Here's the real deal about PM

This letter was published in the Lethbridge Herald on June 26th, 2010, although not published in their online edition.  It was submitted on June 3rd, but a mix-up delayed its publication.

Editor:

The unqualified praise contained in the editorial you reprinted from the Red Deer Advocate on Monday, May 31st ("Perhaps PM is the real deal") almost made me choke on my porridge. Here are some of the reasons:

To me one of the most disturbing aspects of Harper is that he does not accept even the principles of democracy. It starts with his contempt for Parliament.

1. Remember the handbook for disrupting the work of committees? (a 200 page manual the Harper Conservatives had issued committee chairpersons. It suggested debate-obstructing delays and, if necessary, it told chair persons to storm out of meetings to grind business to a halt).

2. There’s the silencing of watchdogs that Parliament put into place to serve the interests of all Canadians: (a) the head of the Canadian Nuclear Regulatory Agency, Linda Keen. Fired. (b) Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page. Harper has tried to muzzle him by cutting his funding unless he keeps his mouth shut. (c) Paul Kennedy, head of the RCMP Public Complaints Commission. He was a bit too critical of the RCMP. Kennedy's four-year mandate was not renewed last November. (d) The Military Police Complaints Commission, one of two committees investigating allegations of torture of Afghanistan prisoners. Conflict between Peter Tinsley, the commission's chair, and the government came to a head in Oct. 2007, when Tinsley suspended the hearings in the face of three government motions seeking an adjournment. Tinsley’s position was not renewed.

3. Let's not forget the two prorogations to avoid a sticky situation in parliament.

Harper uses executive spending powers to eliminate things he does not like, with no reference to the House of Commons and no public debate:

1. A continuous assault on women's rights;

2. Diminishing the role of science in the economy;

3. Attacks on the cultural sector;

4. Eliminating the funding for advocacy organizations which criticize the government: e.g., Kairos and, this week, the Canadian Council for International Cooperation.

The Omnibus Budget Bill represents another order of abuse, one copied directly from the corrupted legislative system in the U.S. The Omnibus Budget Bill would allow Harper and his cabinet to change pension rules, waive environmental assessment of projects such as tar sands expansion and oil pipelines, and privatize parts of Canada Post.

Harper is "some kind of real deal" but not one most thinking Canadians want.

Mark Sandilands

Too many people buying into the corporate version

Too many people buying into the corporate version

Written by Mark Sandilands

Tuesday, 08 June 2010

Re: “Writer failed to recognize economic realities” (Herald, May 26). In my May 12 letter, I described two narratives to the royalty fiasco. One is the corporate narrative: the government jacked up the royalties too high and drove out the oil industry; the non-corporate narrative says even this feeble attempt to increase royalties angered the oil companies and they decided to teach the government a lesson. Clearly Mr. Wilson has bought the corporate, oil industry version. He shows thinking that is ages old, from at least the time of feudal lords and serfs through the beginnings of industrialization to now. It’s always the same message: we must trust big corporations (and now their right-wing political parties) to bring us economic prosperity. Any attempt to take away the lords’ or owners’ privileges will only result in economic ruin for the common folk. We’re now hearing the corporate narrative from the same industry that is telling us the “accident” in the Gulf of Mexico was not BP’s fault, when evidence appears daily of malfeasance by BP in this dangerous kind of drilling. This kind of thinking has led to right-wing governments in Alberta for almost its entire history. Mr. Wilson mentions the NDP government in B.C. in the ’90s, conveniently overlooking the Asian meltdown that happened during its term of office. If we want to consider governments in neighbouring provinces, how about Grant Devine’s Conservatives in Saskatchewan in the 1980s? That was definitely a “lost decade”! (At least six of Devine’s cabinet ministers were subsequently convicted of fraud, by the way.) It took the social democratic government of Roy Romanow to balance Saskatchewan’s books, a year ahead of Alberta. Manitobans also seem happy to elect NDP governments who’ve had a string of balanced budgets. Indeed, data from the federal finance department shows NDP governments consistently have the best track record for the past 25 years for balancing their books. Further evidence of Conservative collusion with corporations can be seen in the Harper Conservatives’ Bill C-27, which would require that only producers delivering at least 40 tonnes of grain can vote in Canadian Wheat Board elections. Also note Conservative tinkering with the percentage of Canadian sugar in goods, which will negatively affect local sugar beet growers. When common folk begin to understand that Conservative governments generally don’t have their interests in mind, perhaps we will elect different governments. Mark Sandilands Lethbridge

p.s. [not included in Herald letter due to lack of space].  I'm reminded of a couple of books I've read recently.  One is The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, discussed here  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ragged_Trousered_Philanthropists  and available as a free e-book: (see  the bottom of the page of the Wikipedia article for URLs).  The other is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, discussed here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle and also available for a frree e-book (again see the bottom of the Wikipedia article for links).

