Today is Thursday. The House of Commons, where the government "committed to releasing the report," does not sit until Monday. It's not clear how much more "immediately" the government could act, but it says here Lynch's report is to be released late this week or early next.
More »But so what? I’m not sure why the right was quite so defensive about these numbers. Market earnings don’t tell the whole story, but they do tell us something. They speak volumes about stagnating productivity, for starters. And while taxes and transfers did go a long way to close the gap between rich and poor that would otherwise have opened up in that same period, the wider the disparity in market earnings, the harder the tax-and-transfer system has to work. Past a certain point, something's got to give: either we give up on trying to keep rich and poor within hailing distance of one another, or we give up on trying to keep tax rates at levels that do not destroy incentives to work, save and invest.
Still... if the median worker essentially has nothing to show for two-and-a-half decades of effort -- "25 years, 53 bucks," the Globe's front page headline bitterly declared, a reference to the total annual increase in earnings, after inflation, over that interval -- it's hard to square with data showing that in fact most Canadians got a lot wealthier in the same period....
StatsCan figures show the average net worth of Canadian families of moderate means -- that is, in the middle fifth of the wealth distribution -- increased by 26% after inflation between 1984 and 2005, driven in part by the real estate boom.
Or take this data on the spread of ownership of everyday household appliances. At least, now they're everyday: not so long ago many of these were the preserve of a select few. Only 8% of Canadian households had a microwave oven in 1980, for exmple. Now nearly every household does. VCRs, CD players, home computers, to say nothing of such exotic animals as cellular phones and satellite TV -- if these were even available in 1980, they would have cost a small fortune. Yet while Canadian workers were supposedly just scraping by, they were also snapping up these once unheard-of luxuries like day-old bread.
I'm not sure what this proves. But if the contention is that the average Canadian is no better off than he was 25 years ago, it just ain't so.
Percentage of households with...
| 1980 | 1985 | 1990 | 1995 | 2000 | 2005 | |
| Washing machine | 64.5 | 68.8 | 74.7 | 77.6 | 80.1 | 82.2 |
| Dryer | 63.2 | 67.5 | 72.9 | 76.0 | 78.6 | 80.4 |
| Dishwasher | 28.6 | 36.6 | 41.6 | 47.1 | 51.7 | 57.2 |
| 2nd refrigerator | 10.0 | 14.9 | 18.3 | 19.3 | 22.8 | 25.4 |
| Microwave oven | 8.0 | 22.7 | 68.2 | 83.4 | 91.2 | 94.1 |
| Central air cond’g | 5.3 | 7.5 | 13.8 | 13.8 | 17.2 | 28.4 |
| 2nd phone | 33.6 | 50.0 | 67.0 | 74.4 | 76.6 | 70.0 |
| Colour TV | 81.1 | 91.2 | 96.9 | 98.5 | 99.4 | 99.0 |
| 2nd colour TV | 9.4 | 21.5 | 38.9 | 49.7 | 57.9 | 63.7 |
| VCR | - | 23.4 | 66.2 | 82.1 | 90.3 | 89.1 |
| CD player | - | 8.0 | 15.5 | 47.4 | 74.7 | 80.4 |
| Computer | - | 10.3 | 16.2 | 28.8 | 55.5 | 72.0 |
Source: Statistics Canada
More »The CRTC is thinking of regulating the internet. Seriously. It's even going to hold hearings -- sorry, a "consultation" -- on the matter. And while CRTC commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein claims "our intention is not to regulate the internet," it wouldn't be the CRTC if it didn't have regulation very much in mind.
So when von F. says “new digital technologies and platforms are creating opportunities for the broadcast of professionally-produced Canadian content that simply didn't exist a few years ago," and when he adds that the purpose of the exercise is "to gain a better understanding of this environment and, if necessary, to propose measures that would support the continued achievement of the Broadcasting Act's objectives," you just know where this is headed. ...
Hence the series of innocent "questions" the regulator would like to address takes on a very sinister hue indeed:
What is broadcasting in new media?Should the creation and promotion of Canadian broadcasting content for the new media environment be supported? If so, how?
Are there any barriers to accessing Canadian broadcasting content in the new media environment?
What other issues should be considered?
Now, not even the CRTC is addle-headed enough to think of regulating every little blogger in cyberspace, or the thousands of other sites that are producing oodles of Canadian content on their own, even without the miracle of government "support." It's the old media in the new media you can imagine the regulator getting its hooks into -- the Canwests and the CTVglobemedias. After all, you can just bet someone at the commission is going to say, we already regulate what they broadcast on the network. Doesn't it just make sense that we should also regulate what they broadcast over the 'net?
