Following up on this post, other commentators are starting to raise questions about what will happen after the impending federal election. Based on the Harper Cons’ track record, the default assumption has to be that they aren’t about to consider themselves bound by mere conventions or if there’s a chance
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Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Linda McQuaig discusses the radical difference between how Canadians want to see public resources used (based on the example set by governments elsewhere), and the determination of the Cons and their corporate allies to instead fritter away every dime of fiscal capacity the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Abdul Abiad, David Furceri and Petia Topalova highlight the IMF’s research confirming that well-planned infrastructure spending offers an economic boost in both the short and long term: (I)ncreased public infrastructure investment raises output in the short term by boosting demand and in the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Aaron Wherry reviews what the last week has told us about the functioning (or absence thereof) of our House of Commons – and points out that the most important problem is one which hasn’t yet surfaced in headlines or memes: (T)he most important
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On practical obstacles
Shorter Andrew Scheer: A functional democratic Parliament is everybody’s responsibility. And to be more precise, my responsibility for a functional democratic Parliament is to enforce complete unaccountability – and indeed punish anybody who questions that choice – until the Conservative Party instructs me otherwise. (For further reading, Michael Den Tandt,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: I went to Controllin’ Steve’s Talking Point Dispensarium the other night…
…and a democratic Parliament broke out.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Bryce Covert rightly challenges the claim that poverty bears any relationship to an unwillingness to work – along with other attempts to blame the poor for their condition: In fact, the majority of able-bodied, adult, non-elderly poor people worked in 2012, according
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how Justin Trudeau seems to have taken up the cause of unaccountable executive power even from his third-party place in the House of Commons. For further reading…– For some of the background on of the Libs’ entitlement hangover following the Cons’ taking power, see here (insisting that Parliament
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how Michael Chong’s Reform Act privileges members of Parliament over party members and supporters – and how there’s far more reason for concern about a lack of genuine grassroots input as matters stand now than about the influence of MPs. For further reading…– I’ll point to Andrew Coyne
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – George Monbiot comments on the dangerous effect of agreements which place investors’ interests above those of governments and citizens: From the outset, the transatlantic partnership has been driven by corporations and their lobby groups, who boast of being able to “co-write” it.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jenny Carson asks what governments are doing to lift poor workers out of poverty. (Spoiler alert: the Cons’ answer is “why would we want to do that?”). – Meanwhile, Kemal Dervis and Uri Dadush discuss the desperate need to rein in inequality
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Tim Harper writes about Scott Vaughan’s final report as the federal environmental commissioner: Scott Vaughan doesn’t have the profile of some of his contemporaries but as the environmental commissioner bowed out with a final report Tuesday, he reminded official Ottawa how much he
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Bill Curry reports on what looks like a thoroughly warped view of the role of the Minister of Justice and Parliament in assessing the constitutionality of legislation (h/t to bigcitylib): Ottawa is crafting legislation that risks running afoul of the Charter of Rights
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – While far too many in the media seem to have glossed over what the Cons’ attacks on votes in Parliament this fall actually meant, Mia Rabson nicely sums it up: (F)or the government to simply reject every single suggestion the opposition makes as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – Paul Dechene interviews Marc Spooner about Saskatchewan residents left behind in the province’s boom: One way that our growing income gap can be hand-waved away is by pointing to the fact that every other province that goes through an economic boom faces this.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On executive decisions
My post yesterday on the Senate’s choice to remind Canadians of its existence by blocking a bill passed by the House of Commons has sparked plenty of discussion. But I’ll highlight one of the more stunning arguments being made in favour of the Senate’s…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Erika Shaker describes the effect of the “right-to-work” laws so popular among our more regressive politicians: “Right-to-Work” still remains a dubious—even Orwellian—term, probably because we have a sweatshop-sized vat of research documenting examples of what this scheme has meant for those American jurisdictions
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Star recognizes the danger facing anybody who tries to convince a Con MP to listen to constituents’ concerns – as the Cons don’t care enough to respond to specific appeals, but will be happy to use whatever information they can gather
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On likely stories
Yes, last week’s attempt to call anti-immigrant bigots to testify before the Standing Committee on Immigration turned into a debacle for the Cons (thanks in no small part to a quick opposition response). But there’s reason to doubt any claim that it was merely an innocent mistake. After all, one
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – The CCPA’s Christopher Schenk offers up a detailed response to the Sask Party’s attacks on workers, featuring this conclusion: In a period of widening inequality restrictive labour laws are blatantly unnecessary and regressive. Indeed, their consideration is shocking when one considers that
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