Tax Freedom Day from the Fraser Institute. Bunkum!

On the weekend, news outlets reported Tax Freedom Day, based on a news release from the right-wing, anti-government Fraser Institute, e.g., http://www.live-pr.com/en/the-fraser-institute-june-5-marks-r1048484728.htm

Here's another take on the concept from tax expert, Neil Brooks:
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National_Office_Pubs/2005/tax_freedom_day.pdf

A shorter version is here: http://www.policy.ca/directory/page.cgi?g=Detailed%2F1526.html;d=1'%20years%20of%20education

Here is a paragraph from the conclusion to Neil Brooks's essay:

Yet the Institute has presented us with infor-
mation that seriously distorts the picture of how
much tax Canadians pay. Far from promoting ra-
tional discussion, the Institute is clearly trying to
incite Canadians to anger, to encourage them to
join with members of the financial élite in a kind
of collective “tax rage.” The ultimate result of its
campaign will be even lower taxes, particularly
for high-income Canadians — and a continued
decline in the capacity of our governments to de-
liver programs that most Canadians value.

Gywn Morgan--now campaigning for salmon farming.

If, like me, you read the Globe and Mail, you may have come across a column in the May 31st paper written by Gwyn Morgan, former CEO of Encana, and the person Harper put forward as his choice for a new public appointments chief (rejected by the opposition).  The column's title was "Blaming salmon farms for decline makes for one fishy tale".  I thought the column was rather "fishy" and am pleased to note the comments have appeared.  Here is a link to the column and rebuttals http://www.salmonaresacred.org/blog/damage-globe-and-mail-credibility. The first rebuttal begins, "Heavily biased misinformed writing such as below damages the credibility of your paper.  Someone should have reviewed this piece with the scientists studying the collapse of wild salmon in BC. "  The second rebuttal begins, "Gwyn Morgan's article is very narrowed minded, ignoring mounting scientific evidence from around the world that concludes open net aquaculture are breeding grounds for sea lice and are lethal to wild salmon, shrimps and clams. "

Big oil running the show

Big oil running the show

Written by Mark Sandilands

Wednesday, 12 May 2010

According to a recent report from Associated Press about the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, BP somehow avoided submitting a plan in 2008 for handling a blowout. This illustrates how big oil companies can get governments to bend to their will. Here in Alberta, a recent example of this phenomenon is the oil royalties issue. Some highlights: • 2006: all PC leadership candidates call for a royalty review • February 2007: Premier Stelmach appoints a Royalty Review Panel; • September 2007: The Panel calls for increased royalties; • October 2007: Alberta’s Auditor-General Fred Dunn says in his annual report that the Alberta government knew as far back as 2004 that Albertans could collect at least another $1 billion a year from the oil industry; • October 2007: Stelmach increases royalty rates by 20 per cent (25 per cent less than the panel recommended); • February 2008: It comes out that the Royalty Review panel was not given all the data — data indicating royalties could be increased without harming the economy; • March 2008: Stelmach announces a five-year royalty break worth $237 million per year. And on it goes. There are two story lines to the oil and gas royalties issue: 1. Stelmach changed the oil royalties at the absolute worst time — when the prices were plummeting, causing the oil industry in Alberta to flee to other jurisdictions where royalties are lower, making the economic slump in the Alberta oilpatch worse than otherwise. 2. The oil companies were outraged that Stelmach and company and decided to punish him. First, they pulled out of Alberta — their huge profits allow them to lose a bit of money and the loss is worth it to teach Stelmach a lesson. Second, they pull donations from the PCs and funding an upstart further-to-the right party, the Alberta Wildrose Alliance, which promises to give the oil companies what they want. What’s the effect of all this on Albertans? Less money for health care, long-term care, etc. Cataract surgery is pulled out of Lethbridge and long-term care facilities are closed in favour of DAL where costs are carried by families. If you’d like to hear more about this topic, plan to attend one or both of the talks by Brian Mason, leader of the Alberta NDP: Thursday at 10 a.m. at the Lethbridge Senior Citizens Organization.  Title: Good Health Care and Royalty Fair Share. Thursday at 7 p.m. at Southminster United Church Thursday.  Title: Good Health Care, Long Term Care and Royalty Fair Share.