And this is where this all gets very scary. Television has been a regulated sector since the start, with predictably dreary results. The nation's magazines, while (hitherto) unregulated as to content, have descended into a similar state of decrepitude, thanks to their clinical dependence on state subsidy. But newspapers have until lately been the exception, or as much of an exception as you get in this country (we still prohibit foreigners from owning Canadian newspapers, though Canadian plutocrats have a proud record of rescuing other countries' newspapers.)
That was already in some peril, thanks to the trend toward cross-ownership of newspapers by broadcasters of recent years. If the government could not pressure the newspapers directly, it could do so indirectly, by threatening trouble for their owners' broadcast interests. And if you don't think that's possible in this country, you haven't been paying attention.
But now suppose the CRTC gets into regulating the 'net in support of Canadian content and other good things. Is it going to regulate what CTVglobemedia puts up on its CTV site, and not on its Globe and Mail site? Will it impose quotas on GlobalNational.com but not on nationalpost.com? Not on your André Bureau.
This has got to be stopped, now. Once upon a time the Conservatives talked about trimming the CRTC's powers back to such rudimentary tasks as auctioning spectrum and the like. I realize that was, like, two whole years ago, but at this point it's an open question who's the bigger threat to press freedom in this country, the human rights commissions or the CRTC.
More »Big issues, after all, have typically been around for a while. That’s how they get to be big. But the reason they’re still around is that no one’s figured out how to solve whatever problem it was that made them an issue in the first place. And the longer they remain unsolved, the more skeptical the public becomes of any proffered remedy, certainly of the kind -- easy, painless, cost-free -- that political parties tend to suggest. If there were an easy answer, the voters reason, someone would have implemented it already.
The other thing about big issues is that everyone knows they’re big issues, well in advance of voting day. So the parties have plenty of time to come up with a position that minimizes any risk of running afoul with the voters. And since the voters are generally skeptical of change (see above), that means hugging as close to the status quo, and each other, as they can manage.
There are exceptions to this rule, however, when the parties retreat to opposite corners on a big, important issue and come out fighting. The free trade election of 1988 is the classic example. This is what makes the Liberals’ apparent willingness to endorse a carbon tax so intriguing. The most radical shift in tax policy in a generation, it holds the potential, as few issues do, to be not just a big issue, but a decisive one.
Even the Tories could not be so flexible, surely, as to suddenly embrace what they have so fervently denounced until now. And even the Liberals could not be so craven, surely, as to back away from a policy to which all of their rhetoric points, and which is so critical to their credibility as environental advocates. The greater likelihood is that both parties will see it in their strategic interests to double down on the proposal: the Tories, because they think they can paint it as a tax grab, the Liberals, because they have to do something to get the focus off their leader. The result: this could be the most policy-driven election since 1988.
That’s if the press can be induced to get off their duffs and examine it as policy, rather than indulging in the usual idle speculation on how it will play politically. So far, most of the commentary has been confined to guffawing at Stéphane Dion for his naivety in suggesting it. “Mr. Dion’s idea,” the National Post declared authoritatively, “will be suicidal at the polls.” This is why Dion will never be prime minister, the paper’s comment editor, Jonathan Kay, agreed, while the Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente saw it as evidence of his “unerring instinct for his own jugular.” To be fair, that’s what many anonymous Liberals are saying, taking advantage of the witness protection program the Globe appears to be operating on its front page.
Leave aside evidence that the policy in fact enjoys considerable popular support -- 61% in a recent poll -- or the apparent political success the British Columbia government has enjoyed with a similar plan. You’d never know it from the above commentary, but the Liberal proposal involves, not just a broadening of the current 10 cents a litre fuel tax to embrace other sources of carbon emissions, but offsetting -- and potentially spectacular -- cuts in income taxes. Either would be good policy on its own, but together they make not only good policy, but I venture to say, good politics. The same cynics would have said free trade was political suicide -- many did. But it just may be that the public are not such dolts as made out, and that treated like adults, they may respond in kind.
Certainly the idea can be defended on its merits. If you attach any significance at all to the global warming thesis, then the best and cheapest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to put a price on them -- whether by means of the cap-and-trade system already in the works for large emitters, or the carbon tax the Grits would apply to the 50% or so of emissions that remain. Exhortation has no effect. Regulation is too costly. Subsidies are if anything counter-productive. The only way you really bring about long-term changes in behaviour is by embedding the cost of environmental damage into the prices of things. That’s what prices do every day, in a market economy: send signals about costs, allowing consumers to make informed choices.
Is it so hard to imagine that the public could be persuaded of the wisdom of a relatively simple idea: that we should tax less the things we want more of -- work, savings, investment -- and tax more the things we want less of, like greenhouse gases? Granted, we have yet to hear the specifics of the Liberal plan, and I’m readying myself to be disappointed: instead of using the revenues from a carbon tax to slash the top marginal rate of income tax, which is where most investment decisions are made, they may choose to blow it all on raising the personal tax exemption and other populist fare. But in the broad strokes, the policy has much to recommend it, and given sufficient time to examine it, the public may well come to agree.
More »To recap: It is not illegal to transfer funds from the national party to a riding association. It is not illegal to transfer funds from a riding association to the party. It is not illegal for the ridings to pool their funds to purchase advertising and other campaign services, and it is not illegal if they buy these from the party. Not illegal, and not unusual: all are routine practices in other parties’ campaigns. What seems to have Elections Canada’s knickers in a twist is that the Tories did all of these things at the same time, in the course of which responsibility for the spending of these funds is somehow said to have passed from the ridings to the party. So what the Conservatives claimed as local expenses were “really” national.
How the agency arrived at this metaphysics is as unclear as why any of it matters. The Tories gained no particular advantage from the exchange, since it is the combined effort, local and national, that makes up a campaign: whatever extra spending they were permitted to engage in at the national level came out of unused local budgets. But even calling them “national” or “local” makes little sense, since local campaigns by and large are extensions of the national campaign -- the same themes and motifs appear, only with the addition of a candidate’s name here and there.
What we are left with are arbitrary distinctions, selectively enforced, according to invisible criteria. That’s not a criticism of Elections Canada. It’s the law that’s the problem. It makes no more sense to set separate spending limits for national and local campaigns than it would as between TV commercials and lawn signs. These are matters best left to the parties to work out for themselves.
But then, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to set overall spending limits, either. The premise is that there should be a level playing field between the parties. But should fairness between parties be the guiding principle? The constitution speaks of the equality of every individual, not the equality of parties. And what are parties but associations of individuals? Surely it is fairness between individuals that should concern us: the equal ability of each individual citizen to make his voice heard at election time. That, after all, is why we give each of them one vote.
To constrain every party within the same spending limit, whether it has 10 members or 10 million, is in fact to put the individuals of which these parties are composed on a distinctly un-level footing: in our admittedly extreme example, each member of the larger party is permitted precisely one-millionth the “voice” of those in the smaller. Does that imply we should have no limits of any kind? Not a bit. But the place to impose such limits is not on the parties, but on individuals; not on spending, but on contributions.
Of course, we have contribution limits now. The Chretien reforms banned union and (most) corporate donations at the federal level, and set limits on individual contributions for the first time. These were tightened further under the Conservatives’ Accountability Act. But important loopholes remain. And indeed, even contribution limits, in traditional form, don’t get it quite right.
Set a limit on how much an individual can contribute to a particular candidate or party, after all, and you simply invite the establishment of parallel groups to receive donations, like the “political action committees” familiar from American politics. A similar problem bedevils spending limits: what do you do with so-called “third-party” advocacy groups, who may or may not be affiliated with the political parties? Either you end up with a total free-for-all, or you impose draconian controls on what private groups can spend to advance their cause, at great harm to freedom of speech.
The answer? Go back to the principle we established earlier: fairness between individuals -- the ability of each to contribute to the national conversation at election time, in this case financially. If every individual had the same income, this would cease to be a concern. The nearest approximation is to set an annual ceiling on the amount individuals can contribute, not just to a particular party or a candidate, but to all of them -- the sum total of all of his political donations in that year. But how he chose to divide these up within this limit, whether between parties, candidates, or third-party groups, would be up to him.
The beauty of this is that it’s self-limiting: the more you contribute to one party, the less you have left to give to another. Spending limits would likewise be unnecessary. Since only individuals could contribute, and since no individual would have any greater capacity to contribute than any other, the only limit the parties need face would be their ability to raise funds in this manner. And not just the parties: third-party groups would be under the same constraint, so far as they spent money to support or oppose a particular candidate or party.
At a stroke, parity would have been achieved -- between individuals, and between the different avenues through which each might seek to express his views in the political arena. Yet at minimal cost to free speech, and without requiring Elections Canada to decide how many local candidates can dance on the end of a pin.
More »“Two of Canada's largest television broadcasters set aside their fierce rivalry yesterday ... imploring the federal regulator to put consumers first ...”