Setting the record straight about climate science

Editor:

The letter from Ben VanHees (April 21: Climate scientists have done nothing to earn respect) contains a number of misleading statements which need to be corrected.

To start, the IPCC scientists did not and do not work for pay from the UN. The IPCC website clearly states, “Experts contributing to the review will do so without any remuneration.” And they didn’t work for a solid year: a glance at the call for applications at the IPCC website mentions frequent week-end gatherings and rely on email the rest of the time.

Secondly, the hockey stick graph, based on an analysis of tree rings (used as temperature estimations) showed clearly how temperatures were fairly steady for hundreds of years and then spiked in the last part of the 20th Century.

The hockey stick graph has been the focus of attacks by certain right wing national newspapers, perhaps because it was prominent in the Third IPCC Report (we’ve received the Fourth and IPCC is working on the Fifth) and in Al Gore’s film. Yes, two Canadians found errors in the Mann “hockey stick” paper, not by visiting trees, but by obtaining the original data and re-analyzing it. However, independent assessments agree that, although there was one small error in the paper, the overall conclusions were reasonable. This website http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptic_arguments/fakeddata.html has a nice summary of the controversy.

VanHees says that replication is the basis of the “scientific method” and charges that Michael Mann, one of the authors of the hockey stick graph, refuses to release all of his data. How then did the two Canadians re-analyze it? In fact, Mann’s data are available (see the website above for links). More importantly, the research findings shown in the hockey stick graph have been replicated again and again, using different temperature proxies and different methodologies. The findings have been published in peer-reviewed journals, such as SCIENCE (arguably one of the top science journals in the world) unlike attempts to discredit the research.

That the earth is warming is accepted by the national academies of the G8 countries (http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/G8+5energy-climate09.pdf) and even by most skeptics who now focus on the cause. There are local temperature changes such as receding glaciers and earlier spring break-ups. More importantly, global temperature averages show the warming (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/). Quick action is imperative.
________

Mark Sandilands

Published in the Lethbridge Herald 2010-4-29, page A8

Fraser Institute take on stimulus plan off target--Letter to the Lethbridge Herald April 14th

Fraser Institute take on stimulus plan off target

Readers must have been surprised to see the right-wing Fraser Institute attacking the federal government stimulus program (“Stimulus Plan Didn’t Help Economy,” Lethbridge Herald, March 31). After all, doesn’t the Fraser Institute usually cheer for the Harperites? Well, they do except when Harper and company are forced into doing something they don’t want to do by the majority of members of Parliament.

Memory takes us back to the fall of 2008 — the first time Harper prorogued Parliament to avoid a nasty situation: the confidence motion that might have toppled his government. The Tories went into overdrive, convincing a slight majority of Canadians that this was an illegitimate, undemocratic move by the opposition parties. Harper tossed away his credibility, particularly in Quebec, by accusing the Liberals and New Democrats of colluding with separatists. (All this is grippingly detailed in a recent book: “How we almost gave the boot to the Tories” by Brian Topp). The culmination of the drama was the budget of January 2009, brought in with enough stimulus to ensure that Michael Ignatieff and the Liberals would not vote it down.

So, did the stimulus plan help the economy? Fortunately other economists have analyzed the report done by the Fraser Institute and found it lacking. One (Erin Weir of the Progressive Economics Forum) analyzed Statistics Canada data and found that “government purchases and investment, which accounted for only one-quarter of the economy in the second quarter of 2009, have accounted for one-third of the economic growth since then.”

Weir then asked how the Fraser Institute got it so wrong. The answer is that the Fraser authors did not examine stimulus as a share of economic growth. Instead, according to Weir, they compared the rate of increase in stimulus between quarters. This would almost guarantee that no effect of the stimulus would appear. But then, that would suit the relentlessly anti-government-action Fraser Institute to a T, wouldn’t it?