“Cable and satellite carriers say consumer choice and market forces should dictate which channels are carried...”
“Rogers Communications Inc. has warned the CRTC that fee-for-carriage would inflate cable bills by as much as $10 a month, provoking a ‘consumer revolt’...”
“Shaw blasted the regulator for ‘continuing on a path of protectionism’ at the expense of consumers...”
“Independent broadcasters are urging the federal regulator to step up enforcement of existing rules governing cable and satellite companies ... to protect the programming interests of consumers...”
You get the picture. Preening and droning, droning and preening through three long weeks of hearings, a procession of suits -- cable, broadcast, plus a few from what are wittily referred to as the specialty channels -- took turns impressing upon the CRTC how they are all about consumers. Well of course. If there’s one group we know has a particular crush on consumers, it’s the cable industry. Unless it’s the broadcasters. Or, for that matter, the CRTC....
Even by the standards of the Canadian television industry, it was stomach-turning stuff. The routine never varies. Advertise your concern for the consumer interest. Boast of your unslakable thirst for competition. Mock your opponents as freeloaders and protectionists, sheltering from competition in the lee of the state. Then demand some regulatory preference of your own.
So the broadcasters, those “fierce rivals” who were “imploring” the regulator to “put consumers first,” were in fact there to ensure that nothing was done to open existing Canadian channels to competition from abroad, or even from each other. No change in “must-carry” rules, requiring the cable companies to distribute, and consumers to pay for, channels that nobody watches. No change in “genre protection,” granting each of the specialty channels its own absurd little monopoly -- one food channel, one dog channel, one Hitler channel -- for fear that somebody, somewhere might go out of business. No change in “simultaneous substitution,” a peculiar bit of legalized piracy alllowing Canadian broadcasters to bump an American signal off the air, substitute their own transmission of the same show in its place, and sell ads based on the combined audience -- a direct subsidy, in other words, for the display of American programming on Canadian networks.
And the cable and satellite carriers? The ones who were leading a “consumer revolt” against the broadcasters’ proposal to charge them for channels they now receive for free? That particular fit of consumerism lasted until about the next breath, when they vowed to pass on any fees that were imposed ... to consumers. For that matter, I don’t notice the cable companies leading the charge to dismantle foreign ownership restrictions, or to permit foreign-based satellites to offer their signals to Canadians (legally, that is -- thousands of Canadians are already doing so on the sly). The last time anyone tried -- remember the DirecTv “deathstar” fiasco? -- the industry practically demanded the government shoot it out of the sky.
As you listen to this unending barrage of nonsense -- and the hearings were just the start: the CRTC has until the summer to come up with a new policy framework for the industry, with the inevitable appeals to cabinet to follow -- bear in mind three things. One, while everyone cites the need to support Canadian content, what they are invariably after is the profits from foreign content. The fees the broadcasters want are supposedly needed to pay for local news broadcasts. They are in fact the the residue from some unpleasant recent bidding wars for foreign programming.
Two, though everyone complains about the burdens imposed upon them by the regulator, nobody actually wants them removed -- since any burden can always be invoked in defense of a regulatory favour. You think broadcasters, rather than suffer under the yoke of Canadian content regulations -- but with all the subsidies that go with them -- would rather be free of both? You think the cable industry would take this deal: no must-carry provisions, in return for no protection from foreign deathstars? Not on your life.
And three, there really are no limits, whether of logic, consistency, or simple shame, on what these people will say to advance their cause. My favourite recent example is the CTV executive, writing in the Toronto Star, who was scandalized that cable and satellite providers should be allowed “to subsidize part of their business” by taking local signals and rebroadcasting them in other parts of the country without compensating local broadcasters. “It's hard to imagine any reasonable business model,” he write, “that would allow someone to confiscate your property with no compensation and resell it for a profit.” Could there be a better description of simultaneous substitution?
But hold on. Suppose we took this gaggle of special pleaders at their word. Suppose we were to design a television policy that really did put the consumer first -- a policy that treated viewers as if they were what television was for. In this world, broadcasters would succeed or fail depending on whether they put on programs that people wanted to watch, not how well they could bamboozle the regulator. Cable and satellite providers would carry only those channels that people were willing to pay for, and would charge only for those people willingly chose. New broadcasters and new carriers could enter the market at any time, whatever their nationality, based solely on their ability to compete for viewers and subscribers. And the cable and broadcast industries, rather than bawling to Auntie CRTC to settle their disputes, would work it out between themselves.
I know. Crazy talk. We return now to regularly scheduled whining.
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last.fm
5/23/2008
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